Celebrities who had tough childhoods in broken homes

Childhoods in hell

Childhood is normally the most beautiful time for most people. But, unfortunately, this is often not the case. This is a problem that not even the most famous celebrities in the world can escape. Their stories of overcoming family problems show that, although life can be hard, there is always room for second and even third chances. The most recurrent example? Drew Barrymore.

Drew Barrymore

Drew Barrymore's story is one of the toughest in the film world. In countless interviews, she has spoken of how she began to lead a life that was not at all appropriate for a girl of her young age. Her parents, who were immersed in a spiral of excess, were more concerned with taking their daughter to parties and events than with her education. As a result, after leaving a detox clinic at the age of 15, Drew Barrymore filed for emancipation from her parents, who had divorced in 1984.

Leighton Meester

"My family's story is crazy, probably the craziest story I've ever heard," the 'Gossip Girl' actress told Marie Claire magazine in a 2012 interview. Not surprisingly, and far from exaggerating, her life story began in prison, where her mother had been sentenced for leading a drug trafficking ring. There, in prison, she met the man who would become the father of the famous actress. The relationship between mother and daughter was never good and in 2011 she filed a lawsuit against her mother, accusing her of having spent the money she sent her to cover the needs of her sick brother on cosmetic treatments.

Michael Jackson

Another childhood plagued by abuse was that of Michael Jackson and his siblings, at the hands of their father, Joseph Jackson, creator and manager of The Jackson 5 group. "If you didn't do it right, he would tear you to pieces with the belt", he said in his documentary 'Living With Michael Jackson' (2003). Humiliations also reached the matriarch of the family, Katherine, who, after several attempts, and despite her religious convictions, ended up divorcing her husband in 2010.

Nick Carter

In his autobiography 'Facing the Music and Living to Talk About It', the singer and member of the famous Backstreet Boys band says that he grew up in a flat above a place owned by his parents that served as a bar and strip club, which meant that, as a result of somewhat negligent parenting, both he and his siblings were exposed to a world that was not ideal for children. "Family legend has it that when I was two years old, I wandered into one of the liquor stores at the Yankee Rebel, where I was caught drinking for the first time," his memoir reads. "My parents always laughed about it. I laughed about it for a while, too, and then I didn't laugh anymore."

Johnny Depp

Johnny Depp's childhood was anything but easy. Before settling in Miramar, Florida, he moved with his family up to 20 times. His adolescence was also difficult, aggravated by the separation of his parents when he was 15, which caused him to fall into a deep depression. In addition, his parents disengaged from him once the marriage broke up. "My mother was perhaps the meanest human being I've ever met in my life," the actor told The Rolling Stone in a 2016 interview.

Eminem

Eminem spent his entire childhood with his mother, Debbie Mathers, as his father abandoned them when he was a baby. The singer grew up with his mother, who suffered from various mental health problems aggravated by the consumption of illegal substances, and his mother's various partners. It was a tough childhood that Eminem has narrated in his songs (which is why his mother came to demand a significant amount of money from her son).

Courtney Love

Courtney Love, Kurt Cobain's former partner, spent her childhood in various hippie communes with her mother, who had custody of her after her father lost her in divorce proceedings over allegations that he had given her LSD. Years later, her mother rebuilt her life and moved to New Zealand, sending Courtney to live with her former stepfather, Frank Rodriguez.

Frances Bean Cobain

The story of Frances Bean Cobain, the daughter of Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain, has not been a bed of roses either. Her life is deeply marked from her earliest childhood by the abstinence syndrome caused by her mother's addictions during pregnancy. Add to that, the death of her father, who took his own life when she was not even two years old.

Jennifer Aniston

Jennifer Aniston's childhood was definitely not a happy one. Her father, actor John Aniston, left her mother, actress and model Nancy Dow, for another woman when she was 10 years old, which affected her deeply. Jennifer Aniston stayed with her mother, but Jennifer was never good enough or pretty enough for her. The relationship between the two broke down when Nancy Dow published the book 'From Mother and Daughter to Friends', in which she revealed details of the cold and complicated relationship between the two.

Christina Aguilera

The American singer has childhood memories she never should have had, such as the day she travelled seven hours with her mother and younger sister Rachel to her grandmother's house in Pittsburgh. As she herself told The Sunday Times in the past, they were fleeing the violence of their father, Sergeant Fausto Aguilera.

Tom Cruise

Tom Cruise was born into a family of limited economic resources. This constant instability was compounded by the fact that his parents were separated, which forced him to live from one place to another, travelling all over the country and attending up to 15 schools. Furthermore, his relationship with his father was not good, as he himself told Parade magazine in 2006, because "he was an abuser and a coward, a person who, if something went wrong, kicked you, kicked you hard".

Lindsay Lohan

In the song 'Confessions of a broken heart', Lindsay Lohan makes biographical reference to a troubled past full of family violence marked by the figure of her father, who went to prison for influence peddling and was later accused of wanting to sell secrets of his daughter's intimate life to the tabloids.

Macaulay Culkin

Actor Macaulay Culkin also emancipated himself from his parents before he came of age. After they separated, a battle began between the Culkins for custody of Macaulay, and what that entailed (access to his fortune, valued at between $15 million and $20 million). But the young actor eventually took his parents to court and managed to wrest access to his trust fund from his parents.

Adele

Adele's father, Mark Evans, abandoned the British singer three times in her life, causing her trauma. She never got closure, although she did reconcile with him shortly before he died of cancer in 2021. Nevertheless, the relationship was bad most of the time. "I would spit in his face," Adele told Vogue in an interview.

Rihanna

Rihanna's parents' marriage was badly affected by her father's addiction to various illegal substances, which caused countless chapters of stress and anxiety that had such a physical affect on the singer. In fact, from the age of eight she began to suffer from severe headaches that only subsided when her parents divorced when she was 14.

Mariah Carey

Mariah Carey's childhood was scarred by a lack of resources, racism, illegal substances and domestic abuse among family members. In her biography, entitled 'The Meaning of Mariah Carey', she recounts a cruel episode involving her sister, who drugged her when she was 12 and tried to sell her to a pimp.

Angelina Jolie

Angelina Jolie was also marked by the break-up of her parents' marriage, after her father, Jon Voight, left her mother, Marcheline Bertrand. Angelina was just three years old and her brother James was five. Such was the trauma that led to her decision to take her surname.

Britney Spears

When Britney Spears' parents divorced in 2002, the singer told People that it was "the best thing that ever happened to my family. I've wanted this to happen for 10 years." Not surprisingly, she went through hell in the domestic context, aggravated by the alcoholism problems of her father, Jamie Spears, who continued to exert an iron grip on the singer's life until the courts restored her anxious freedom in 2021.

Demi Lovato

Demi Lovato's father's addictions to illegal substances and alcoholism gave Lovato a childhood full of violence. Her parents broke up their marriage when she was two years old and she had to grow up with the weight of that burden on her shoulders. The actress and singer's experiences were so damning that, as she told the 'Dr. Phil' show, at the age of seven she thought about taking her own life to end all the pain she felt.