How these entrepreneurs and entertainers went from sleeping in cars and flopping on friends’ couches to becoming some of the most successful people in America.
In 1992, struggling playwright Tyler Perry invested his $12,000 life savings into his first play, “I Know I’ve Been Changed,” attended by 30 people. It left him with nothing to pay rent, so he spent three months sleeping in his royal blue, two-door Geo Metro. Perry would go on to build an estimated $1.4 billion fortune in film and television, notably for the hit “Madea” franchise, and in 2019 opened the 330-acre Tyler Perry Studios in Atlanta. One of his first moves: parking a replica of his Geo Metro (which had been repossessed) out front. “I wanted all who enter to know that their dream can come true too,” he wrote in a social media post.
Perry is one of at least 15 people to rise from homelessness to a spot on Forbes’ list of the 250 Greatest Self-Made Americans. Some, like Perry and fellow billionaire John Paul DeJoria, lived out of their cars. Others, including actor Al Pacino and San Francisco Federal Reserve bank CEO Mary Daly, crashed on friends’ and family members’ couches. A few, including ballerina Misty Copeland and actress Halle Berry, stayed in motels and shelters, respectively. Several of them have found ways to give back to those experiencing housing instability. In 1986, Whoopi Goldberg famously hosted the first Comic Relief telethon to raise money for America’s homeless population. DeJoria, a longtime Austin resident and philanthropist, has donated funds to dedicated housing for the city’s homeless population. Chris Gardner, meanwhile, pitched solutions to homelessness to the United Nations in 2020.
Here are the 15 members of Forbes’ list of the 250 Greatest Self-Made Americans who experienced extended periods of housing instability on their way to greatness.
LeBron James
Rank on the 250 Greatest Self-Made Americans list: No. 5
The basketball great missed 83 days of his fourth-grade year when he and his single mother did not have a permanent home. In 2018, James’ foundation opened a school for at-risk children in his hometown of Akron, Ohio, with championship jerseys lining the walls.
John Paul DeJoria, No. 24
The billionaire cofounder of the Paul Mitchell haircare products and Patrón tequila grew up in a small apartment with his mother in downtown LA and started working at 9 years old to help support the family. DeJoria was homeless twice. First as a single father in his early 20s, when he says he collected Coke bottles to provide for him and his son, and second in 1980, when he started John Paul Mitchell Systems in his mid 30s with just $700 and slept in his car while selling shampoo door-to-door.
Tyler Perry, No. 25
The billionaire entertainer started his career by writing plays about growing up amid poverty and abuse in New Orleans. While still living out of his car, he constructed his own sets, created the programs and sold snacks during intermission.
Yvon Chouinard, No. 34
The founder of clothing and outdoor gear brand Patagonia began climbing mountains at age 14, spending years living out of his car and eating cans of cat food while chasing mountaineering adventures and attracting his future clientele, selling pitons from his trunk. In 1966, Chouinard set roots in Ventura, California in a beachside tin shed to develop his product line and eventual clothing line. Chouinard was the owner of the brand, which Forbes estimated was worth more than $1 billion in 2022, when he donated the company to a trust and a nonprofit, in part because he hated being called a billionaire.
Whoopi Goldberg, No. 52
Before she was a celebrity comedian, Goldberg was a young single mother who suffered from addiction and experienced homelessness. She turned her life around in the 1980s by overcoming her addiction and in 1986 hosted a “Comic Relief” telethon for homelessness with Billy Crystal and Robin Williams.
Chris Gardner, No. 67
Gardner has traveled the world sharing his experience of sleeping in the shelters and churches of San Francisco with his son in the 1980s. His story of rising from sleeping on the floor of a public restroom to opening a brokerage firm Gardner Rich & Co. formed the basis of the 2006 Will Smith movie The Pursuit of Happyness. In 2020, Gardner testified at the United Nations to advocate for solutions to homelessness.
Dwayne Johnson, No. 70
Now one of the highest-paid actors in Hollywood, “The Rock” and his family were forced to move over a dozen times, as his father chased wrestling gigs. He was 14 when his family was evicted from their one-bedroom apartment in Hawaii. Later, at age 23, his childhood dream of professional football came to an end when he was cut from the practice squad of a Canadian Football League team. When his father picked him up from the airport in Miami, Johnson says he had only $7 to his name—the inspiration for his production company, Seven Bucks.
Jewel, No. 103
The Grammy-nominated singer grew up on an Alaskan homestead with no running water, an outhouse and a coal stove. She began performing in bars at a young age to support her family; her father suffered from addiction and her mother left when she was 8 years old. She moved out at 15 and ended up homeless, living in her car, after refusing a sexual advance from her boss at a computer warehouse.
Hilary Swank, No. 105
A teenaged Swank and her mother lived out of their car for a few weeks when they moved to Los Angeles in 1990 with only $75 and a Mobil gas card. At one point, while Swank pursued an acting career, they spent nights in a friend’s house that was on the market, leaving during the day so it could be shown to potential buyers. Now Swank has two Oscars. “Life is very full, I am very blessed,” she once told Forbes.
Al Pacino, No. 127
The Oscar-winning actor grew up in the South Bronx and, as an unemployed struggling actor, once slept in theaters, friends’ homes and even in a storefront.
Cher, No. 130
The future pop star’s parents left her in a Catholic orphanage in Pennsylvania as an infant for a few months. She dropped out of high school at 16 and lived at a friend’s house in Los Angeles, where she worked odd jobs and attended acting classes before she met and moved in with her future partner, Sonny, in a move that would launch them both into stardom.
John Hope Bryant, No. 145
The CEO of financial literacy nonprofit Operation HOPE spent six months without a home when he was 18 years old. He would park his Jeep in a lot by the LAX airport and cover the license plate so it wouldn’t get towed.
Sylvester Stallone, No. 185
Before he was Rocky, Stallone was a struggling actor in New York, the city where he was born and spent his infancy in foster care. He moved back to New York in 1969 after studying drama at the University of Miami and spent four nights sleeping at the Port Authority Bus Terminal. He kept his pens and books in a 25-cent locker at the station and was so desperate for work at the time, he said in a 1978 Playboy interview, that he found a job listing for a part in a seedy underground movie that paid him $200. He also worked as an usher and cleaned the lion cages at the Central Park Zoo while he wrote scripts at night by candlelight.
Mary C. Daly, No. 205
At 15, the now president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco dropped out of high school to escape a chaotic home life in Ballwin, Missouri. She slept on friends’ couches, and worked at a doughnut shop and Target, before pursuing a GED. Daly, whose mentor paid her first tuition bill of $216 because she didn’t have the money, was the first in her family to graduate college, getting a bachelor’s in economics from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, then a master’s from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a Ph.D. from Syracuse University. She joined the San Francisco Fed as a research economist in 1996 and worked her way up the ranks.
Misty Copeland, No. 216
Ballet’s biggest star hung up her pointe shoes last year after a 25-year career with unlikely origins. “I didn’t have a typical path or journey of what people expect from a classical dancer, not growing up in a family that’s supportive or that has money, not being white,” Copeland told Forbes in 2018. She slept on the floor of a motel room in her early teens with her five siblings while her mother worked several jobs to keep the family afloat. At 13 years old, she found peace and stability in ballet classes at the local Boys & Girls Club of America and went on to become the first Black woman to become principal dancer at the American Ballet Theater.
Source: Forbes
John Hope Bryant — founder of Bryant Group Ventures, Operation HOPE, Inc, publisher of the Bryant Journal and author of his 7th book Capitalism for All: Inclusive Economics and the Future Proofing of America, now a bestseller.
