Family comes in many forms—just ask these stars who grew up in foster care or became proud foster parents
14 Famous People You Didn’t Know Were Foster Kids or Foster Parents
Updated on Jun. 06, 2025
Jon Cryer
The Two and a Half Men and Pretty in Pink star and his wife, Lisa Joyner, are proud parents to a daughter named Daisy, whom they adopted shortly after she was born. They are such advocates of adoption that they starred in a campaign for the organization RaiseAChild, a nonprofit dedicated to building loving families for children in foster care. “Really good friends have said to me, ‘I don’t know, though. I don’t know what I’m going to get,’” says Joyner. “You kind of don’t know what you’re going to get if you have a biological child. It was a no-brainer for me. Adoption is a choice. And it’s a beautiful choice. Family is where you find it.”
Joyner herself was in foster care and adopted. She always knew she would one day want to adopt. “Families are what they are. You can defy convention,” says Cryer, who also has a son named Charlie from a previous marriage.
Simone Biles
Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles proves that incredible parents can help a child achieve anything, whether they’re related by blood or not. The GOAT was in the foster care system before she was eventually adopted by her grandfather and his wife. “My birth mother suffered from drug addiction, and when I was just 3 years old, my siblings and I were removed from her custody,” Biles told CNN. “From there, we bounced around until I was 6, and my grandparents made the brave move to adopt us.” The most decorated gymnast in history encourages greater investment in the foster care system to give more children the opportunity to thrive.
Scott Shriner
Scott Shriner of the band Weezer and his wife, Jillian, are parents to two adopted children. They were connected with their younger son, Jovi, through the child-and-family services agency Five Acres, after learning about the difficulties of the foster care system in their hometown of Los Angeles. “The first time we met Jovi, it was a bit overwhelming. I just saw this little guy, and he was so grown up and so small at the same time,” Shriner has said. “We just fell in love with him. I just had that instinct that he was my son. I feel like our family was out there, and it’s not your typical way of making a family, maybe, but you couldn’t make up a better one—we were all so meant to be together. It’s just undeniable.”
Alec Mapa
You’ve seen him on countless TV shows, most notably Ugly Betty, but actor Alec Mapa’s most important role is parent. Mapa and his husband, Jamison Hebert, are fathers to son Zion, and they’re staunch advocates of adoption through the foster care system. “He was 5 years old when he was out of foster care, and it was a tragic circumstance, so there was a lot of grief happening,” Mapa has said. But now, “he’s so funny and quick-witted. He can be very sarcastic in a very biting way, which is very similar to Jamie and I. On the other hand, he has a physical prowess that I never possessed as a kid. He has a natural athletic ability that doesn’t come from either one of us. He’s a fearless athlete, and he’s becoming a very confident person.”
Tiffany Haddish
In her book The Last Black Unicorn, actress and comedienne Tiffany Haddish describes her experience in the foster care system. After being in a serious car accident, her mother became more violent and abusive. At 12 years old, Haddish, along with her siblings, began being placed among foster families, a revolving door of uncertainty. “You’re dropped in these strangers’ houses, you don’t know these people, these people don’t know you, you don’t know if they’re gonna hurt you, if they’re gonna be kind, you don’t have a clue what’s going on,” she said in an interview with David Letterman. The star of classic modern comedies like Girls Trip says her talent is what helped her survive this incredibly difficult time.
Greg Louganis
There are several elite athlete celebrities who were in foster care growing up. Renowned Olympian Greg Louganis, who won five medals during his time competing in the games, was placed in the system at birth and adopted at 9 months old. Louganis proudly starred in a campaign for RaiseAChild to help raise awareness of the help the system so desperately needs. “I even had the opportunity to briefly meet the woman who fostered me,” Louganis has said. “I have had amazing opportunities I never would have had otherwise. I am truly grateful.” In 2017, Louganis found his birth father, whom he had longed hoped to meet.
Cleo King
When Mike & Molly actress Cleo King met her now son Titus, he was just 5 years old and had already lived with three different foster families. “We met Titus on Monday, observed him at school on Tuesday and had a play date on Wednesday,” she has said. It took only those three days for King and her wife, Camille Thornton, to fall in love with the little boy. King pinpoints why she thinks people are so nervous to foster: “You don’t know what you’re going to get. But this is what I know today: Even if you have a baby … you still don’t know what you’re going to get. So it’s OK. Just love the one that comes.”
Coco Chanel
It seems almost unfathomable that someone associated with high fashion and glamour had a hardscrabble childhood, but that is, indeed, the case for the pioneering French designer Coco Chanel. Born Gabrielle Bonheur “Coco” Chanel, she found herself in the equivalent of the foster system after her mother passed away when she was 12 years old. It was the late 1800s, and her father sent Chanel and her sisters to an orphanage maintained by Catholic nuns. Though she was never adopted, she learned to sew in that group home, paving the way for her future as a fashion icon.
Marilyn Monroe
The original blonde bombshell, Marilyn Monroe is arguably the most famous of all the celebrities who were in foster care early in life. The actress endured a tumultuous childhood, shifting through many foster homes in her early years. Monroe’s mother, Gladys Baker, suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and dropped her off with her first foster family, the Boldenders, when she was just 2 weeks old, according to Biography.com. Though Baker popped in and out of Monroe’s life for years, there was little consistency. Marilyn bounced around to the homes of family friends until she was able to strike out on her own as a model, before settling into acting—and eventually, superstardom.
Eddie Murphy
Like many celebrities, legendary comedian and actor Eddie Murphy had a turbulent childhood. His parents divorced when he was 3 years old, and when he was 8, he learned his father had died. Murphy’s mother, Lillian, became gravely ill and needed to be hospitalized, and Eddie and his older brother, Charlie, landed in the foster system. The brothers spent about a year in a foster home, which reportedly wasn’t the most pleasant experience, but Murphy says it forced him to hone his sense of humor. Fortunately, the boys were reunited with their mother when Eddie was 9 years old.
Emma Thompson
Academy Award winner Emma Thompson is all about family. “Family is the center of everything for me,” she has said. “But family is about connection, not necessarily about blood ties. It’s about extended family—and extending family.” The actress and screenwriter, along with her husband, actor Greg Wise, informally adopted their son, Tindy, when he was 16 years old and began spending time with her family. The family embraced Tindy, a former Rwandan child soldier, quickly and lovingly.
Cher
Cher (born Cherilyn Sarkisian) found herself in the foster care system several times during her childhood. Her mother was a struggling actress and often couldn’t provide for Cher, so she’d put her into foster care and take her back when she could make ends meet. You might think growing up with that uncertainty would deter a child from pursuing a career in entertainment. Not Cher! She went on to become a singer and actress so iconic she needs only one name.
Rosie Perez
Actress Rosie Perez lived as a ward of the state for nearly a decade of her childhood, making her a fierce advocate for children’s rights today. According to her memoir, Handbook for an Unpredictable Life, Perez was admitted into a Catholic home for boys and girls at the tender age of 3 because her mother, who was mentally ill, could not care for her. Though longing to reside with her aunt, Perez continued to be moved around to various homes that didn’t deliver the love and attention she craved. “No one tucked us in. No one kissed us goodnight. No one told us they loved us and they’d see us in the morning,” she wrote.
Nia Vardalos
Nia Vardalos adopted her daughter, Ilaria, through the foster care system in 2008, after years of unsuccessful attempts to conceive through IVF and surrogacy. The little girl was just 3 years old at the time she was matched with Vardalos and her then-husband. “What I didn’t know then is that there is no damage that has been done to a child that can’t be undone with love,” she wrote in an essay for Guideposts magazine. “I have met so many kids who have been adopted from foster care and have gone on to live fantastic, productive lives. It’s why I became the spokesperson for National Adoption Day.”
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Sources:
- Biography: “How Marilyn Monroe’s Childhood Was Disrupted by Her Mother’s Paranoid Schizophrenia”
- Brittanica: “Coco Chanel”
- Children Uniting Nations: “How Many Children Are in Foster Care in 2025?”
- CNN: “Simone Biles: I went from foster care to the Olympics”
- Foster Club: “Eddie Murphy”
- Guideposts: “The Sign That Pointed Nia Vardalos Toward Adoption”
- Handbook for an Unpredictable Life by Rosie Perez
- HuffPost: “Alec and Jamie’s Story from the Let Love Define Family Series”
- KTLA5: “Four-Time Olympic Gold Medalist Greg Louganis Partners with RaiseAChild”
- Foster Club: “How Cher Overcame Dyslexia and Beat the Odds”
- My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman: “Tiffany Haddish Talks Childhood”
- OutlookNewspapers.com: “Five Acres Sounds the Alarm: More Foster Families Needed”
- RaiseAChild: “Cleo King and Camille Thornton’s Story”
- RaiseAChild: “Jon Cryer and Lisa Joyner’s Story”
- The Guardian: “Emma Thompson: ‘Family is about connection’”
- The Last Black Unicorn by Tiffany Haddish
- Time: “How Poverty Shaped Coco Chanel”
