GRASS TO GRACE STORIES OF CELEBRITIES

Nicki Minaj

Onika Maraj lived with her grandmother until the age of 5, when she reunited with her parents who moved to America for a better life. Her father was violent and was struggling with an addiction to crack cocaine. One night he even tried to set their house on fire. “He did burn the house down. It wasn’t an attempt, he did! My mother was in the house and she had to run out at the last minute,” Minaj said.

 Lionel Messi

At the age of 11, Lionel Messi was diagnosed with a growth hormone deficiency. The treatment cost $900 a month, which his family could not afford. The sporting director of FC Barcelona heard about Messi’s story and arranged a trial with the team. With no other paper at hand, he offered Messi a contract written on a napkin. Barcelona paid all of  Messi’s medical bills on the condition that he moved to Spain. Today, the superstar is an ambassador for UNICEF.

 Bill Gates

The richest man in the world failed his first business. He once created a company called Traf-O-Data, which was a device that could read traffic tapes and process data. Gates and his business partner could not get the device to work. The company had only modest success, but the experience was critical in the creation of Microsoft a few years later.

Eminem

Eminem has been pretty outspoken about his troubled lifestyle. He grew up in a trailer home, witnessed domestic violence against his mother and was bullied. He had a rocky relationship with his mother, but in 2014, in his song called Headlights,  the rapper apologized and expressed his love for his mother. Eminem is considered to be one of the greatest hip-hop artists of all time.
 

Tyler Perry

Tyler Perry did not have the best relationship with his father, Emmitt Perry, Sr. He was constantly beat and abused. He even contemplated suicide at some point to escape from his father’s beatings. He developed a different kind of relationship with his mother, who used to take him to his “happy place”: church. When he was 16, he changed his name from Emmitt to Tyler in order to distance himself from his father. Many years later, a DNA test confirmed that Emmitt Sr. is not Tyler’s biological father.

Albert Einstein 

Albert Einstein did not speak until the age of four. His teachers thought he was lazy. He always managed to maintain good grades, eventually developed the theory of relativity and turned out to be one of the greatest scientists of all time.

Richard Branson 

Serial entrepreneur Richard Branson was not the best student. He always performed poorly on standardized tests because he had dyslexia. He adapted his management style to his learning disability and built the Virgin empire. According to Forbes, he is now worth $5.1 billion.