Oprah Winfrey
Winfrey's childhood was filled with enough turmoil to all but ensure she would never make it. She spent her early childhood living with her grandmother on a farm in Kosciusko, Miss., while her unwed teenage mother searched for work. She was reportedly sexually molested at an early age and worked as a housemaid. At 17 years old, Oprah got her first big break when she won the Miss Black Tennessee beauty pageant, launching her into a journalism job in Baltimore. The media mogul is now worth around $2.7 billion, according to Forbes.
Sarah Jessica Parker
Sarah Jessica Parker's life was not always as glamorous as it appears on "Sex and The City." She was born to a impoverished family in the small town of Nelsonville, Ohio, and began singing and acting partly to support her family. She is now worth $15 million, according to Forbes.
J.K. Rowling
J.K. Rowling, now wealthier than the Queen of England thanks to her wildly successful "Harry Potter" series, has been open about her lower-middle class background, admitting that she also experienced harsher times. "I, too, have passed through a period of poverty in Britain and can understand some of those issues," she told NPR News in 2012. "I think I've had a very strange life."
Leighton Meester
She played a privileged Upper East Side kid on the CW's "Gossip Girl," but Leighton Meester was actually born in jail to her mother Constance Meester, who was serving time for drug smuggling.
Jim Carrey
All his jokes aside, Jim Carrey has a dark past. The Canadian actor grew up in poverty and at 12 years old was forced to get an after-school factory job working eight hours per day. "My father lost his job when he was 51 and that was the real 'wow', the kick in the guts. We lived in a van for a while, and we worked all together as security guards and janitors," Carrey once said of the experience. His 2003 film "Bruce Almighty" grossed $484.6 million according to the Washington Times.
The rest at the source