“You know, I had a couple of years of being homeless in Hollywood,” Carmen told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in 2009. “A lot of people don’t even know this.” Carmen nearly returned to her hometown of Cincinnati but instead decided to contact Jamie King, who had choreographed the “Erotic City” shows. Jamie then helped facilitate Carmen getting a manager. Soon, the actor, singer, and dancer began trying out for parts and securing roles. “I started going to auditions, and they would [drive] me, because I didn’t have a car,” Carmen said. “A lot of people don’t know this, but when I was about 14 or 15, my father lost his job. And I actually became homeless for quite some time,” Jim said. “Of course, I grew up in Canada, so I thought we had just gone camping.” In a 2003 interview on The Howard Stern Show, Jim said he “ended up … trying to be the adult and trying to take care of everything” due to his family’s circumstances. Additionally, in a 2019 Sunday Today with Willie Geist interview, Tiffany revisited memories of living out of a car before her career took off. The Girls Trip star would show up to comedy events after everyone else had already arrived so others wouldn’t be able to look at the car, which was filled with her possessions. “I would always pull up maybe 5 or 10 minutes late so nobody could see my car because I had all my clothes, everything, suitcases all in the car,” Tiffany said. When she got to a comedy venue one day, fellow comedian and actor Kevin Hart was also arriving and took notice of Tiffany’s living situation. He then stepped in to help, giving Tiffany $300 and encouraging her to go after her aspirations. “[Kevin] was like, ‘Well you can’t be sleeping in the car on the streets,’” Tiffany said. “He gave me 300 bucks [and] said, ‘Find yourself a place for the week. And then write out a list of goals of what you want to do, and start accomplishing those goals.’ And then I started attacking those goals.” “I had this one coat, and that coat literally was my house,” Sylvester said in an interview for Creed with journalist Kjersti Flaa. “And I would sleep at the bus station, Port Authority bus station, or outside the post office in the dead of winter. And boy, it was cold. So that coat saved my life.” “I started sleeping on the sofa in the dance studio. I was homeless, but I told [my mom], ‘This is what I have to do,’” Jennifer said to W magazine in 2013. “A few months later, I landed a job dancing in Europe. When I got back, I booked In Living Color. I became a Fly Girl and moved to LA. It all happened in a year.” " … He said, ‘Look man, I’m going to buy you a one-way ticket to Maui. I’ve been living there since high school, it’s awesome — we sleep on the beach, it’s super fun!’" Chris said on a SmartLess podcast episode in June 2022. Chris took his friend up on the offer, went to Maui, and started working at Bubba Gump Shrimp Company while residing on the beach. He explained that he and his friends who stayed in this environment for one year were not living without their basic needs being met, however. “People say ‘homeless,’ … living in L.A., there’s homeless people everywhere. It’s destitute people,” Chris said. “We were just a bunch of kids living, camping on the beach for a year.” With only $60 to his name, Chris later left Maui when he was offered a movie role, for which he was flown to Los Angeles and paid $700. “I’ve eaten out of garbage cans, and I’ve slept on rooftops,” Eartha said to The New York Times in 1993. “That’s when I knew homelessness,” she added. “Sometimes I would be gone weeks, other times months.” “I have been in a lot of desperate situations,” Drew said to the crowd, the Kirkland Reporter wrote. “But it is nothing compared to what some of these kids go through. Just thank God that you or your kids don’t have to go through it.” “We had a friend who was selling their house,” Hilary said on 60 Minutes in 2005. “And so they said, ‘You know, there’s no furniture, but you can stay there at night. And then, during the day, you have to leave so we can try and sell it.’ So we got air mattresses. Blew the air mattresses up. Slept on the air mattresses. And left in the morning.” The two were able to afford housing in the months following as Hilary began booking Hollywood roles. Eventually, she scored the lead in Boys Don’t Cry, which earned Hilary her first Oscar in the category of Best Actress. “One or two gigs fell through, and suddenly I was homeless,” Steve said to People in 2013. The Family Feud host lived in his1976 Ford Tempo for these years until he booked a spot on Showtime at the Apollo. This gig was a game changer and kick-started his prolific entertainment career. “It was so disheartening,” Steve said of his time being unsheltered. “A week is really the maximum you can do. This was three years! It was rock bottom. But even in my darkest days, I had faith it would turn around.” “By then I was living in the back room of a friend’s house in Hollywood and had about 25 cents to my name, so I represented myself in court,” Rose said to The Guardian in 2019. “I needed to have control of my own life.” The Charmed star told the Big Issue that same year that she was “on [her] own, … very lonely,” and “was entirely focused on just surviving” while she was unhoused. With nowhere else to turn, Rose felt “forced” to live with a man who was 20 years older than her, the news outlet wrote. She subsequently made enough money to move into an apartment through her early acting roles. “Being homeless again was always the biggest terror for me,” Rose said. “So I took my first acting job.” The iconic actor previously revealed that he lived in a pickup truck during this time and “was totally broke” as he performed at East Coast theaters. “It was the early 1970s, and I was recently divorced,” William said, per Metro. “I had three kids and was totally broke. I managed to find work back east on the straw-hat circuit – summer stock – but couldn’t afford hotels, so I lived out of the back of my truck, under a hard shell.” In 2019, Tyler noticed that a sign on an Atlanta highway had been altered, and it is now labeled with the title “Tyler Perry Studios.” This prompted the performer to express his gratitude for the full-circle moment. “My eyes filled with water knowing what God has allowed to happen in my life,” Tyler wrote on Facebook. “Atlanta has truly been the promised land for me. I came here with nothing, lived off Sylvan Road, ended up homeless and starving, but I was always praying and believing.” “I was always keeping the faith, knowing that if I worked hard, did my absolute best, kept my integrity, honored every blessing, and remained grateful through it all that everything would work out. And it has, thank God,” he added. “I went to sleep in the toilet. [It] used to be pay toilets,” Sidney said. “And it cost a nickel. So I put a nickel in the thing, … and I got in, I put down the seat. I sat there, put my feet up against the door, and I would sleep, uncomfortably, needless to say.” “That’s probably one of the best things [my mother] did for me because it taught me,” Halle told People in 2017. “[My mother] said, ‘If you want to be there, then you be there. You work it out.’ And I had to work it out.” In spite of this setback, the Moonfall star never contemplated throwing in the towel. “Giving up was never an option,” Halle said. “It took me right back to my high school years. You say I can’t? Watch me. I’m going to figure this out. And shelter life was part of figuring it out for a minute.” “What makes this award special to me — not only because it’s being presented to me by this beautiful family — is that when I was 14 we were evicted, living in Honolulu, Hawaii,” Dwayne said, per The Hollywood Reporter. “We were evicted and forced off the island, and we didn’t have a place to live. I wound up moving to a little motel outside Nashville, Tennessee. It’s a crazy story for another time.” “That’s why this award is really special to me, I know what it’s like not to have the security of a home, and to see your family, my mom crying because of an eviction notice,” Dwayne added. “My first Versace piece was a red velvet overall minidress,” Selma said, per E!. “I was basically homeless, living in the Salvation Army in New York City. I was 21 years old, and I saved all up my money [for the designer dress] that I should have saved up for rent at the Salvation Army.” “I lived in my car, on mates’ couches, I stayed at a girl’s mom’s house,” Sam said to the Toronto Star in 2011. In a 2010 interview with the Times of India, Sam stated that persisting through these hardships prepared him for whatever might come his way in life. “The journey has just started; I have to go far away in my voyage and have seen a lot of ups and down so far and I am ready for anything, anything that could happen — irrespective of good or bad,” Sam said. “I can still live in my car, and I am not at all trapped with stardom.” “Well that was because it was still warm enough, I could actually sleep there … for only a few weeks, really,” Kelsey told journalist Graham Bensinger in 2019. “But I could sneak behind a certain bush and cover myself with the newspaper, and I was fine. And I showered over at Juilliard.” “Whatever it was, there was always something that kept me safe,” the Frasier star added.
