15 Celebs Who Were Adopted

From Katherine Heigl to Sheryl Crow, the Hollywood elite seem determined to give a loving family to orphaned children both stateside and abroad. But there are also celebrities on the other side of the coin, who have actually been adopted themselves-either by non-relatives or by other family members. Read on to discover 15 well-known faces with surprising birth histories. 

1. Steve Jobs
The Apple cofounder was born in San Francisco in 1955 to Joanne Simpson and Abdulfattah John Jandali, an unwed couple who put Jobs up for adoption as an infant. He was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs, a machinist and accountant respectively, and grew up in Los Altos, California. As an adult, Jobs tracked his family history, discovering that his parents later wed and had a daughter, Mona Simpson, who Jobs later had a "close relationship" with, according to The Apple Museum.

2. Deborah Harry
This '80s punk diva and lead singer of the band Blondie was born in 1945 in Miami, but was adopted at 3 months old by Richard and Catherine Harry, gift shop owners in Hawthorne, New Jersey. She has stayed relatively mum on her family history, but has said that she was originally named Angela Trimble and that she has never met her birth parents. She was also quoted in 2003 in the German newspaper Die Zeit: "For a long time I thought I was Marilyn Monroe's daughter. My parents had adopted me, I knew that. …In my imagination I built a relationship to her, made her my unknown, biological mother."

3. Ray Liotta
Born in Newark, New Jersey, the edgy 59-year-old actor was adopted at 6 months old by Alfred and Mary Liotta and raised in New Jersey along with a younger adopted sister. After becoming a parent himself, he decided to hire a private detective to track down his birth mother. The two met and he learned he has four half-sisters, a half-brother and a full sister. "When I finally found out in my 40s, you realize that the best thing in the world was that I was adopted, only based on that my birth mother had circumstances that didn't warrant her to keep a kid," he said in a 2009 PBS interview with Tavis Smiley.

4. Babe Ruth
George Herman Ruth, Jr. was the eldest of eight children born to George Herman, a Baltimore bartender, and his wife, Kate. By the age of 7, he was an energetic troublemaker, and his parents decided he needed a stricter home environment. They placed him at St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys, a combination reform school and orphanage run by Catholic monks, who were given custody of Ruth. One particular monk, Brother Mathias, became a father figure for Ruth, and encouraged him in baseball. At 18, he was spotted by Jack Dunn, a scout and owner of the Baltimore Orioles, who later became Ruth's legal guardian so the underage baseball player could legitimately join the team.

5. Frances McDormand
The award-winning actress was born in Chicago in 1957 and was the youngest of four children adopted by Canadian parents Vernon McDormand, a Disciples of Christ minister, and Noreen, a retired registered nurse and receptionist. Her father's work led the McDormand family to move frequently around the U.S. during Frances' early years, but they finally settled in a suburb of Pittsburgh. In 1994, McDormand and her husband, film director Joel Coen, adopted a son, Pedro, who was born in Paraguay.

6. Nelson Mandela
The anti-Apartheid leader was born into the Thembu sub-tribe nobility of the Xhosa people in Mvezo, South Africa. Though he was initially raised by his parents, his father died when he was 9 years old and he was taken to the larger village of Mqhekezweni, the Thembu provincial capital, where he was informally adopted by the Thembu chief Jongintaba. His father had been instrumental in the rise of Jongintaba within the tribe, and Mandela's adoption was in acknowledgement of that debt.

7. Marilyn Monroe
The iconic actress was born Norma Jean Mortenson to an unmarried Hollywood film-editing assistant named Gladys Baker, who later baptized Marilyn with her own last name. Baker was psychologically unstable and committed to an institution early in Monroe's life. With her mother institutionalized, Monroe bounced around at least nine foster homes until she was 11, when she went to live with Grace McKee Goddard, a family friend.

8. John Lennon
John Lennon's parents, Julia Stanley and Alfred Lennon, separated when he was 3 years old. Soon after, his seaman father virtually disappeared, and by the time John was 5, his mother begrudgingly allowed him to be raised by his Aunt Mimi and Uncle George. She had frequent interactions with Lennon, but never raised him full-time for a host of speculated reasons, including family pressure that she was unfit because of her lifestyle.

9. Faith Hill
Audrey Faith Perry was born in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1967. She was adopted at one week old by Edna Perry, a bank teller, and Ted, a factory worker, who already had two biological sons. Raised in Star, Mississippi, she met her birth mother in 1993, discovering that her parents had been unwed when she was given up for adoption, but later married and had a son. Hill commented on her three-year search for her birth mother in a 2004 interview with Good Housekeeping: "I was adopted into this incredible home, a loving, positive environment, yet I had this yearning, this kind of darkness that was also inside me."

10. Jamie Foxx
Actor and musician Jamie Foxx was born Eric Marlon Bishop in Terrell, Texas. When Foxx was 7 months old, his mother, Louise, divorced from his father, and his grandparents, Mark and Esther Talley, adopted him. His grandmother had a significant influence on his life, encouraging Foxx in his music, studies and sports. As an adult, Foxx has been an advocate for adoption, talking and appearing in shows about the subject.

11. Dave Thomas
The Wendy's fast-food chain founder was born in 1932 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. He was adopted by Rex and Auleva Thomas at 6 weeks old. Thomas's adoptive mother died when he was only 5 years old, and as a result, he spent much of his childhood moving from state to state with his father. During those years, he enjoyed his summers in Michigan with his adoptive grandmother, Minnie Sinclair, whom he credits on the Wendy's website as one of the major stabilizing forces in his life.

12. Liz Phair
The '90s alt-rocker was born in 1967 in New Haven, Connecticut, but raised in the Chicago suburbs with her older brother Philip (who was also adopted) by John Phair, MD, an infectious disease specialist and HIV/AIDS researcher, and his wife Nancy. Phair has been quoted as saying that she had a happy childhood and always knew she was adopted. But in a 2006 interview with Women's Health, she surprisingly voiced some criticism of adoption, saying: "I don't think you can be adopted without being a little bit screwed up."

13. Jesse Jackson
Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson was born in 1941 in Greenville, South Carolina, the child of 16-year-old Helen Burns and her neighbor, boxing champion Noah Robinson, Sr. Robinson was already married, but Burns kept Jesse, and a year later married Charles Jackson, who adopted the boy as his own. It was not until Jesse was 7 years old that he learned about his birth father's identity. In a 1997 interview with The New York Times, Jackson rebutted comments that he resented his childhood, saying, "People say I had a father deficit when in truth I had a father surplus."

14. Sarah McLachlan
Born in 1968, Sarah Ann McLachlan was adopted in Nova Scotia, Canada, by Jack and Dorice McLachlan, who also had two adopted sons, Ian and Stewart. McLachlan found out she was adopted at 9 years old; in an interview with American Baby, she said: "Even then it wasn't a big deal. …Perhaps I was too young to understand it really, but it just never was a big issue to me." Later in life, she met her biological mother, who had been a 19-year-old artist when she became pregnant.

15. Scott Hamilton
The 1984 Olympic Gold Medal champion in men's figure skating was adopted when he was 6 weeks old by Dorothy and Ernest Hamilton of Bowling Green, Ohio. His adoptive father was a professor of biology at Bowling Green State University and his mother was a grade school teacher who later became an associate professor at Bowling Green. He has an older sister, Susan, the Hamilton's firstborn biological child, as well as a younger brother, who is also adopted.