Childhood Of Celebrities : Val Kilmer

Kilmer, the second of three sons, was born in Los Angeles, California to Gladys (Ekstadt) and Eugene Kilmer, an aerospace equipment distributor and real estate developer. Kilmer has Scottish, Irish, Sephardic Jewish, Cherokee Native American (from a paternal great-grandmother), Swedish, German and distant Mongolian ancestry. Kilmer’s paternal grandfather was a gold miner in New Mexico; the poet Joyce Kilmer is a second cousin of Kilmer’s. Kilmer grew up in the San Fernando Valley with his two siblings, older brother Mark and younger brother Wesley, but says that even as a child growing up in California he did not like it there.

Kilmer, who was raised a Christian Scientist, attended Chatsworth High School, where he attended with Kevin Spacey, and Mare Winningham as well as Hollywood’s Professional’s School. He also attended Berkeley Hall School, a Christian Science school, from elementary school up until 9th grade. At the age of seventeen, he was at the time the youngest person to be accepted into Juilliard’s drama program.

Technorati Tags: Celebrities, Famous, Pictures, Actor, Val Kilmer

Share This

Childhood Of Celebrities : Viggo Mortensen

Mortensen was born in New York. His Danish father, Viggo Peter Mortensen (a farm manager), and American mother, Grace Gamble Atkinson, met in Norway. His maternal grandfather was Canadian. When he was two years old he moved with his family to Argentina and lived there until age eleven, when his parents divorced and his mother moved back to New York, and Viggo moved with his father to Copenhagen, Denmark. Viggo and his father eventually went back to the United States, and Viggo finished High School at Watertown High School. After that, he moved back to Denmark, and became a truckdriver in Esbjerg, Denmark, before, again, eventually moving back to to the United States to pursue an acting career. He attended St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, earning a degree in Spanish, a subject in which he could get good grades without a lot of study, leaving him free to be in a lot of plays. At his commencement, he refused to wear an academic gown because they were made by sweatshop workers; however, after the Lord of the Rings trilogy, when he was granted an Honorary Doctorate by his alma mater, he did appear in the appropriate robes.

Technorati Tags: Celebrities, Famous, Pictures, Actor, Viggo Mortensen

Share This

Childhood Of Celebrities : Vin Diesel

Vin Diesel was born of mixed heritage on 18 July 1967 in New York NY USA, never knowing his biological father. He was raised by his astrologer mother and adoptive father in the Westbeth artist’s housing project in New York’s Greenwich Village. He first showed an inclination to becoming a performer at the age of three during a visit to Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus when he tried to join in with the show, before being rescued by his mother. His father, a theatre director turned drama teacher at New York University, further stimulated the young Diesel’s innate interest by taking him, his twin brother and his younger sisters to the movies. Read more »

Share This

Childhood Of Celebrities : Tommy Lee Jones

Jones was born in San Saba, Texas to Clyde C. Jones, who worked in the oil fields of both Texas and Libya, and Lucille Marie (Scott), a police officer, schoolteacher, and hairdresser who owned a beauty parlour; the two were married and divorced twice. Jones, an eighth-generation Texan, has a Cherokee Native American grandparent. He was a resident of Midland, Texas and attended the same high school, Robert E. Lee High School, as the First Lady Laura Bush.

Jones graduated from the St. Mark’s School of Texas (where he is now on the board of directors) and attended Harvard on a scholarship, where he lived in Mower B-12 as a freshman, across the hall from future Vice President Al Gore. As an upperclassman, he was roommates with Gore and John Lithgow in Dunster House. Jones played offensive tackle on Harvard’s undefeated 1968 varsity football team, was nominated as a first-team All-Ivy League selection, and played in the memorable and literal last-minute Harvard sixteen-point comeback blitz to tie Yale in the 1968 Game. Jones graduated cum laude with a degree in English in 1969.

Technorati Tags: Celebrities, Famous, Pictures, Actor, Tommy Lee Jones

Share This