9 celebrities who experienced homelessness – Jennifer Lopez, Kelly Clarkson, more

Kelly Clarkson has enjoyed incredible success since winning American Idol in 2002 – and her big break couldn't have come at a better time.

In 2023, she revealed on her eponymous talk show that she was living in her car before she auditioned for the show after the house she was staying in burned down.

"I actually moved out to L.A. with some random person I did not know," she said. "[The house] burned down, so yeah," she added.

"Then I slept in my car for a few days and then tried out for a show called American Idol, so it all worked out."

It may be hard to believe now, but Jennifer Lopez found herself homeless after one too many arguments with her mother.

"My mom and I butted heads," she told W Magazine in 2013. "I didn't want to go to college. I wanted to try dance full time. So, she and I had a break. 

"I started sleeping on the sofa in the dance studio. I was homeless, but I told her, 'This is what I have to do.'"

Her homelessness lasted "a few months" before she scored a job dancing in Europe and her luck turned around. "When I got back, I booked "In Living Color." I became a Fly Girl and moved to L.A. It all happened in a year."

Shania Twain and her family spent time in a shelter when she was a teenager after her mother left her abusive stepfather.

"First, we went to a battered women's sort of crisis centre until they can place you in a battered women's home," she said in 2023.

"Thankfully, we were placed fairly quickly, within a week or two into a battered wives home which was so necessary, all the steps are necessary to keep you protected and off the street so it's better to be in a homeless shelter than be homeless on the street," she added. 

Describing her first night in a shelter, Shania wrote in her 2011 memoir, "From This Moment On": "That night, we slept in a crowded, sweltering place on cot-like beds spread out along the walls of a series of spacious, open rooms designed for large groups."

Jim Carrey, two of his siblings, and his parents became homeless after his father was let go from his job. 

"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," he said during a comedy performance.

The family lived in a tent at a Lincoln, Ontario park for eight months before they landed jobs as janitors and security guards in return for housing.

Halle Berry also experienced life in a homeless shelter after running out of money shortly after arriving in New York City.

"I mean three months later, I was out of my cash," she told People in 2017. "I called my mother and asked her to send me some money, and she said no, and that subsequently led to a year of not speaking to her because I was so upset that she wouldn't help me."

"But again, that's probably one of the best things she did for me," Halle continued. "She said, 'If you want to be there, then you be there, you work it out,' and I had to work it out.

"Giving up was never an option," she added. "Shelter life was part of figuring it out for a minute until I could get a waitressing job. Then I got a bartending job, and until I could figure that out, that's what I did."

Family Feud host Steve Harvey experienced homelessness for three years before he landed a gig as host of Showtime at the Apollo.

Steve earned $50 a week while pursuing comedy and was forced to live out of his 1976 Ford Tempo, utilizing the bathrooms in gas stations and showers at local swimming pools.

Recalling the despair he felt, Steve told People in 2013: "One or two gigs fell through, and suddenly I was homeless. It was so disheartening.

"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."

Hilary Swank and her mother temporarily lived out of a car when they relocated to LA.

"In LA, my mother and I first lived in her Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme on quiet residential streets," she recalled to the Wall Street Journal in 2024.

"When we weren't sleeping in the car, we stayed at the house of a new friend my age whose family had just moved out and were trying to sell their home. We slept on an air mattress."

Despite her fame and fortune now, Hilary fondly remembers her humble beginnings. "Even though I'm happy we left LA every so often, when I'm there for meetings, I'll drive along a street in Pasadena where my mom and I parked and slept," she admitted.

"Despite the challenges, I feel nostalgia for those days when we had nothing."

Rocky star Sylvester Stallone was struggling to make ends meet during his early career, earning $39 a week while living in New York in 1972.

"I had this one coat. That coat literally was my house," he said in 2015. "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."

Selma Blair sacrificed a home for a designer dress and ended up "basically homeless" in her early twenties.

"My first Versace piece was a red velvet overall minidress," Selma said in 2011. "I was basically homeless, living in the Salvation Army in New York City."

She added: "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."