It’s not everything about glitz, glamour and gobs of adoring fans. Yeah we often only think about that when we hear the names of celebrities, but for some of them, the road of their lives has been pretty bumpy. Many stars did not grow up surrounded by the fame and wealth they now experience today, and even if they were, there wasn’t everything about puppies and rainbows either.

We know about some celebs, who don’t hide their terrible childhood. Take Eminem for example, he didn’t went easy on his mother in his movie «8 Mile», and came out with the whole ugly truth without blinking.

But in fact, I still think that there are so much more stars who had to experience a bad childhood but just keep it as their secret because they are scared of their culprits.

Anyway, we found 15 celebs you may not have known had terrible childhoods that were filled with domestic violence, poverty or even murder. Many of these stories will leave you jaw-dropped, and you will swear to yourself you will do so much better with your own children than some of those celebs parents did.

14 Missy Elliott Grew Up In A Broken Home

Rapper Missy Elliott, born as Melissa Elliott grew up in a really broken household. She was only eight years old when her 16-year-old cousin violated her. She once said, that she didn’t quite understand back than what was happening, she only knew something was wrong and totally not normal. This whole thing went on for a whole year, he lured her to his house, which was next-door. When she was a little bit older, she had to witness her father physically abusing her mother. He also pulled a weapon on her mother. Little Melissa had to step between her dad and her mother and beg her father to leave her mother alone. Her uncle, who lived next door, luckily stepped in and ended the attack before someone could get hurt or killed.

13 Shania Twain Witnessed A Troubled Marriage

Country music legend Shania Twain, who got famous by shelling out one female empowerment anthem after another, had to go through quite a though time in her life. She had a very abusive father, which she once said she just tried to keep on existing under his thumb. She described his personality as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (google that if you don’t know it, very interesting!). He repeatedly and constantly hurt her mother. Shania thought once that she witnessed him ending her mother's life. In the end her mother was only hurt very bad. She always feared the next day, because she never knew what would happen.

When Shania was 22 her parents were both taken in a car accident. From this day on, she became responsible for raising her two younger siblings.

12 Angelina Jolie Struggled With Depression

Angelina Jolie grew up in Los Angeles which was harmful to her health, because she was raised in a place where if you have fame and money and you’re decent-looking and have the ability to work in this industry, people might think you have everything. But also after attaining those things she realized that she couldn’t be more empty.

So she struggled with depressions from a young age on. Her childhood caregiver had to take Angelina to the hospital once, because she struggled with some bad anorexia.

Maybe this is the reason, why she always wanted that much kids, to do it so much better. To show them they could be whatever they want, even if it’s not to be an actress as her mother. I think she found her fulfillment now with the role as a mother.

11 R. Kelly Was Shot When He Was 11

So R. Kelly himself as an adult is tracked by a really huge scandal. We all remember, when he was charged and acquitted of disturbing charges back in 2008.

In his childhood, he was shot at the age of 11 by a stray bullet, which he still has in his shoulder. In his memoir "Soulacoaster: The Diary of Me," he revealed that out of all the shootings he witnessed in his young years, that one blow him away. It was like he was leaving his body, he explained.

Also, he grew up in a household with several women. One of those women violated him for several years. He didn’t tell his mother back then what was going on, because he was too afraid and also too ashamed to tell her.

10 Naomi Watts' Dad Had A Tragic End

Actress Naomi Watts experienced a huge shock which wrecked her childhood.

When she was just a little child, her father was found dead in their apartment from an heroin overdose. Her mother and her moved around after that a lot, because they both searched for a place they could live in peace from their sad thoughts about this whole thing. Unfortunately this whole moving around thing didn’t really help little Naomi, because she couldn’t find any friends that way she could talk to.

Naomi's mother once said, that her dad died when Naomi needed him the most, which incredibly impacted her. Losing a parent is a terrible thing to everyone, but to lose him the way she did was really hard to understand for her especially at this young age.

9 Mark Wahlberg Was Put Behind Bars

Mark Wahlberg didn’t had a bad childhood because of one of his parents in particular. Yeah, they divorced when he was 11, and he grew up dividing between them, but his problems during childhood probably resulted from a bad circle of friends.

During his childhood and teenage years he had been in trouble 20-25 times with the Boston Police Department! By the age of only 13 he was suffering with an addiction to cocaine. When he was 15, a civil action was filed against him for his involvement in two separate incidents of harassing African-American children. It got even worse! At the age of 16, he was charged with attempted murder and was sentenced to two years in Suffolk County Deer Island House of Correction!

Today, Wahlberg is father of four children and he attends church daily!

8 Johnny Depp Considered Himself A Loner

Johnny Depp’s childhood was troubled. Because of his fathers job, the whole family had to move every few years. That caused Johnny to have quite a difficult time making friends. He once told that in the beginning, he really tried to meet new friends and keep them, but the older he got, the more he knew that it was pointless to put so much effort in making friends when he has to leave in a few months anyway. From then on he considered himself a loner who engaged in self harm and he would lock himself in his room for days at a time, so he could avoid family problems. Sometimes he would only come out because he was out of drugs and/or alcohol, which he began to experiment with in early teenage years.

He said once, that with his kids he is totally different from his parents. He tells his kids at least once a day that he loved them, which he not heard even once from his parents.

7 P. Diddy's Dad Was Taken Too Soon

P Diddy, born by the name Sean Combs is today a very successful rapper and entertainment mogul, but his childhood wasn’t the best one at all. His father was a notorious criminal and and an associate of kingpin Frank Lucas. P Diddy’s father was found shot dead in his car, when little Diddy was only 3-years-old. It later turned out, that the reason for his fathers dead was most probably a payback from Frank Lucas because his father turned some information to the police.

P Diddy said in an interview that his father’s death inspired him to search for a better life himself. He is now father of six children himself, and he gives everything that they have a blessed childhood. In a video he posted via social media, he said, “I started out as a young boy from Harlem that couldn’t even be a waiter. So you know what I did? I became a billionaire.”

6 Corey Feldman - A Troubled Child Star

Corey Feldman is a former child star, we know him from «The Lost Boys» and «The Goonies». He wrote a memoir called Coreyography in which he described what happened to him and fellow child star Corey Haim.

The way he described it, it sounds like some kind of ring of adults that abuse children, which is horrible. He revealed: “Ask anybody in our group of kids at that time: Grown men were passing us back and forth to each other. Like it was something people joked about on studio lots. We’re not talking about huge executives and directors that I am aware of that were involved in this. The people that I knew doing it were publicists, they were photographers for teen magazines, things like that.”

Feldman and also his friend Haim struggled with drug addictions, probably caused by those terrible things they had to experience.

5 Michael Jackson Was Denied Love

Michael Jackson was also one of the poor children in Hollywood who was under the pressure of his parents. He and of course also his siblings were constantly working for their father. Jackson once said that he was rather crying from loneliness in his room, schooling with a tutor or recording for several hours until it was time to go to sleep.

He and his siblings were denied to have a real childhood and also any kind of love. He said that he tried some times to hug his father, but he wouldn’t hug him back. When he was scared to go on stage, his father would tell him to get his a** on that stage and to don’t act like a little girl.

That sounds like his father took away his complete childhood – no Christmas, no birthdays, no nothing – his only intention was to get rich with his kids, which is so sad.

4 DMX Endured Severe Punishments

Rapper/actor DMX, born Earl Simmons, grew up in a household where the concept of discipline and punishment was anything other than normal or healthy.

He revealed one, that his mother used to punish him by braiding together three extension cords, she waited until he fell asleep before beating him until she was tired. Until today he sometimes has quite some issues to fall asleep.

At the age of seven, his mother had beaten him so badly with a broom that he lost two teeth. His mother always threaten him and his siblings, that if they would tell something of that to anyone, the «white people» would come and would take them away to a far worse place. This is how this rule resulted, that whatever is going on in the house has to be kept in the house.

3 Queen Latifah Was Violated At A Young Age

Also the musician, actress and talk show presenter Queen Latifah, born as Dana Elaine Owens did not had such a good time as a teenager.

She came forward with her account of being violated as a teenager really late. She said that the offender violated her so she was scared to tell anybody, which is why she kept it as a secret for so long. He tried to forget about it and bury it as deeply inside her as she could.

This terrifying experience has affected Queen Latifah’s ability to form close relationships throughout her whole life. She said, that she kept everyone at an arm’s distance from then on and never really let a person get too close to her. This is so sad, because we hear that from a lot of victims of sexual crime, that they are so scared to tell others about, so they try to process this horrible experience all on their own.

2 Drew Barrymore Had A Troubling Past

Drew Barrymore’s parents were already famous, so they gave her the pressure that she as well has to get famous. So she got forced to take spectacle teaching and all that stuff from a very young age on. She once said, that she does not know how it could have been differently, because that were the only parents and the only life she got to know.

You can see very clearly, that the speed she had to learn things and that pressure she was under, it was too much for Drew. Because at just 14 years old, she had to enter a rehabilitation facility for drug use.

She once said in an interview: «Even if I was a bad girl at moments here and there, I was never a bad person». Oww poor Drew, of course you weren’t, you were a child who needed parents and unfortunately didn’t had any!

1 Tyler Perry Had A Violent Father

Tyler Perry, who got famous because he topped the Forbes magazine highest-earning entertainers list after he amassed a staggering $130 million in one year.

Perry told Oprah Winfrey once, that his father was physically abusive, and as a child he created this park in his mind, where he could be and block out the abuse. It was a park he visited once with his mother and aunt. He had such a great time there, that this got his mental sanctuary. So, every time somebody was doing something bad to him, he blocked out the reality and went to that park where he could have a good time until the abuse was over.

He also mentioned, that he struggles to look at any childhood pictures of himself, because he feels so strange to that boy, it is like he died as a child.

Sources: www.thetalko.com, www.vh1.com, www.famefocus.com