Welcome! Stars and their stories of overcoming learning difficulties.
BORN IN 1962
TOM CRUISE
ACTOR, PRODUCER, SCREENWRITER, DIRECTOR
Difficult childhood, constant relocations, and difficulty in assimilating information — all this did not break his spirit, which found its vocation in the movie.
By the age of 15, he changed more than 10 schools, he was unable to assimilate the necessary information, and he could not learn to read. To this day, scripts are still read to him.
Willingly overcoming difficulties and achieving acting success under the tutelage of parents and teachers, who pushed her to read and write with an ultimatum, helping to separate the grade for meaning from the grade for spelling.
Thanks to audiobooks during school, she was able to outpace her classmates and successfully tackle academic material.
His parents set him the difficult task of reading 50 books to get a motorcycle in an attempt to motivate their son to read. He had a reading problem and was unable to fulfill the challenge, but he became famous.
Now he himself encourages parents of children with school difficulties to understand how to teach so that they could be interested and enjoy the learning process.
She faced her condition in her 20s when she went to the doctor to get glasses. She was having trouble reading, her eyes would jump forward and go backwards when reading text.
Discovering a new fact about herself she was able to explain many of the difficulties she had as a child and went on to strive for success, becoming one of the most recognized actresses in the entertainment industry.
ACTOR, FILM DIRECTOR, FILM PRODUCER, MUSICIAN (BASS GUITARIST)
As a child, he constantly changed schools, for the students saw that he could hardly read and write, so they immediately made him an object of ridicule. He grew up and published his own collection of poems.
Despite the difficulties, he overcame his fear of reading and writing by developing the skills of discipline, perseverance and hard work. He is now a successful actor with a phenomenal memory.
From childhood she composed fairy tales and had an amazing imagination. The actress emphasizes the role of teachers and parents in supporting her to overcome difficulties.
She could not get a school education because of her diagnosis, but thanks to her belief in herself and the support of her loved ones, her talents and perseverance, she achieved a great deal.
Born into a very wealthy family, she was home-schooled with private teachers until she was 12 years old. When she was sent to a Catholic school, it was discovered that she had trouble absorbing new information, so she was kicked out.
She illegally moved to America, had poor English skills and only an incomplete degree in international relations. However, she managed to gain the status of a global star.
He was in the same class with autistic children, he was very insecure as a child. He even had an imaginary friend to dialog and play with. Despite the difficulties he managed to get into the University of South Florida, got a scholarship.
He still finds it difficult to read: it takes five times longer to understand the script than other actors.
He overcame many difficulties as a child, often feeling outcast among his peers and teachers because he had problems with reading, which he still has to this day.
Already at the age of 12 he made his first amateur film: a train crash using toy trains.
During his school years, he was called "dumbass" and was a very withdrawn and unsociable child with a stammer and problems with reading and writing. At the age of 15, he was advised to chant words when he wrote to Richard Burton, a famous actor of the 1960s.
He wrote a number of works for piano and violin and orchestra. He memorized by heart all the educational texts he was required to read.
ACTOR, FILM PRODUCER, DIRECTOR, TV PRESENTER, CLIP MAKER, RESTAURATEUR
He found it really hard to study, his mother was called to the school, and often had to blush for her negligent child.
He entered the directing and staging faculty and practiced at Ozerov’s workshop. In the first courses, he had to prove to others his creative capacity.
He finished school with difficulty, later than he should have. He did not dare to enroll in a film school, he mastered all the skills of film directing on his own.
Thanks to his rich imagination, his ideas do not run out. He is engaged in several projects at the same time, bringing his fantasies to life.
In spite of a rare high IQ level (160), he did very poorly in school, skipped classes, and was a bully. The only things he couldn’t do were writing and numbers.
With all this, he became synonymous with movie art. He has impeccable taste in music and created classics of American cinema. Although he still confuses the numbers and the time on the clock.
ACTOR, FILM DIRECTOR, SCREENWRITER, COMPOSER, EDITOR
He had a difficult childhood: divorce and death of parents, workhouse, and school for orphans. Until the age of 26, he read poorly and little, almost never wrote, played the violin with his left hand, and then retrained his right hand.
He created films without a clear plan, often began shooting, having only a vague idea of the final result.
He didn’t graduate from high school. He was kicked out of McKinley High School at the age of 16. Despite this, the empire-builder was named professor emeritus at Yale University.
His biggest problem since high school was the letter S. He could never remember which way to point its hooks, and instead of "s" it was always "z."
Her mother was in favor of educating the girl in the spirit of the Victorian era, and thought reading was dangerous for a girl. She made so many mistakes and wrote so slowly that her parents took her out of school, where she was ridiculed.
It is believed that the peculiarities were not congenital but acquired. Her mother’s eccentricities, as well as the early death of her father, undermined the girl’s nervous system.
POET, PLAYWRIGHT, SCREENWRITER, FILM ACTOR, ARTIST
He hated punctuation. When he brought a manuscript to the publishing house, the editors begged him to put at least some signs. When creating works, Osip Brik often selected material for him.
His famous indentation is also a way to get away from language rules; this system of writing allowed him to emphasize semantic parts without punctuation marks.
He was left-handed, which in those days could cause religious persecution, so he was home-schooled. He was gifted, but had a flaw in his appearance and stuttered badly under stress.
Constantly made mistakes, which was unacceptable for a Victorian intellectual. At the same time, he graduated from Oxford University with a double major in mathematics and classical languages.
As a child, he invented a friend, Prince Frits. His mother believed in his talent, in his unusual abilities, took him out of the regular school, where he was mercilessly flogged for illiteracy.
Editors, shocked by the number of errors, returned manuscripts, sometimes without finishing them. Rumors circulated around Copenhagen of a stunningly illiterate author.
He read the worst and slowest in the class. Teachers realized that he was not an idiot, but considered him a lazy, lazy bastard. By virtue of the fact that he simply did not remember how to spell words, learning was more difficult for him than for the rest of the class.
Only by the age of 25 did he realize what was wrong with him, and by 33 he had already written a play. He can completely edit the text in his mind, changing the composition. And he sees everything in pictures, so he can describe it in detail.
SINGER, SONGWRITER, MUSIC PRODUCER, ACTRESS, FILM DIRECTOR
In her school years she could barely distinguish between the numbers 6 and 9, confused letters, but she has not learned to read well until now because of a neglected disease.
She grew up in a very poor family, but for 50 years in a row her songs reached the top positions in the ranking of the hundred most popular songs in the United States.
He had difficulty with reading, writing, memorizing words and concentrating. He says this became an advantage in his musical career.
He developed his aural and creative abilities, creating a distinctive performance style. He also used graphic aids such as diagrams and charts to improve his understanding of information.
He thinks he just has a different view of the world. But to live with it, he needs someone to help him find the right teaching methodology. For him, that person was Mrs. Coogan, who taught him to visualize everything.
He drew bubbles on a sheet of paper, inside of which he wrote things he had to do. He uses the method of visualization even now. He writes his songs himself, implying profound ideas. He speaks five languages.
Difficulties with reading did not stop him from becoming a true rap star and releasing the single "Gucci Gang," which was certified platinum three times by the Recording Industry Association of America.
The rapper is trying to rise above himself and address his educational deficiencies.
THEORETICAL PHYSICIST, CREATOR OF THE THEORY OF RELATIVITY, NOBEL PRIZE WINNER
He suffered from partial lack of reading skills due to underdevelopment of some parts of the cerebral cortex. He preferred self-study to school lessons.
At the same time, he wrote a letter to the President of the United States, in which he pointed out the danger of developing nuclear weapons in Nazi Germany.
Teachers considered him a worthless student because he could not speak well, write well and could not memorize anything. He was recognized as completely incapable of mathematics and was kicked out of school at the age of 12.
His success owes much to his mother, who supported her son in every possible way, despite the teachers' words about his poor progress.
DIVER, 4-TIME OLYMPIC CHAMPION (THE ONLY ONE), 5-TIME WORLD CHAMPION, 47-TIME U.S. CHAMPION
He was bullied as a child because of his peculiarity. He had problems with reading in elementary and middle school and was put in speech therapy and special education classes.
Only in college did he learn the reasons and was able to adapt. Kept going and scored a perfect 10 at the Youth Olympics and won a silver medal at the Montreal games at the age of 16.
He perceived school as a punishment: he did not want to follow the common rules and regulations. The lessons bored him, and he could not master reading and writing. He was happy about school punishments because he was locked in a room where he would draw alone.
It is interesting that at the age of four he began to cut fanciful figures out of paper and project them on the wall like in a Chinese shadow theater.
He openly said that he had difficulties with reading and writing. This allowed him to develop his own strategy: he began using visual and pictorial elements in his works.
He combined image with text and created many of his works, this is how he expressed his ideas and thoughts.
The great painter and sculptor had great problems with writing. Not only was he ambidextrous, that is, he could write with both hands, but he also wrote with a mirror — from right to left.
Scientists examined his manuscripts with the help of a mirror. And while some believe it was some kind of cipher, most experts believe it was a peculiarity of his writing.
ENTREPRENEUR WHO ESTABLISHED THE VIRGIN GROUP, AUTHOR
He had serious difficulties with movement coordination and slurred speech. In addition, he was practically unable to read and write, and had significant problems with elementary arithmetic.
His mother Yvette believed, developed him in every possible way and gave him various tasks. At the age of 13 he won the school literary contest for the best essay.
STATESMAN AND POLITICIAN, PRIME MINISTER, JOURNALIST, WRITER, ARTIST
He repeated a class in elementary school, failed the entrance exams to the Royal Military Academy twice, had a speech impediment, and was left-handed. Yet he had a phenomenal memory.
For 15 years he had been working on himself: he tried to write as much as possible, and he wrote self-authored stories.
ENTREPRENEUR, INVENTOR, FOUNDER OF APPLE AND PIXAR MOVIE STUDIO
He believed that everything that happens in life has its own meaning and brings experience in life’s journey, be it problems at school or a failed career.
He did not like school and did not attach much importance to it in his life, so he did not finish his education.