Famous/Successful People Who Were "Sickly Children"

[Mesquite-oh]

It seems that 1 out of 10 biographies I read indicates that the famous/successful person were at one time bedridden or had significant childhood illnesses. There is usually a passage like:

Famous Person) was a sickly child whose frequent bouts with (some kind of sickness) caused him to be bedridden for a significant part of his childhood. Unable to play with the other children, (Famous Person) spent his afternoons (reading Sophocles and writing plays, studying Copernicus and making his own celestial charts, etc.) to amuse himself.

What famous/successful people were sickly children? I just can’t seem to remember any of them I am actually going to visit a youngster who unfortunately is going to have to spend a bit of time in the hospital.

[Ms_Macphisto]

First person to come to mind is Scott Hamilton, who definitely qualifies as having been a “sickly child” before going on to a highly successful figure skating career, including an Olympic gold medal. Can’t think of anyone else though.

[pseudotriton_ruber_ruber]

Teddy Roosevelt was a famous example.

[I_Love_Me_Vol.I]

Ryan White?

[KarlGauss]

I’ve read that Isaac Newton was almost the epitome of ‘sickly’. From here:

Isaac Newton was born at Woolthorpe, Lincolnshire, England on Christmas Day 1642. On that cold winter night, the sick, premature baby seemed unlikely to live. Gradually, however, he gained strength to survive. But Isaac’s first few years were a struggle.

[Cuckoorex]

Bram Stoker , author of Dracula. Snippet from the linked Wikipedia entry:

"Until he was 7 years old, recurring illness ensured that he could neither stand up nor walk on his own. This illness and helplessness was a traumatic experience which is noticeable in his literary work. Everlasting sleep and the resurrection from the dead, which are the central themes of Dracula, were of great importance for him, because he was forced to spend much of his life in bed.

Not only his illness but also his convalescence were considered miracles by his doctors. After his recovery, he became a normal young man who even became an athlete at the University of Dublin, where he studied history, literature, mathematics and physics at Trinity College."

[FlyingRamenMonster]

John F. Kennedy was pretty sickly.

[Robot_Arm]

Bobby Darin

From the link:

Frail as an infant, perhaps from the poverty that resulted in a lack of proper diet and medical attention, at the age of 8 he was stricken with multiple bouts of rheumatic fever. The illness left him with a seriously diseased heart, and he would live with the constant knowledge that his life might be a short one. As a child he overheard a doctor tell his mother he would be lucky to reach the age of 16. Driven by his poverty and illness, and with an innate talent for music, by the time he was a teenager he could play several musical instruments, including piano, drums and guitar. He later added harmonica and xylophone.

[China_Guy]

Japanese author Mishima

[Guinastasia]

Audrey Hepburn-she suffered from malnutrition during WWII.

[Foldup_Rabbit]

OJ Simpson had rickets. Pretty impressive for a guy who went on to break a whole whack of records.

[Tikki]

Alan Alda was bedridden with polio for two years as a child.

[teela_brown]

IIRC, a young girl wanted to grow up to be a famous dancer, but she was laid up for a long time by an automobile accident. Bedridden, she turned to singing instead, and became proficient at it. That girl’s name was . . . Doris Day.

And now you know . . . the REST of the story.

[zuma]

katie holms

[Rayne_Man]

Edith Piaf was went blind when she was three and did not regain her sight until she was seven .

[Annie-Xmas]

Ringo Starr had appendictis and pleursy

[minlokwat]

Marcel Proust fits the bill.

[FormerMarineGuy]

Edvard Munch:

Edvard Munch (of “The Scream” fame) was always sick as a child (rheumatic fever), and was often bedridden. Hence, there was plenty of time to develop his artistic talent. His life was dogged by disease and death (his mother died when he was 5, his sister died when he was 14). Unsurprisingly, his artwork revolved frequently around illness and death–for example, “The Sick Child.”

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec:

Toulouse-Lautrec was also of weak constitution as a child, perhaps due to the fact that his parents were first cousins. It was suggested that he had osteogenesis imperfecta. In 1878 he broke both legs, and spent his convalescence drawing and painting. However, after the fractures, his legs stopped growing, although his torso matured normally. As his adolescence progressed, he became “a grotesque dwarf (4.5 feet), with a thick nose, swollen and puffy lips, a retreating chin, and a strange waddling walk.” Deprived of the physical life that a normal body would have permitted, Toulouse-Lautrec lived completely for his art.

Hernando Cortes:

He was very sick as a child but when he became 14 he turned into a very healthy man. People of Mexico thought he was a God because in a legend it said that a god would come from the east with a black beard.

DuBose Heyward:

Often sick as a child, he got polio when he was eighteen; two years later he contracted typhoid fever and the next year pleurisy. At twenty-one, Heyward and his friend Henry T. O’Neill organized a real estate and insurance company.

[Annie-Xmas]

Stephen King had a wretched childhood that included an ear infection and strep throad keeping him out of much of first grade, and he ended up repeating it, not graduation high school till he was almost 19.

[Moirai]

Gwen Verdon suffered from rickets as a child. It actually became one of her great assets- her loose-limbed, knock-kneed style made her the perfect muse for Bob Fosse and his inventive choreography.