# What actresses & celebrities had children at ages 15, 16 and 17? Surprising answers!
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-actresses-celebrities-had-children-at-ages-15-16-and-17-surprising-answers/375681
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [October 8, 2006, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-actresses-celebrities-had-children-at-ages-15-16-and-17-surprising-answers/375681 "2006-10-08T03:06:47Z")
**Posts on this page:** 7
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)
#### Post date: [October 8, 2006, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-actresses-celebrities-had-children-at-ages-15-16-and-17-surprising-answers/375681/1 "2006-10-08T03:06:47Z")
Inspired by [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=391307) I was doing some searching on young actress/celeb mothers and some surprising people popped up.
Here are some “before they became famous” young actress mothers
[The Glamorous Bennett Sisters: Constance & Joan](http://www.classichollywoodbios.com/bennettsisters.htm)
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> Joan Bennett never had any desire to become an actress, she wished only to be a wife and mother. Joan married Jack Fox at the age of 16, became a mother at 17 and was divorced by the time she was 18 years old. In order to support herself and her baby, Joan decided to try acting until something better came along.
[Jayne Mansfield](http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~palmerpaths/CelebPalmers.html)
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> Born Vera Jayne Palmer on April 19, 1933, in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, married at 16 to high school sweetheart Paul Mansfield and becoming a mother at 17 (to Jayne Marie Mansfield, born in 1950), she started out as a physics major but then switched to drama at the University of Texas and later at UCLA
Interesting factoid L&O SVU’s actress Mariska Hargitay is her fourth child.
[Stella Stevens](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001771/bio)
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> A native of Hot Coffee, Mississippi, Stella was married at 15, a mother at 16 and divorced at 17. While attending Memphis State College
[Dave Evans!](http://www.angelarose.com/FamousDiabetics/Fam-actors.htm)
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> Actress-Singer-Cowgirl-Dedicated Christian. American leading lady of musical Westerns of the 1940s. Born Lucille Wood Smith in Uvalde, Texas, her name was changed at an early age to Frances Octavia Smith. She was raised in Texas and in Arkansas. Married at 14 and a mother at 15, she was divorced at 17 (some sources say widowed). Intent on a singing career, she moved to Memphis, Tennessee, and worked in an insurance company while taking occasional radio singing jobs. After another unhappy marriage, she went to Louisville, Kentucky and became a popular singer on a local radio station
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[American Idol winner Fantasia Barrino](http://www.worldjewishnewsagency.org/celebrities_front_page_news.htm) (who is also functionally illeterate!)
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> But the hardest part, she said, is not being able to read to Zion, her four-year-old daughter. “That hurts really bad,” she said, adding that she is now learning to read with tutors. In her memoir, Life Is Not a Fairy Tale, which she dictated to a freelance writer, Fantasia also said she was raped in her early teens by a classmate. She says the boy was disciplined, but she blamed herself for the attack. She dropped out of high school that year and became an unwed mother at 17
[Loretta Lynn](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_Lynn)
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> [A mother at 14](http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060302/news_lz1w02lewis.html) and a grandmother at 29
[Marianne Faithfull](http://observer.guardian.co.uk/life/story/0,,521920,00.html)
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> And I in turn put on my thrilled-to-meet-you face and tell her that I deeply enjoyed her autobiography Faithfull (1994), which I did. It is a truly amazing story - a pop star at 17, a mother at 18, Mick Jagger’s girlfriend at 19, reigning over Cheyne Walk - and yet by her thirties she was a heroin addict living on the street in Soho.
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### Author:  [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)
#### Post date: [October 8, 2006, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-actresses-celebrities-had-children-at-ages-15-16-and-17-surprising-answers/375681/2 "2006-10-08T03:08:35Z")
(who is also functionally illeterate!), but who can probably spell “illiterate” just fine! ;p
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### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [October 8, 2006, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-actresses-celebrities-had-children-at-ages-15-16-and-17-surprising-answers/375681/3 "2006-10-08T15:21:03Z")
> [@astro](#):
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> Dave Evans!
Known as “Dale” after her sex changer operation.
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### Author:  [@Rigamarole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rigamarole)
#### Post date: [October 8, 2006, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-actresses-celebrities-had-children-at-ages-15-16-and-17-surprising-answers/375681/4 "2006-10-08T18:23:54Z")
[QUOTE=astro]
(who is also functionally illeterate!), but who can probably spell “illiterate” just fine! ;p
[/QUOTE]
I think that may have been a purposeful joke/stab.
If not, he can always say it was after the fact. That is the joy of messageboards.
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### Author:  [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)
#### Post date: [October 8, 2006, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-actresses-celebrities-had-children-at-ages-15-16-and-17-surprising-answers/375681/5 "2006-10-08T18:26:27Z")
[QUOTE=Rigamarole]
I think that may have been a purposeful joke/stab.
If not, he can always say it was after the fact. That is the joy of messageboards.
[/QUOTE]
Pssst. Post one and two are from the same person.
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### Author:  [@Rigamarole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rigamarole)
#### Post date: [October 8, 2006, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-actresses-celebrities-had-children-at-ages-15-16-and-17-surprising-answers/375681/6 "2006-10-08T18:28:06Z")
[QUOTE=Loach]
Pssst. Post one and two are from the same person.
[/QUOTE]
😃 😃 😃
Just noticed that.
If you _hadn’t said anything_, you _could_ have passed it off as a joke, silly. Now you’ve gone and made us both look foolish. I reprimand you.
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### Author:  [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)
#### Post date: [October 8, 2006, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-actresses-celebrities-had-children-at-ages-15-16-and-17-surprising-answers/375681/7 "2006-10-08T18:30:05Z")
Marilyn Monroe (aka Norma Jean Baker) got married for the first time at 16.