Celebrity Childhood Homes

Celebrity Childhood Homes: Where Madonna, Jimmy Fallon and Kate Hudson Grew Up

Madonna

Although international phenomenon Madonna prefers to spend most of her time at her homes in London and New York, she grew up in a brick home in the neighborhood of Rochester Hills, about thirty minutes outside Detroit, MI. Madonna’s childhood home is a two-story brick Colonial with 4 bedrooms and 2 baths, which the singer shared with seven siblings before leaving for fame and fortune at age 18. Madonna’s father and stepmother moved out in July 2001, selling the home for $270,000. In 2008, the home burned, reportedly due to arson, and sat empty until it sold for $91,700 in early 2012.

Jimmy Fallon

Before he cracked jokes on “Saturday Night Live” and as the host of “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon,” Fallon was like most kids: Days spent playing in the backyard of his childhood home in upstate New York. Fallon’s childhood home in Saugerties is now available for a new family (and perhaps future comic) to move in. The 3-bedroom, 2-bath home has 1,780-square-feet of living space, hardwood and ceramic floors, a large country kitchen, and upstairs study.

Farrah Fawcett

Before she was one of “Charlie’s Angels,” blond beauty Farrah Fawcett was the daughter of an oil man in Corpus Christi, TX. Fawcett’s 4-bedroom, 3-bathroom childhood home was recently given a nice facelift with new paint, tile, carpeting, lighting and bathroom fixtures before it was listed on the market earlier this year for $215,000. It also boasts an updated kitchen and fresh landscaping and new driveway.

Kate Hudson

Most celebrities move on from their childhood home. Except if you grew up the kid of Hollywood stalwarts. In 2011, actress Kate Hudson purchased the Pacific Palisades home she grew up in. The home was built in 1935 and owned by Hudson’s mother Goldie Hawn and stepfather Kurt Russell in the 1970s. They sold it and it was expanded to 7,000 square feet by new owners before Hudson bought it back for $5.3 million. Coincidentally, Hawn and Russell still live nearby and Hudson also owns the home next door.

Michael Jackson

Source: People.com

The King of Pop’s first home in Gary, IN has long been famous as part of the Jackson 5′s history-making story about the rise from poverty to international fame. The home was tiny, measuring just 672 square feet with 2 bedrooms and 1 bath. To apartment dwellers, that may not seem so bad, but considering that all eleven members of the Jackson family lived there, the space was the definition of cramped. The Jacksons moved out to Hollywood following the success of the Jackson 5, and in the latter years of Michael Jackson’s career, the home became a shrine of sorts. The home has not been sold and is likely still owned by the Jackson clan.

Mitt Romney

Source: Politico

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney spent the first five years of his life in this 5,500-square-foot home in the upscale Detroit Palmer Woods neighborhood before moving to Detroit’s Bloomfield Hills suburb.  Although Detroit real estate has been hard hit in the past few years, Palmer Woods real estate remained steady as a high-end neighborhood. However, even an upscale location couldn’t save Romney’s childhood home from foreclosure or the wrecking ball. After falling into disrepair in 2009, the house was one of 3,000 Detroit homes razed in the city’s renewal plan.

 

Madonna shows she’s no lady (Gaga)

Pop superstar Madonna kicked off a new world tour on Thursday wishing peace on the Middle East, even as she showcased grim dance routines depicting violence and bloody gunmen among her more colourful numbers.

Madonna, 53, mixed hit songs over three decades in music with tunes from her recent album, MDNA, before a packed audience, and she took a sly dig at younger diva, Lady Gaga.

“She’s not me!” Madonna belted out at the end of Express Yourself, which she had reworked to include a sampling of Lady Gaga’s recent Born This Way. 

That song from Lady Gaga, who emerged on the pop music scene about four years ago and has enjoyed a huge following, was noted by many fans and critics as being very similar to Madonna’s late 1980s dance club smash.

Since Lady Gaga, 26, released Born This Way, there has been speculation that a generational challenge was in the works and comedians have poked fun at any imagined rivalry between the two women.

Despite occasional light-hearted touches such as a baton-twirling routine in cheerleader formation and a psychedelic homage to Indian philosophy, the dominant mood at Thursday’s concert in Tel Aviv seemed more grim, with a stage shrouded in black and red and costumes that often appeared ominous.

Like a Virgin, a dance tune that helped propel Madonna to stardom as risqué pop ingénue in the 1980s, was performed as a mournful cabaret with violin accompaniment. At one point, the singer was trussed up and hoisted into the air by four male dancers, then lowered on to a platform as though into a volcano – a virgin sacrifice.

For Gang Bang, Madonna wrestled with armed intruders whom she then dispatched with a pistol – their “blood” spattering across an enormous video backdrop. In a routine for Revolver, she wielded a Kalashnikov rifle, used by many modern-day insurgents, while one of her dancers favoured an Israeli Uzi.

The exertions never sapped her confident singing, though she did become somewhat breathless during remarks to the audience at Ramat Gan stadium on Tel Aviv’s outskirts. “I chose to start my world tour in Israel for a very specific and important reason. As you know, the Middle East and all the conflicts that have been occurring here for thousands of years – they have to stop,” she said to cheers.

A devotee of Jewish mysticism, Madonna had dubbed the first leg of her 28-country MDNA tour the “Peace Concert” and distributed free tickets to some of the Palestinians who attended from the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem.

Among them was a woman named Yasmine, who declined to give her last name in light of Palestinian calls to boycott the Madonna concert and other cultural events in Israel. She offered a mixed assessment of the show. “I wasn’t a fan of the intro. It was too aggressive and massacre-like,” Yasmine said. “Her (Madonna’s) speech about peace and the mention of Palestine was heartfelt, though.”

Avihay Asseraf, an Israeli who dedicated a Facebook page to Madonna’s visit, was more sanguine about the darker displays.

“That’s how she chose to express herself this time,” he said. “Ultimately this is a show, a spectacle, and it’s all for fun.” – Reuters