National Adoption Day is an effort to raise awareness about adoption and bring attention to the more than 125,000 children in foster care waiting for permanent, loving families. More than 75,000 foster children have been adopted, thanks to the annual efforts. In 2020, the event will take place on Saturday, November 21.
Most of us know someone personally who has adopted or been adopted. Here are 17 celebrities you might not realize were adopted either as infants or young children.
Nicole Richie
Trace Cyrus
Musician Trace Cyrus was adopted by country music star Billy Ray Cyrus, who is the biological father of singer and performer Miley Cyrus and their other siblings. Their mom, Tish, gave birth to Trace in Kentucky, before meeting and marrying Billy Ray. After Trace was adopted, they changed his name from Neil Timothy Helson.
Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton's father died in a car accident before the future president was born, famously, in Hope, Arkansas. His mother, in an effort to find a way to support her son, left him with her parents while she went to New Orleans to study nursing. She returned years later, married to Roger Clinton Sr., who adopted Bill and gave him his name. Until then, he had been William Jefferson Blythe III.
Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela, the late former president of South Africa, was born into the Thembu tribe and adopted by a "high-ranking Thembu regent" after his father died, when the young Mandela was 9.
Deborah Harry
Deborah Harry was just a few months old when her parents adopted her. When she was 4, they explained to the future Blondie frontwoman that she wasn't biologically related to them.
She's been open about her struggles with the fact that she was adopted, and some say that her album Mother had something to do with her adoption, though she denies it.
Sarah McLachlan
Lilith Fair headliner and founder Sarah McLachlan was one of three children adopted by Jack and Dorice McLachlan.
Sarah's birth mother, Judy, with whom she developed a friendly relationship as an adult, was 19 when Sarah was born. McLachlan, who had a close relationship with her parents, met her birth mother when she was 19 and away at art school.
Run DMC's Darryl McDaniels
Darryl McDaniels credits adoptee Sarah McLachlan's song with saving his life. In his twenties, he was depressed and suicidal when he heard her sing Angel, about the heroin overdose of Smashing Pumpkins keyboard player Jonathan Melvoin. Though he didn't know it at the time, McDaniels had been born to an unwed mother who had given him up, at which point he was placed in foster care with the McDaniels family. Eventually, they adopted him.
After hearing Angel, he took a deeper look at his life and career, and started writing his autobiography. While researching his early years, his mother, Bannah, told him the shocking secret: He'd been put up for adoption at 3 months old. Things fell into place for McDaniels, including why he looked different from the rest of the family.
McDaniels has since been an advocate of laws that restore adopted adults' access to their original birth certificates.
