November is National Adoption Month! Here’s a look at some celebrities who have added to their families through adoption.
Diane Keaton
Jamie Lee Curtis
“Adoption is a very complicated road filled with incredibly emotional and challenging aspects,” said Jamie Lee Curtis, who adopted her kids Annie and Thomas, to Parents magazine last year. “At its core, adoption is about loss. It’s one that needs a lot of good support for everybody, so that everyone is clear about the feelings that are being stirred up for everyone,” said the forever youthful Curtis, 53. “It’s a complicated terrain but still a beautiful way to make a family. You have to just be really open to all sides of it.”
Kristin Davis
Much like her Sex & the City character Charlotte, Kristin Davis longed to be a mother. But the 47-year-old single actress thought adoption would be a longshot. “I didn’t think anyone would choose me, you know,” she told Anderson Cooper on his talk show last year. “I’m single, and I thought people wanted the white picket fence domestically.” Still, the fresh-faced actress got in touch with an agency in Haiti, and these days, she’s balancing Broadway and baby Gemma Rose, whom she brought home last summer. “It is terrifying, partly because with adoption you always know there’s the chance that it won’t work. So you’re on pins and needles.”
Kirstie Alley
Friends—and husbands—may come and go, but family is forever. Kirstie Alley’s closest? Her two kids, William True, 21, and Lillie Price, 19, whom she adopted with ex-husband Parker Stevenson after struggles with infertility and miscarriages. “They are very protective of me,” the Dancing With the Stars diva told People. And she’s very protective of them, too. “My best quality is that I’m a good mother.”
Mariska Hargitay
These days, Mariska Hargitay is blissful with her brood of three—August (pictured, right), 6, and adopted kids Amaya (pictured, left), nearly two, and Andrew, 1. But it didn’t come easy. “I’m not gonna lie,” the 48-year-old actress and former beauty queen (she was crowned Miss Beverly Hills!) told Good Housekeeping earlier this year, “there were wrenching moments. I say to everybody, ‘Adoption is not for the faint of heart.’” The process of getting the two kids took more than two years, but for Hargitay, the idea of adopting was planted decades ago. “I remember being in Thailand and India when I was 9 or 10 and seeing kids alone in the street and thinking, ‘Where are their moms?’ They were so amazingly resourceful and soulful and smart. And somewhere inside of me—even so young—I had that maternal instinct. I remember thinking, ‘I want to take them all home!’”
Sharon Stone
Sharon Stone’s got her hands full with three men in her life—adopted sons Roan, 11, Laird, 6 (pictured, left), and Quinn (pictured, right), 5. Her decision to adopt came after several miscarriages. “The last time I lost the baby, I went into 36 hours of labor,” the 54-year-old actress told AARP earlier this year. “While we were at the hospital, our adoption attorney called. I thought, ‘This is such a godsend. This is so right.’ I always thought I would adopt. Even when I was young, I used to look up how to adopt. I’m loving raising my kids.”
Angelina Jolie
Angelina Jolie’s brood of six with Brad Pitt includes three children they’ve adopted: Maddox, 10, from Cambodia; Zahara, 7, from Ethopia; and Pax, 8, from Vietnam. And the Jolie-Pitts are all about ensuring that their uber-international clan knows exactly where they came from. “They are all learning about each other’s cultures, as well as being proud of their own,” Jolie, 37, told the Financial Times last year about the globe-trotting family’s regular visits to their kids’ homelands. “So it’s not like just the boys get to do the Asian thing. They all have their flags over their beds and their individual pride.”
