Mental Floss

The Quick 10: 10 Famous Military Brats

By Stacy Conradt

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My dad was a military brat - my grandpa was in the Navy so my dad found himself uprooted a few times. He was born in Virginia but ended up in Iowa where he decided to stay put. Although he doesn't quite make the list of famous people (sorry, dad), these brats do:

10 Famous Military Brats

1. Photographer Annie Leibovitz's father was a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force.

2. R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe's dad was in the U.S. Army.

3. Actor Tim Curry (one of my favorites) traveled quite a bit with his dad, who was a Chaplain in the Royal Navy.

4. Xuxa, a Brazilian Icon who is sometimes called "The Madonna from South America", was quite worldly at a young age. Her father, who was in the Brazilian military, wasn't stationed in one place (Rio de Janiero) until Xuxa was seven.

5. Michael J. Fox was born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and didn't settle in one place until his dad retired from the Canadian Forces in 1971.

6. Elton John comes by his musical talents honestly - his dad was a trumpter with the Royal Air Force Band.

7. Bruce Willis was born in Iber-Oberstein, West Germany. His father was a soldier in the U.S. Army and met his mother while stationed there.

8. Emmylou Harris's dad was a Marine Corps pilot who went missing in action in Korea in 1951. He was a prisoner of war for for somewhere between 10 and 16 months (different reports say different things) before he was released and sent home.

9. Michelle Bachelet, the President of Chile, was born to an archaeologist mother and a father who was a Chilean Air Force Brigadier General. She moved all around Chile, and spent two years in Maryland while her father was serving at the Chilean Embassy in Washington, D.C. They then moved back to Chile where Michelle graduated high school.

10. Luke Skywalker himself, Mark Hamill, moved numerous times because of his dad's career with the U.S. Navy. Although he started high school in Annandale, Virginia, he graduated from Nile C. Kinnick High School in Japan. And then he went on to save the world from his evil father. No, wait, I'm confusing fantasy and reality again...