Camille Codling

Charlize saw her Mother shot her armed, drunken father in self-defence. In the days following, Theron’s devastated mother insisted that the teenager leave and resume her life away from home. Her mother said she would face the investigation on her own.

At 13, she lost her arm and nearly lost her life in a vicious shark attack. One month later she was back on her surfboard with a determined spirit and positive attitude.

Canadian athlete, humanitarian, and cancer research activist. In 1980, with one leg having been amputated due to cancer, he embarked on an east to west cross-Canada run to raise money and awareness for cancer research.

A family with many members part of the Black Panthers, many of which had run-ins with the law and prison. Politics surely affected his upbringing and his later career.

A well-known drag queen, actor, model and singer, RuPaul came from a family of “crazy hillbillies”, coming from a tough childhood into an even tougher career path.

Hawking had a rare early-onset slow-progressing form of motor neurone disease (also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, “ALS”, or Lou Gehrig’s disease), that gradually paralyzed him over the decades. In the wake of this disease he became an accomplished English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author.

A Series of Unfortunate Success