25 Celebs Who Overcame Dyslexia and Still Made it Big

Jennifer Aniston didn’t learn she was dyslexic until she was an adult. “The only reason I knew [that I had it] was because I went to get a prescription for glasses," she recalls. "I had to wear these Buddy Holly glasses. One had a blue lens and one had a red lens. And I had to read a paragraph, and they gave me a quiz, gave me 10 questions based on what I'd just read, and I think I got three right. Then they put a computer on my eyes, showing where my eyes went when I read. My eyes would jump four words and go back two words, and I also had a little bit of a lazy eye, like a crossed eye, which they always have to correct in photos." Until she was diagnosed as dyslexic, she explained, "I thought I wasn't smart. I just couldn't retain anything. Now I had this great discovery. I felt like all of my childhood trauma-dies, tragedies, dramas were explained.”

For Top Gun star Tom Cruise, dyslexia made school a serious struggle. “I’d try to concentrate on what I was reading. Then I’d get to the end of the page and have very little memory of anything I’d read,” he said. “I would go blank, feel anxious, nervous, bored, frustrated, dumb. I would get angry. My legs would actually hurt when I was studying. My head ached.”

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Best known for playing The Fonz on Happy Days and his new role on HBO’s Barry, Henry Winkler revealed that before he was diagnosed with dyslexia, his family just assumed he was stupid. “They had an affectionate phrase for me: Dummer Hund. And for those of you who don’t understand German, that means ‘dumb dog.’ They were convinced that I was lazy, that I was not living up to my potential. Teachers said the same thing. So I was grounded most of my high school career,” he said. “It was horrible. It was humiliating. It was scary. And I learned to memorize as much as I could from any page and then improvise.”

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Like Jennifer Aniston, director Steven Spielberg was diagnosed with dyslexia when he was an adult, and described the diagnosis as “the last puzzle piece to a great mystery that I’ve kept to myself,” explaining why he faced enormous difficulties at school.

Billionaire Sir Richard Branson actually credits his vast business success to his learning disability. “I was hopeless at schoolwork and people didn’t really understand dyslexia then so it was just assumed that I was not bright when it came to academic things,” he said. “I almost definitely wouldn’t have left school at 15 and I wouldn’t have started a magazine or built Virgin if I had not been dyslexic.” Added Branson: “I think dyslexia helped me on the creative side with simplifying things,” he says. “I think it has influenced the way I talk to people and communicate in articles. I keep things simple. That helped build the Virgin brand and people identified with it much more as a result.”

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Earvin “Magic” Johnson had a tough time in school, and spent his summers taking classes in order to stay caught up with his classmates so he wouldn’t be forced to repeat a grade. “All kids need is a little help, a little hope and somebody who believes in them,” said Johnson, who received just that kind of help when teachers recognized his athletic gifts and helped place him on a path that led to the NBA.

For Whoopi Goldberg, dyslexia is not a curse but a blessing. “The advantage of dyslexia is that my brain puts information in my head in a different way,” explained the Oscar-winning moderator of The View. “When I was a kid they didn’t call it dyslexia. They called it you know, you were slow, or whatever. What you can never change is the effect that the words ‘dumb’ and ‘stupid’ have on young people. I knew I wasn’t stupid, and I knew I wasn’t dumb.”

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Before going on to greatness in the boxing ring, heavyweight champ Muhammad Ali barely made it through high school due to his dyslexia. “As a high school student, many of my teachers labeled me dumb…I knew who the real dummies were. I barely graduated…There was no way I was going to college—I never even thought about it. I could barely read my textbooks,” he said.

Jay Leno credits his dyslexia with his extreme work ethic. “My mother always said to me, since I was dyslexic, ‘You’re going to have to work twice as hard as the other kids to get the same thing.’ I said, ‘OK. That seems fair.’ And I did work twice as hard to get the same thing,” said the former Tonight Show host. “Never think you’re better, or, for any reason, smarter. Just keep working and plugging away.”

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Dyslexia was little known and little understood when Lethal Weapon star Danny Glover attended elementary school in the 1950s. “I don’t believe there was a real discussion about the idea of dyslexia and learning differences,” he said. “I remember… in the seventh grade, because of my grades, the counselor made a comment to my mother that I was [mentally challenged]. I think that people were naive at that time. I was tested in L.A. at a clinic later on in life and at that time I was diagnosed as dyslexic… By that time I had found different ways to manage my sense of… inadequacy. You celebrate those things that you’re good at, and you become better at those.”

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Keira Knightley was diagnosed with dyslexia at the age of six, and revealed that her mother — who was working with Emma Thompson on her 1995 adaptation of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility — gave Knightley a copy of Thompson’s script.  “My mum who worked with her [Thompson] on Sense and Sensibility got me a copy of the screenplay Emma had written. “And I was — am — dyslexic and the way she got me over it was to say: ‘If Emma Thompson couldn’t read, she’d make [expletive] sure she'd get over it, so you have to start reading, because that’s what Emma Thompson would do.’”

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According to Patrick Dempsey, his dyslexia “has made me who I am today. It’s given me a perspective of — you have to keep working. I have never given up.” In fact, the former Grey’s Anatomy star said that it’s something he still struggles with as an actor. “I think that’s when I get the most insecure … it’s very hard for me to read it off the page,” he said. “I need to memorize it, in order to go on.”

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“I was an angry, angry child at times,” Orlando Bloom said of growing up with dyslexia. “Somewhere in me I knew I was smart, but I was really struggling … My creative outlet, performing — that was what got me through.” However, the Pirates of the Caribbean star has since come to see dyslexia not as an affliction but a benefit. “It’s a gift and don’t let anyone tell you that because you struggle with dyslexia you’ll never make it in life because it’s simply not true,” he added. “It’s about your determination and desire to overcome. And I think that the obstacles that come with any disability can become the opportunity of your life if you make it that.”

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Cher didn’t discover she was dyslexic until she took one of her children to a specialist to evaluate that child’s learning issues. Looking back, her struggles with school suddenly made sense. "I couldn't read quickly enough to get all my homework done and for me, math was like trying to understand Sanskrit,” she admitted.

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“If I wasn’t dyslexic, I probably wouldn’t have won the Games,” said Caitlyn Jenner, reflecting on becoming a gold medalist at the 1976 Olympic Games. “If I had been a better reader, then that would have come easily, sports would have come easily, and I never would have realized that the way you get ahead in life is hard work.”

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The CNN anchor now has a job that involves reading off a teleprompter, so it’s somewhat ironic that his dyslexia made reading a struggle when he was a child. To compensate, he simply worked harder at it. “I grew up in a home where reading and writing had great value,” said Cooper, revealing he would usually carry a book around with him, but “I would just pretend to read it, because I had trouble reading and making sense of words, in particular, letters.”

For Sir Anthony Hopkins, dyslexia inadvertently led him to a career in acting. “I was lousy in school,” said the Silence of the Lambs star. “I was antisocial and didn’t bother with the other kids… I didn’t know what I was doing there. That’s why I became an actor.”

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The Black Sabbath rocker credits his dyslexia as allowing him to think differently than most people. “The only good thing about having dyslexia is that dyslexics are usually very creative people, or so I’ve been told. We think in unusual ways,” said the rocker. “But it’s a very bad stigma to have, not being able to read like normal people can. To this day I wish I’d had a proper education. I think books are great, I do. To be able to lose yourself in a book is ****ing phenomenal. Everyone should be able to do it. But I’ve been able to get through an entire book only a few times in my life. Every blue moon this thing in my head will release, and I’ll try to read as many books as I can, because when it closes up it goes straight back to the way it was, and I end up just sitting there, staring at Chinese.”

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While the former U.S. president has never publicly confirmed he’s dyslexic, at least one expert believes that to be the case due to his sometimes scrambled syntax and verbal gaffes. “Bush is probably dyslexic, although he has probably never been diagnosed,” Sue Horn, the former head of the Maryland branch of the International Dyslexia Association, said. In addition, Nancy LaFevers, a Houston dyslexia expert, said: “The errors you’ve heard [him] make are consistent with dyslexia.”  

Late comedian Robin Williams not only overcame his dyslexia, he would often joke about it. “I suffer from severe dyslexia” he once said to Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show. “I was the only child on my block on Halloween to go ‘trick or trout’ … ‘Here comes that young Williams boy. Better get some fish.’”

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"I’m really a fast learner,” said Salma Hayek. "I always was, which is maybe why in high school they didn’t realize I had dyslexia. I skipped years without studying too much." While that never held her back when she pursued an acting career, she did encounter some struggles when she left her native Mexico and moved to the U.S. "I came here and I didn't speak English, I didn't have a green card, I didn't know I had to have an agent, I couldn't drive, I was dyslexic. I hadn't had to do anything on my own in Mexico,” she said, adding: "It doesn’t bother me now. Some people read really fast, but you’ll ask them questions about the script and they’ll forget. I take a long time to read a script, but I read it only once. I directed, and I never brought the script to the set."

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Channing Tatum has been candid about being dyslexic, recalling dyslexia made hosing Saturday Night Live “by far the most terrifying thing that I’ve ever done, because there is a lot of reading involved, and I don’t read that well out loud.”

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Bill Gates is adamant that his dyslexia is the reason why he became so successful. “Don’t compare yourself with anyone in this world, if you do so, you are insulting yourself,” the software mogul explained. “I failed in some subjects in exam, but my friend passed in all. Now he is an engineer in Microsoft and I am the owner of Microsoft.”

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“I’m a dyslexic,” admitted Billy Bob Thornton. “When I was growing up, they just thought I was slow. Teachers thought I was lazy. I never wanted to be anything that school taught me,” added the Bad Santa star. “I was only in drama because there were girls in there.”

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Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver believes dyslexia isn’t a disability to overcome, but a gift to be treasured. “I genuinely think that when someone says to you, ‘Johnny’s got dyslexia’, you should get down on your knees, shake the child’s hand and say: ‘Well done, you lucky, lucky boy,’” he said. “If I’m in a meeting, I just see the problems differently and I obsess about things differently. Sometimes, when it requires a load of stuff to be done, I just do it. It’s like I’m a massive, 10-ton boulder rolling down the hill.”

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