Do celebrities exaggerate their early life?

Been reading some biographies (i'm a big reader) and thinking about the early pre-fame lives of some famous people in business, politics, etc. and it just seems like their stories are often exaggerated like they knew what they were doing from a young age and were destined to be great or something, crazy stories like memorising the dictionary at 5 years old etc.
I mean, at that time they were normal people and absolutely not famous and I think at a certain point they put their life together and exaggerate the things that made them what they eventually became. Would you guys agree?

(edited 12 months ago)

Reply 1

sixthformstress

I mean it's possible that there's hyperbole but as someone who grew up in the theatre world up until I was about 15 I was dead set on being an actor/singer and had spent my whole life pursuing that - if I had got signed or put on a TV show before I changed by mind about what I wanted to do then it wouldn't have been exaggerating at all to say that and I have a lot of friends who haven't changed their mind about acting and are in the same position. I also truly believe that some people feel called to do things (myself included, hence why I decided acting wasn't the route for me). Of course creative licence can sensationalise things and we all look back at things different by typically if you're famous or successful in your career it's involved a lot of hard work, a lot of dreaming, and even more luck, so I suppose that you could view the 'luck' as a kind of destiny! Memorising the dictionary at 5 sounds insane though.

Original post by albayati