Meryl Streep managed to raise three daughters and one son while racking up 15 Oscar nominations—and it looks as if her devotion to Tinseltown rubbed off on her kids. The acclaimed actress is close with her daughters and typically brings them to red-carpet events. Daughter Mamie Gummer acted alongside her mom in the film Evening, and Streep brought along her daughter Grace, who’s also an aspiring actress, to this year’s Oscars.
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R&B star Usher is a notorious momma’s boy and almost overly devoted to his mom, Jonnetta Patton, who doubles as his manager. Having a platinum record-selling son comes with perks. “Mother's Day is such a special day, filled with so much love,” Patton said. “[One year] he bought me a Jaguar. That was the best gift, I was really surprised!” But with every Jaguar comes a high price: Patton skipped Usher's wedding to Tameka Foster, and she was fired by her son for a short while. The two have since bonded again.
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Heartbreaker Justin Timberlake is so devoted to mom Lynn Harless that he tattooed her initials and the word “guardian” on his back. "She's been my best friend since I figured out who I wanted to be," he told Rolling Stone. "She goes out with me and stays out later than I do." Wonder what song she requests at the clubs?
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Tom Cruise is an infamous momma’s boy, often sidelining Katie Holmes by showing up with Mary Lee Mapother South at multiple red-carpet events. South left Cruise’s abusive father and raised the future Top Gun as a single mother. “My mother finally had the courage to stand up to my dad and go, ‘No more! I'm not taking it,’” Cruise said to Parade Magazine in 2006. "I saw how my mother created [her life] and made it possible for us to survive."
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How many moms can say their honor was defended with a head butt? And by none other than Jack Bauer! Brooke Shields has been outspoken about being a strict parent to her two girls, Rowan and Grier. "I always feel like the odd mom out, because trust me when I tell you I'm on my girls. And every time I am, I know from the outside it looks like I'm an overbearing, controlling parent,” she said. “But I don't think we have any responsibility to anybody else but our kids and ourselves." Tom Cruise slammed her for taking antidepressants after the birth of her first child, saying she should have used vitamins instead to combat her postpartum depression. They later made up.
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Julia Roberts has a pair of 4-year-old twins and a 2-year-old with cameraman husband Danny Moder. She took time off from grinning her way through rom-coms to be a stay-at-home mom. “I will never be bored again,” she said. “I’m the luckiest girl in town, I really am.”
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Michelle Obama describes her role as first lady as “Mom in Chief” to daughters Sasha and Malia. Probably most striking to ever-curious onlookers is how “normal” Michelle seems as a mom: She enforces early bed times, healthy meals, and even makes surprise visits to the girls’ school, Sidwell Friends. "I’m there when they wake up in the morning and home in time to have dinner and tuck them into bed at night," she said.
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Reese Witherspoon is mother to two impeccably dressed blond tykes, 9-year-old Ava and 5-year-old Deacon. Witherspoon had a messy divorce from Ryan Phillippe and seems to enjoy her notoriety taking a backseat in the eyes of her children: “Realizing you’re not anything special to the kids is always a great sort of reminder that you’re just a regular person,” she said. “A regular embarrassing old mom.”
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Alias star Jennifer Garner is notable for actually dressing like a mom (sweatpants! BabyBjorn!) when out and about with adorable 3-year-old Violet Anne, and 4-month-old Seraphina Rose Elizabeth. In a typically selfless and motherly move, she gushed about husband Ben Affleck’s parenting ability: “There's nothing more emotional than seeing your partner—the man you love—with your baby at any time: the first time, the second, yesterday, today. There's nothing more beautiful,” she said.
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Supermodel Heidi Klum is pregnant with her fourth child, but vows this one will be her last. Klum and her husband Seal have two sons, 3-year-old Henry, and 2-year-old Johan, and Klum has a 5-year-old daughter, Leni, from a previous relationship. "When we looked around the table, it was like one person was missing. And that's how No. 4 came about. But that will be it," the German beauty said. If only Octomom had such willpower.
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“You never, never feel you've done a good job," Susan Sarandon has said of being a mom. She raised 23-year-old actress Eve Amurri, and two sons, Jack and Miles, during her Thelma & Louise days—but not without a little confusion. “I feel like I do everything badly. My house is a mess. I'm finding permission slips two weeks too late. Or I give them to my son but I don't nag him to make sure he gets them in… You know, I think that's the modern-day lifestyle,” she said.
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Hogwarts hero J.K. Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter novel in cafes while her infant daughter, Jessica, slept in a stroller next to her. “There was a point where I really felt I had ‘penniless divorcee lone parent’ tattooed on my head,” Rowling, who was a single mother, said. The writer had two more children with second husband Neil Murray—their son David, born in 2003, and daughter Mackenzie, born in 2005. She’s battled fiercely for privacy from the press for her children, and dedicated Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince to Mackenzie.
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Many still remember Demi Moore’s infamous nude-while-pregnant cover of Vanity Fair that shocked newsstands in 1991. The now 46-year-old was pregnant with daughter Scout LaRue at the time, and has two other daughters, Rumer and Tallulah, with ex-husband Bruce Willis. She told Bazaar that she didn’t want her divorce to get in the way of her family: "Look, I'm the product of divorced parents, and my brother and I were the pawns in my parents' game," Moore said. "I never wanted that for my kids." Moore has expressed interest in having kids with current husband Ashton Kutcher. Is the first Tweeted pregnancy in their future?
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Emmy-winning actress Blythe Danner often accompanies daughter Gwyneth Paltrow on the red carpet, and the pair has also fundraised for causes together. Danner had added "grandmother" to her resume: Gwyneth and Coldplay frontman Chris Martin now have two children. “My daughter is a huge movie star, married to a rock star, and their lives are just—I don’t have that frame of reference,” she said. “I can’t quite imagine what their lives are like. I see them all the time, but I see them as my children. I don’t see them functioning as big stars.”
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