Even as a kid, Katt Williams didn’t have it easy. He chose to emancipate from his parents when he was a teenager and even stopped going to school, per GQ. “I had already read a hundred books by the time I was 4 years old,” he told the outlet. “I was homeless as a teenager — I didn’t graduate from high school. I found out my IQ, and then I was done.”
Per The New York Post, Williams’ emancipation happened when he was 13 years old. At that point, he hitchhiked from his home in Cincinnati to Florida. Eventually, Williams ended up in Los Angeles. Director Marcus Raboy told the outlet that when the casting director for “Friday After Next” met Williams, he was homeless and living out of his car.
As it turns out, the nomadic nature of his youth suited his work as a touring comic, per Recordnet.com. Williams told the outlet that reading voraciously as a kid and seeing how other people led adventurous lives inspired him to do that, too. Further, he told Recordnet that, looking back, his childhood home wasn’t awful — he just knew that things weren’t going to work. “Cincinnati always held a special place in my heart,” he told the outlet. “To go back and be famous … that was a big deal to me. It’s a memory I won’t forget.”
