Sarah Jessica Parker grew up in Ohio as the fourth of eight siblings, she told The New York Times in 2000. Providing for such a large family was no easy feat for Parker’s mother, Barbara, and stepfather, Paul Forste, who worked as a truck driver. “I remember my childhood as Dickensian,” she said. ”I remember being poor. There was no great way to hide it.”
Poverty meant she did not always have access to basic services or special occasions like her peers. “We didn’t have electricity sometimes,” she explained. “We didn’t have Christmases sometimes, or we didn’t have birthdays sometimes, or the bill collectors came, or the phone company would call and say, ‘We’re shutting your phones off.'” To make ends meet, Barbara and Forste relied on welfare. “I knew I was different from the kids who pay for lunch or bring their lunch from home,” she said.
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Parker, however, never lacked the most important things. “I wouldn’t change any of it for anything,” she told People’s Jess Cagle in 2017. Despite their limited means, Parker always had plenty of love, in addition to access to the arts. The truth of her everyday life also taught Parker some valuable lessons. “Not having everything you want is a blessing,” she said. It stimulated her creativity in myriad ways. “You make up games … we went to the theater, and the ballet and the opera because all of that was free,” she detailed.
