He was an incredibly damaged human being, from his father leaving when he was 7 and then his mother being bi-polar and an alcoholic. Yet somehow, he rose to become one of America’s biggest entertainers — and today, everyone knows his name… Check comments ⬇️

 a child growing up without a father. ”There was no breadwinner, so our situation went downhill pretty fast,” he said. ”I was different than the other kids because they had dads. And I remember, especially like a lot of guys my age, there was a dynamic with their fathers that I actually didn’t have.”

But his cousin saw things differently. In the documentary, she recalled, “When Howard left, it was a relief in that my mother felt more free, but it did give her a lot more stress in that she had to then work very, very hard to keep the family going.”