Famous U.S. immigrants

Theron was born in rural South Africa. The traveled to New York at 18 to pursue a career in dance, but severe knee injuries derailed those dreams. She moved to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career but said her Afrikaner accent kept her from landing roles. After watching hours of television, however, Theron learned to hide her accent. She was sworn in as a United States citizen in May 2007. “Well, I’ve always wanted to be (citizen) they just didn’t want to take me. It’s quite a process you have to work hard, you know, study up,” she told David Letterman in 2008. “Then finally I was approved and you have to go in and do an interview. You have to know your stuff.”

The head of News Corp, Murdoch was born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1931. His father was a famous war correspondent and newspaper publisher who left everything to his son when he was only 21. Murdoch quickly expanded his business in Australia, eventually breaking into the U.S market. He aimed to enter the broadcast industry but U.S. law and the FCC do not allow foreigners to hold major stakes in U.S. networks. In 1985, Murdoch became a U.S. citizen.

Known as one of the best ballet dancers of the 20th century, Baryshnikov was born in Latvia in 1948. He began dancing as a teen and by 26 he was performing internationally with the Kirov Ballet. In 1974, Baryshnikov defected to Canada, requesting political asylum in Toronto. “I am individualist and there it is a crime,” he told the New Statesman regarding his decision to flee the Soviet Union. He eventually moved to New York City where he danced with the American Ballet Theater until 1979. Baryshnikov became a U.S. citizen in 1986.

Westheimer, best known in the U.S. as the sex therapist Dr. Ruth, was born in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1928. To escape the Nazis, her parents sent her to Switzerland. Westheimer never saw her parents again and believes they died in the Auschwitz concentration camp. After the war, she moved to Israel and then Palestine. There she became a Zionist, joining the Jewish underground movement, Haganah. She served as a sniper until she was seriously injured when a shell exploded at her feet, seriously wounding her. In 1950 she lived in Paris with her first husband but moved to New York in 1956 to attend the New School. She married two more times and gave birth to a girl and a boy. In 1965, Westheimer became a U.S. citizen and went on to receive degrees from the New School and Teacher’s College, Columbia University. She worked at a Planned Parenthood, eventually getting her radio program and becoming the sex guru we know today.

Schwarzenegger, the bodybuilder, actor and former governor of California, was born in 1947 near Graz, Austria. He dreamed of becoming a bodybuilder and idolized Reg Parker, an actor in B-level Hercules movies. Those films fueled his desire to come to America. With the help of the International Federation of BodyBuilding, which sponsored contests such as Mr. Universe and Mr. Olympia, he realized his dream. Schwarzenegger, who immigrated in 1968, went on to win five Mr. Universe titles and six Mr. Olympia crowns before embarking on an acting career. He became a United States citizen in 1983.

A Romanian gymnast as a youngster, Comaneci is best known for earning seven perfect scores and winning three Olympic gold medals at the age of 14. Comaneci enjoyed a life of privilege in Romania but felt she wasn’t free. In 1989, shortly before the revolution that overthrew Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu, she and six others traveled from Romania to Hungary. From there she defected to the United States. In 2001, she took the oath to become a naturalized citizen in a ceremony in Oklahoma City, Okla. “I come from a wonderful country with wonderful people but we were living with a system telling us how to live,” she said afterward.

Albright, who was born on May 15, 1937 in Prague, Czechoslovakia, was the first woman to serve as U.S. secretary of state, under former President Bill Clinton. Born Marie Jana Korbelova, her father, Josef Korbel, was a Czech Jewish diplomat who strongly opposed the Communist Party that took over Czechoslovakia in 1948. His opposition led her father to resign as the ambassador to Yugoslavia. He later took a position on a United Nations delegation to Kashmir and sent Albright and her family to the United States to wait for him. She arrived in New York City in 1948 and Korbel applied for political asylum, arguing that as an opponent of communism he was under threat in Prague. "I am a beneficiary of the American people's generosity, and I hope we can have comprehensive immigration legislation that allows this country to continue to be enriched by those who were not born here," she told Time magazine in 2008.

Hopkins, an Academy Award-winning actor, was born in Port Talbot, Wales, on New Year's Eve in 1937. In 1972, Hopkins moved to California to advance his acting career but then briefly returned to the UK in 1986. He eventually returned to California and has been a Los Angeles resident since 1998. In 2000, in a private ceremony witnessed by Steven Spielberg, Hopkins became a U.S. citizen. He maintains dual citizenship. “America has been very generous to me, magnanimous, really,” he told the BBC in 2000. “I thought it would be good to give something back. It was a decision of the heart.”

Kunis was born in Chernivtsi, now a part of the Ukraine, but grew up in Russia. Her parents had good jobs there, but as faced persecution as Jews. “My parents thought that my brother and I had no future there … so we moved to the United States,” she told the Daily Telegraph in 2011, adding that she and her family arrived in 1991 with only $250 to their name. Her parents did what they could to put food on the table; her father made money delivering pizzas, installing toilets and painting homes, while her mother worked at a thrift store. Meanwhile, the then-7-year-old Kunis struggled to adjust to her new life. “My first sentence of my essay to get into college was like, ‘Imagine being blind and deaf at age 7,’ and that’s kind of what it felt like moving to the States,” she told the Los Angeles Times in 2008.

Gerald Norman Springer was born in a London Tube station in 1944. His parents were Polish Jews who escaped Germany during the Holocaust. At 5, his family immigrated to Queens in New York City. Springer studied political science at Tulane University, then received a law degree from Northwestern University. Shortly thereafter, he began to pursue a political career, becoming a political consultant to Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. He joined a law firm after Kennedy’s death, then ran for Congress in Ohio before winning a seat on the Cincinnati City Council. He became mayor of Cincinnati, Ohio at the age of 33, serving two terms. After an unsuccessful run for Ohio governor, Springer began working as a news anchor. He eventually developed his own talk show. “The Jerry Springer Show,” which debuted in 1991 and is still popular today.

Estefan, the famed Latin pop singer, was born in Cuba in 1957 as Gloria Maria Fajardo Garcia. Feeling unsafe under Castro’s rule, her family fled to Miami when Gloria was a year old. After arriving in the U.S., her father was recruited into the 2506 Brigade, a band of Cuban refugees involved in the Bay of Pigs invasion. He later joined the U.S. Army and served in Vietnam. Meanwhile, her mother worked as a teacher and attended night school. In 1975, she met Emilio Estefan, a Cuban-American band leader who asked her to sing with his group. Three years later, the two married. In 1993, Estefan was awarded the Ellis Island Congressional Medal of Honor, which honors immigrants and their contributions to America.

Ferguson, the comedian and late-night talk show host, was born and raised in Scotland. At 21, he moved to the New York City, where he worked in construction and as a nightclub bouncer. His visa was for six months but he stayed for a year, then he went back to Scotland. In the UK, Ferguson starred in “The Craig Ferguson Show.” After its cancellation, he move to Los Angeles in 1994 working as an actor, most notably on “The Drew Carey Show.” When Craig Kilborn stepped down from “The Late Late Show,” in 2005, Ferguson took over. In 2007, via his show, Ferguson began a campaign seeking honorary citizenship from every state in the U.S. In 2008 he became a naturalized citizen, airing his citizenship test on his talk show.

The former model, business executive, activis, and wife to David Bowie, Iman is sometimes described as Somalia's greatest export. She was born to an African diplomat in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1955. As a student at the University of Nairobi, she was discovered by photographer Peter Beard, who convinced her to go to New York. Iman modeled on runways and fashion magazines for several years. In 1977, she married basketball player Spencer Haywood and together had a daughter. They divorced in 1987. She left modeling in 1989 and moved to Los Angeles, where she married English rocker David Bowie in 1992. The former supermodel has since launched her own cosmetics company targeting multi-cultural women.