who the hell is Ayrton Senna?
August 7, 2005 6:57 PM   Subscribe

Before they were famous - six pages of childhood photos of celebrities.
posted by jonson (57 comments total)
 
Bjork's had the same haircut since she was 5!
posted by dobbs at 7:07 PM on August 7, 2005


Marilyn Manson (correct picture)

I wonder what the incorrect picture was.
posted by daninnj at 7:12 PM on August 7, 2005


Famous musicians, athletes, movie stars, and Vladimir Putin.
posted by sellout at 7:16 PM on August 7, 2005


teehee...mariah carey's boobs...teehee...
posted by es_de_bah at 7:17 PM on August 7, 2005


I declare the Drew Barrymore photo invalid as she was already famous as a kid.

Same for Michael Jackson.

And. Uh. VLADIMIR PUTIN!?
posted by linux at 7:22 PM on August 7, 2005


I had no idea that Tina Turner was transgendered.
posted by Kwantsar at 7:30 PM on August 7, 2005


I had no idea Courtney Love was the Firestarter.
posted by selfnoise at 7:31 PM on August 7, 2005


Crikey! Check out the chompers on Freddie Mercury. I thought they were novelty teeth.
posted by uncanny hengeman at 7:35 PM on August 7, 2005


This would have been better as a guessing game!
posted by Robot Johnny at 7:48 PM on August 7, 2005


Aw, lil' Bjork's a cutie.
posted by painquale at 8:01 PM on August 7, 2005


Eminem looks like trouble already.
posted by caddis at 8:15 PM on August 7, 2005


looks like demi moore was transgendered, too. and sarah jessica parker is wearing a toupee.
posted by timory at 8:16 PM on August 7, 2005


Ringo Starr was adorable! I wonder if he wore the rings even then?
posted by maxsparber at 8:16 PM on August 7, 2005


uncanny, I was going to comment on those. I am fairly certain I have never seen a proportionally larger set of teeth.
posted by PhatLobley at 8:30 PM on August 7, 2005


Poor Freddy Mercury.
posted by ColdChef at 8:31 PM on August 7, 2005


George Clooney looks like he's about to fuck the photographer.
posted by ColdChef at 8:32 PM on August 7, 2005


Ringo Starr looks like Baby Hitler. No offense.
posted by ColdChef at 8:33 PM on August 7, 2005


I had no idea who Kimi Raikkonen and Mika Hakkinen were, and given the odd names I felt oddly compelled to look them up. Now I know that not only are they both race car drivers, they are apparently both male. Given the pictures, I had a small glimmer of hope that I would find the Swedish Bikini Team captains or something.
posted by yhbc at 8:33 PM on August 7, 2005


Strange how Paul McCartney looks exactly the same some 60 years on...
posted by Chrischris at 8:42 PM on August 7, 2005


and sarah jessica parker is wearing a toupee

Isn't it SJP as Little Orphan Annie?
posted by John Shaft at 8:50 PM on August 7, 2005


Tina Turner's a peach.
posted by disgruntled at 8:54 PM on August 7, 2005


Thank you, jonson. I've been wanting a copy of that!

Interestingly (or not) enough, the main site descibes itself as "Crazy Pictures of Insane Internet" and the celebrities-kids page is nowhere to be found as a link. How did you find it?
posted by yhbc at 9:08 PM on August 7, 2005


Anyone have links to what they look like now when they're not wearing clothes?
posted by eatitlive at 9:44 PM on August 7, 2005


Sarah Jessica was on B'way as Annie for a while, after Andrea McArdle.

I couldn't get over the Tina Turner at all.
posted by amberglow at 9:47 PM on August 7, 2005


Demi Moore looks just like the girl everyone in my school picked on. I wonder if she's a hottie now too?
posted by FlamingBore at 9:52 PM on August 7, 2005


Isn't Aryton Senna a famous Formula 1 driver? Kimi Raikkonen, Mika Hakkinen, Fernando Alonso, and the Schumacher brothers are all there and they're all F1 people.
posted by divabat at 9:56 PM on August 7, 2005


Helen Hunt: totally recognizable.
Jean Claude van Damme...not so much :-))
(but one can imagine his source of motivation)
Patrick Swayze: totally recongizable
Mick Jagger...what did he do to make his lips grow latter???
posted by Goofyy at 10:04 PM on August 7, 2005


Helen Hunt: Totally recongizable.
Jean Claude Van Damme, not so much :-))
(But one can imagine his source of motivation!)

Patrick Swayze: Totally recognizable
Mick Jagger: How'd he make his lips grow, latter???
posted by Goofyy at 10:07 PM on August 7, 2005


hey commish, I had the same experience, scrolling further up the url to "eatliver.com" and not being able to find a link to the celebrities as kids page from there. I stumbled across the site on a link from hedonistica.com, a silly links/games/videos style blog that advertises heavily on TheSuperficial.com (see my yesterday post).
posted by jonson at 10:14 PM on August 7, 2005


Bjork: Everyone else is smiling.
Tom Cruse: What a weird looking kid.
posted by delmoi at 10:57 PM on August 7, 2005


I could have sworn that this was on MoFi or MeCha sometime in the last few days. I remember looking at it, and I have it bookmarked, but don't see it on either. hmm...
posted by dreamsign at 11:20 PM on August 7, 2005


Why oh why did they show a picture of the infant
Jennifer Aniston taken during potty training?
posted by PeterMcDermott at 11:43 PM on August 7, 2005


Glad I wasn't on DeNiro's playground. Prolly even shook his teachers down for lunch money.
posted by hal9k at 12:40 AM on August 8, 2005


Isn't Aryton Senna a famous Formula 1 driver?

Yep.

I'm at work so no time to Google and check – he died when his steering wheel snapped off and the shaft that holds it on went thru his helmet and into his brain. It happened at Imola and a couple of big wigs (eg. team owner) had to stand trial.
posted by uncanny hengeman at 12:53 AM on August 8, 2005


Janet Reno was a cute little boy.
posted by eyeballkid at 1:42 AM on August 8, 2005


Oh wait, that was Jean Reno.




But you can hardly blame me for making the mistake. That kid could grow up to be either.
posted by eyeballkid at 1:43 AM on August 8, 2005


This would have been better as a guessing game!

Heh.
posted by dgaicun at 1:58 AM on August 8, 2005


I've got an even better link: pictures of Bollywood stars when they were kids.

Look at little Shahrukh Khan, he's hardly changed. And I can hardly believe that's Abishek Bachhan!
posted by dgaicun at 2:12 AM on August 8, 2005


uncanny hengeman writes "Isn't Aryton Senna a famous Formula 1 driver?

"Yep.

"I'm at work so no time to Google and check – he died when his steering wheel snapped off and the shaft that holds it on went thru his helmet and into his brain. It happened at Imola and a couple of big wigs (eg. team owner) had to stand trial."


You really should check these things before posting, you know...

Whilst it's not 100% clear how Senna died, the above is most certainly not the truth. It's true that there was a puncture in Senna's helmet when he was recovered from his car after it left the Imola track at 186mph and crashed into the wall at Tamburello at 135mph, it was certainly not caused by the steering column. Theories range from a fragment of tyre or gravel to one of the narrow suspension struts that F1 cars sport. The most generally accepted theory though, formed after careful and close scrutiny of the television pictures of the tragedy, are that Senna's helmeted head hit the wall, causing the puncture, brain trauma and respiratory failure.

It is still not know why Senna's car left the track. The broken steering linkage discovered in the post-accident investigation most-likely occurred during the crash and was not the cause of it. A theory that Senna's supreme driving skills instinctively corrected for a brief slide caused by a momentary loss of downforce which left him effectively driving himself off the track when the downforce returned has often been mooted, but Senna's fans refuse to accept that notion. T hat Senna managed to retard the speed of the vehicle by 50mph in two seconds while on gravel implies that he was conscious until the point of impact, proving false another theory that maybe he blacked out an an inopportune time... Most likely it was that the cars tyres were running on reduced pressure after a prolonged period following the Safety Car at slower-than-ideal speeds and that traction was lost until the car was on the gravel and it was too late to correct it's trajectory.

It's true that Williams, the team for whom Senna drove and who designed and built the car in which he died, were charged with manslaughter (although Italian prosecutors initially wanted to charge them with murder - Williams argued that F1 drivers knew the risks and it was not possible to prove premeditation on the part of the team owners) but they were found innocent after a long trial...

Senna's death was a great loss for F1 and motor racing in general - he was a supreme driver - but whatever the cause and process of his death, it wasn't the spectacularly cinematic "impalement by steering column" that you suggest...
posted by benzo8 at 2:33 AM on August 8, 2005


[Ayrton Senna] died when his steering wheel snapped off and the shaft that holds it on went thru his helmet and into his brain. It happened at Imola and a couple of big wigs (eg. team owner) had to stand trial.

That's not true, actually. It wasn't confirmed what actually happened, but most signs suggest that he hit his head on a concrete wall where the car impacted at the turn when the crash occurred.

There's still a lot of speculation as to how the crash happened in the first place (debris on the track, etc. causing a loss of downforce on the car, and so on) but in the aftermath the rules were changed, chicanes were stuck in everywhere, and safety became a priority (a symptom of this attitude to safety being the farce that was the Indianapolis Grand Prix a few weeks ago).
posted by macdara at 2:40 AM on August 8, 2005


Aaagh benzo20 beat me to it!
posted by macdara at 2:41 AM on August 8, 2005


Bruce Willis used to be jonmc?
posted by CunningLinguist at 5:14 AM on August 8, 2005


Pam Anderson used to be pretty. Who knew?
posted by notsnot at 5:52 AM on August 8, 2005


Who knew Angelina Jolie used to be Janeane Garofalo?
posted by Emperor Yamamoto's Eggs at 6:06 AM on August 8, 2005


The 1905 MetaFilter would have us all discussing how the shape of their heads and faces corresponded to their later success...
posted by alasdair at 6:22 AM on August 8, 2005


Actually, in 1905 MetaFilter was preoccupied with an endless argument over how the 1904 election would have gone if Mark Hanna hadn't died early in the year. NewsFilter has always been with us.
posted by languagehat at 6:41 AM on August 8, 2005


Robot Johnny,

I found a blog that does do a mildly entertaining 'guess who' game. There are definitely some good ones, but the problem is that you have to click on the pictures to find out who it is, and a majority of the links go to old Yahoo News pictures that don't exist anymore.
posted by dgaicun at 7:48 AM on August 8, 2005


Here's another "Before They Were Famous" site (2 pages). What's interesting is that it has many of the same people as in this link, only the pictures are mostly teen instead of mostly preteen (the Clooney picture is the only repeat), so we get a developmental series. Demi Moore is weird, her preteen picture looks nothing like her teen picture looks nothing like her adult picture. Billie Corgan stands out as the only immaculate trans-gender in the teen group.
posted by dgaicun at 8:13 AM on August 8, 2005


Vladimir Putin?

Sing with me now, "One of these things...is not like the other...one of these things just doesn't belong!"
posted by mr.curmudgeon at 8:39 AM on August 8, 2005


Btw, Lil' Madonna is soooooo cute. The mole and gapped teeth are adorable! I want a little Maddona!
posted by mr.curmudgeon at 8:41 AM on August 8, 2005


CunningLinguist Bruce Willis used to be jonmc?

Bruce Willis used to have a full head of hair?
posted by PurplePorpoise at 8:57 AM on August 8, 2005


*runs into restroom to check hairline*
posted by jonmc at 10:18 AM on August 8, 2005


Here's another "Before They Were Famous" site (2 pages).

What's kind of silly about this one is that a lot of the celebrities pictured here were famous way before the "look at how young they were!" pictures were taken. Natalie Portman was younger than that in Beautiful Girls, Will Smith was younger on Fresh Prince... there are a few more, I think.
posted by timory at 11:12 AM on August 8, 2005


timory writes "What's kind of silly about this one is that a lot of the celebrities pictured here were famous way before the 'look at how young they were!' pictures were taken. Natalie Portman was younger than that in Beautiful Girls"

And younger still in Leon...
posted by benzo8 at 1:08 PM on August 8, 2005


Everyone I didn't recognize was a Formula 1 driver.
posted by shoos at 8:27 PM on August 8, 2005


there are a few more, I think.

Helen Hunt was on Ark II before her photo.
posted by shoos at 8:29 PM on August 8, 2005


Hasn't everyone had a little Madonna?
posted by horsewithnoname at 10:06 PM on August 8, 2005


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