12 Famous People with Klinefelter Syndrome!!
Hardships come into everybody’s life. But those who don’t let it beat them down are the true champions.
Likewise, Klinefelter Syndrome is also one of the major hardships faced by many individuals around the world and it’s not just seen in ordinary people but also in some of the most famous and richest individuals around the world.
Did you know superstar Tom Cruise suffers from from Klinefelter’s syndrome?
Superstar Tom Cruise (Source: POPSUGAR)
Before delving deep let’s first understand what Klinefelter Syndrome is.
Well, Klinefelter Syndrome is a genetic disorder that occurs in males.
This chromosomal disorder causes a man to have an extra X chromosome, resulting in 47 XXY chromosomes in them.
Mostly, its symptoms are subtle, so the majority of the men don’t even realize that they have this disorder.
Whereas, in prominent cases, the men will have a small penis, less muscle, less facial and body hair, broader hips, and enlarged breasts.
Besides, they will have low sexual drive, infertility, and suffer from learning and speech disorders.
Now, let’s take a look at these 12 famous people who were born with Klinefelter Syndrome but did not let it hinder their success and made it to the top.
Quick Overview
| Famous People With Klinefelter Syndrome | Country |
| 1. George Washington | USA |
| 2. Lili Elbe | Denmark |
| 3. Veronique Renard | Netherlands |
| 4. Caroline Cossey | United Kingdom |
| 5. Caster Semenya | South Africa |
| 6. Tom Cruise | USA |
| 7. Jamie Lee Curtis | USA |
| 8. King Tutankhamun | Egypt |
| 9. Janet Mock | USA |
| 10. Lauren Foster | South Africa |
| 11. Adele Markham | USA |
| 12. Dr. Renée Richards | USA |
Famous People With Klinefelter Syndrome
The information and details has been compiled from trusted sites on the web including Wikipedia.
12. Dr. Renée Richards
One of the famous people with Klinefelter Syndrome is Dr. Renée Richards. Dr. Renée Richards is an American ophthalmologist, author, and former tennis player.
She is a transgender athlete who is the pioneer for the rights of transgender people in sports.
Before becoming the star of the professional women’s tennis court, Dr. Renée was a Jewish man born Richard Raskind.
He served as Yale tennis team’s captain and ranked 6th among the top 20 male players. Besides, Renée was a Navy officer and won all of its tennis championships.
Similarly, Renée is a renowned eye specialist in Manhattan Eye, Ear, and Throat Hospital.
Dr. Renée Richards (Source: Sports Illustrated)
Moreover, Renée underwent male-to-female sex surgery in 1976. That same year, she played La Jolla Championship and won it.
But, with her winning, she became a hot controversial topic in the national news headlines when a reporter wrote: “Woman’s Winner Was A Man!!”
Further, Renée tried to enter the U.S. Open Women Championship.
But, The United States Tennis Association banned her from the tournament, notifying her she must pass the genetic screening test as a woman.
So, she kept on fighting for her right to play tennis as a transgender woman.
In 1977, the New York Supreme Court ruled in her favor, and she got to participate in the US Open as a woman. She was 41 years old at that time.
Dr. Renée got inducted into the USTA Tennis Hall of Fame in 2000. In 2013, she became one of the first class inductee in the National Gay and Lesbian Sports Hall of Fame.
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11. Adele Markham
Adele Markham is a 31 years old normal girl who loves dresses and hopes to get married someday.
But for 28 years, Adele lived as a male “Matthew” until an amazing medical breakthrough shed light on her original sexual orientation.
She was identified with Klinefelter syndrome. Instead of having the normal male chromosomes (XY), she had XXY chromosomes. That revealed she was intersex.
Besides, she had not undergone male puberty during her teenage and showed no progress in her adulthood even after taking male hormones.
Adele Markham (Source: Daily Mail)
Moreover, she always loved playing with girls, wearing dresses, and was attracted to men. But, her family did not want her to act the way out of her gender.
So, she started living as a gay man at the age of 16.
But after discovering that she was intersex, Markham decided to go through gender surgery. She started taking estrogen.
Her characters and desires made some sense after knowing the truth. After battling for more than 20 years, she is now living as a female.
Adele Markham runs a project called “Silverfish” in London for homeless and addicted intersex people.
10. Lauren Foster
Lauren Foster is a South African transgender model, actress, and transgender rights, activist. Besides, Foster is the first transgender model to appear in the Vogue Magazines in the 1980s.
Foster was born and raised in Durham, South Africa as a boy. At the age of 4, Foster got diagnosed with Klinefelter’s Syndrome.
And she showed feminine behaviors. But, she was lucky enough to be born into a very supportive family. So, she started taking estrogen hormones at the age of 17.
And after one year, she took gender surgery.
Lauren Foster (Source: Jejune Magazine)
Later, Foster became a successful model and traveled from Paris to North America. But, her first breakthrough began when she covered in Vogue Mexico.
Later, a journalist made a fuss with big headlines: “Revealed: Vogue Model Was a Man!!”.
Despite the prejudice, Foster fought for her gender identity. Along the journey, she faced hatred and ignorance. But, eventually, her fight was worth it.
Later, she continued to shine in the glossy pages of the industry’s top magazines.
Lauren Foster is the first transgender woman to appear in “Real Housewives of Miami”. Her notable films include Circuit (2001), Trapped (2011), etc.
Currently, Foster lives in Miami. In December 2021, Foster was honored as a notable transgender activist in the city.
9. Janet Mock
Holding the 9th spot is an African-American descent writer, TV host, journalist, and transgender rights activist.
Janet Mock was born a boy in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1983. At the age of 18, she took male-to-female sex surgery in Thailand.
After five years, Mock earned Masters of Arts in Journalism from New York University.
Janet Mock (Source: NPR)
In 2011, Mock pursued her career as an editor in Marie Clarie and People’s Magazine website. Through the Marie Clarie magazine, she outed herself as a trans woman.
Besides, Mock has written on a variety of topics related to transgender women for Elle, Advocate, People, etc.
After five years, Mock went to host a social issue advocacy show, Take Part Live. Similarly, she also hosted her own cultural show, So POPular!, and guest-hosted Melissa Harris-Perry Show.
Moreover, she wrote, directed, and produced the popular LGBTQ series “Pose (2018)” and Netflix’s series “Hollywood (2020)”.
Janet Mock is the author of New York Time’s best-seller memoir “Redefining Realness“. She won a Primetime Emmy Award for the Oustanding Writing for the Series “Pose”.
8. King Tutankhamun
King Tutankhamun ruled ancient Egypt during the New Kingdom of Egyptian history.
After the death of his father, King Tut ruled over the throne at the age of 9. He died at the age of 19.
During his reign, King Tut played a significant role in reviving the worship of the Egyptian air god Amun.
Similarly, he moved the capital of Egypt from Amarna back to Thebes. Likewise, he also restored many places and temples that were destroyed in previous wars in Egypt.
King Tutankhamun (Source: iStock)
In 1922, British Egyptologist Howard Carter and his team excavated King Tut’s hidden tomb. Through the DNA test, it was proved that King Tut had Klinefelter’s Syndrome.
Besides, he had slim hips, pronounced breasts, a deformed left foot, and suffered from bone necrosis.
King Tutankhamun’s tomb is made of solid gold weighing about 110.4 kgs and his face is covered with a golden mask full of ancient Egypt decorated jewelries.
7. Jamie Lee Curtis
Jamie Lee Curtis is an American actress, author, blogger, and activist.
Throughout her career, Lee Curtis appeared in several independent blockbuster films. Besides, she has starred as a lead actress in 8 films which grossed more than $100 million.
Similarly, Jamie’s debut as Laurie Stroder in the 1978 hit horror film “Halloween” earned her the name of “scream queen.”
Jamie Lee Curtis (Source: Biography)
Her other successful movies include the Halloween film series, Trading Places (1983), True Lies (1994), Knives Out (2019).
Moreover, Jamie has written several children’s books, including New York Time’s best-seller, Today I Feel Silly, and Other Moods That Make My Day.
Further, the media rumors that Jamie was born intersex and had undergone gender surgery.
Jamie Lee Curtis has won 14 awards which includes 2 Golden Globe Awards for the Best Actress.
6. Tom Cruise
Tom Cruise is an A-list Hollywood actor and producer from New York City. Cruise is the second richest actor in the world, and his films have grossed more than $8 billion globally.
Some of his blockbuster films include Top Gun (1986), Collateral (2004), and Mission: Impossible- Fallout (2018).
Tom Cruise (Source: MensXP)
Throughout his acting career, Cruise has received three Golden Globe Awards, a British Academy Award and three Academy Award nominations.
Moreover, Cruise has dyslexia, which is one of the symptoms of Klinefelter Syndrome.
5. Caster Semenya
Caster Semenya is a 31-year-old middle-distance runner from South Africa. Similarly, she is a two-time Olympic Champion and three times World Champion in the women’s 800 meters race.
Semenya won her first World Championship in 2009.
Due to her terrific speed and physique-related suspicion, the World Athletics forced Semenya to take a hormone test. Later, it was revealed that Semenya was intersex.
In 2019, the World Athletics set new rules that intersex athletes must take hormones to lower their testosterone levels in order to run international women’s races from 400 m to 1 mile.
Caster Semenya (Source: Vogue)
But Semenya refused the proposal as it was discriminatory against her female rights.
Moreover, Semenya made an appeal to end the testosterone limits discrimination in the Court of Arbitration for Sport in 2019 and the European Supreme Court in 2020.
But unfortunately, the court did not do anything about it.
Further, she could not take part in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. In addition, her appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in 2021 has not been ruled yet.
4. Caroline Cossey
Caroline Cossey, popular as “Tula,” is a British transgender glamour model of the 70s, 80s, and 90s.
Tula was a boy by birth with the name Barry Kenneth Cossey. She was born with a rare type of Klinefelters, where she had XXXY chromosomes. So, Cossey looked more feminine during her teenage.
Besides, she started taking hormone pills at the age of 17. After three years, she took gender surgery and changed her name to Caroline.
Moreover, Tula debuted in the 1981 James Bond film, For Your Eyes Only.
Caroline Tula Cossey (Source: The Mirror)
Similarly, she has appeared in top magazines like Harper Bazaar, Australian Vogue, and The Sun. Whereas Tula also appeared in The Power Station’s “Some Like It Hot” and “Get It On” music videos.
But, she became a hot topic when a British tabloid, News of the World, outed her as a transgender woman in 1982.
Caroline Cossey became the first transgender woman to pose for the Playboy in 1991.
Further, Tula is the author of the memoir “My Story.”
In the book, she describes her transition journey, the struggles, and the unsuccessful battles she played with the European Court to get a gender identity.
3. Veronique Renard
Veronique Renard was diagnosed with Klinefelter Syndrome at the age of 17. After 18 months, Renard did gender surgery, making her the youngest one in the Netherlands to do so.
At the age of 35, Renard traveled to Dharamsala, India, to learn the Buddhist teachings of the Dalai Lama.
While there, she gave herself the name “Pantau,” which means to be helpful in Tibetan and a small peach in Mandarin.
Veronique Renard (Source: The Heroines of My Life)
While her stay in Dharamsala, Renard wrote several books based on the Tibetan freedom struggle, which includes Pantau in India and The Fire of Hell.
Besides, she is the author of the memoir “Pholomolo: No Man No Woman” where she portrays her struggles as a transgender woman.
Moreover, Renard is the co-founder of the Pantau Foundation, which raises funds for the welfare of the Tibetan refugees living in India.
2. Lili Elbe
Lili Elbe was born a male under the name Einar Magnus Andreas Wegener in 1882. As Wegener, she was a renowned Post-Impressionist landscape, still life, and portrait painter of the 1920s.
Her works were shown in Paris at the Salon d’ Automne and the Salon des Indépendants.
In 1904, Einar married the lesbian erotica painter Gerda Gottlieb. Later, the couple moved to Paris in 1912.
There Gerda made Einar her painting model “Lili.” After that, Einar started dressing as a woman regularly and wore stockings and heels.
Einar introduced herself as the woman “Lili” while attending various art and guest events.
Lili Elbe (Source: Wikipedia)
In the 1930s, she became the first person in the world to take gender surgery. She named herself Lili Elbe and then stopped painting and broke the marriage with Gerda.
Later, Elbe took testicle removing surgery. After several months, she implanted an ovary and removed the penis and scrotum.
Finally, in June 1931, Elbe transplanted a uterus and did vaginoplasty. But, her immune system rejected the transplanted uterus, and she died of cardiac arrest after three months.
Besides, the reports say that Lili already had undeveloped ovaries in her abdomen.
On a fictional account of Elbe’s life, David Ebershoff wrote the international best-seller “The Danish Girl” in 2000. Later, Tom Hooper transformed it into a blockbuster film in 2015.
1. George Washington
George Washington is the founding Father of America. He served as the chief commander of the colonial armies during American Revolution from 1775 to 1783.
Besides, Washington guided the Patriot troops to win the American Revolutionary War and made America a federal government. Later, he served as the first president of the US from 1789 to 1797.
George Washington (Source: Wikipedia)
Moreover, Washington had a rich and powerful wife, Martha Dandridge.
But, Washington had no biological children with Martha. They both raised Martha’s two children from her previous marriage and their grandchildren.
Further, it is rumored that Washington had Klinefelter syndrome, so he was sterile.
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