8 Stars You Didn’t Know Were From the Bay Area

Way before making people laugh during Saturday Night Live’s trouble-ensuing skits, comedian/actor Will Forte grew up in Lafayette in the East Bay Area. Even as a kid, Forte apparently tried to get laughs as a troublemaking youngster, as he explained in a 2011 interview in which he discussed the various pranks he’d pull as a teen at the local Sun Valley Mall. The comedian lives in L.A. now but never has a cruel thing to say about where he comes from.

BuzzFeed and The Huffington Post co-founder Jonah Peretti was born and raised in Oakland. Peretti spent most of his childhood going back and forth between living with his mom, a schoolteacher, and his dad, a criminal justice lawyer and painter. Now 44, Peretti lives in Los Angeles with his wife and twins.

Though his time there was brief, The Doors lead singer is still often claimed by the Bay Area. He lived in Alameda for a short time, at 1717 Alameda Avenue, with his family. Jim Morrison’s father was a military man who worked at the local Alameda Naval Air Station. Between 1956 and 1958, Morrison was playing pranks on his Alameda High School teachers, reading books like On the Road, and cutting up snippets of magazines to create a string of animation. Morrison didn’t get a chance to graduate high school before his family relocated to Virginia.

Diamond hails from San Jose, living there as a kid while his mother worked at Pacific Bell (now AT&T). Born in 1977, Dustin Diamond rose to fame as a young kid, from his time as Screech on the Saved By the Bell TV show. In recent years, however, Diamond has been in and out of jail on charges such as disorderly conduct, concealed weapons charges, and violating probation.

Although Robert Frost was born in San Francisco, England initially published the American poet for the first part of his career. His father was also a writer—William Prescott Frost Jr.—who edited the San Francisco Evening Bulletin newspaper. He was born in 1874 and moved to Massachusetts at the age of nine, which heavily inspired his literary work of rural New England lands.

The name may not sound familiar, but Charles Martinet’s voice certainly will. He was the original voice of Mario from Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros. video games. The voice actor was born in San Jose and lives there now. Mario isn’t the only character Martinet voices either. Working with the gaming franchise since 1990, Charles Martinet has also voiced fellow Super Mario characters Luigi, Baby Mario, Wario, Baby Luigi, Waluigi, and Toadsworth.

Nicole was born and lived with her biological parents in Berkeley until she was three years old. When her parents, Peter Escovedo and Karen Moss, were unable to support their daughter financially, Nicole moved out of Berkeley after being adopted by soul music singer Lionel Richie.

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson most likely felt quite at home while filming San Francisco-based film San Andreas. The actor was born a half-hour away in Hayward. Regarded as one of the top professional wrestlers in history, Johnson first made a name for himself in the wrestling ring many years before his debut on the big screen.