Early Life
She was born Estelle Caro Eggleston on October 1, 1938 in Yazoo City, Mississippi, the only child of Estelle (née Caro) and Thomas Ellett Eggleston. Her great-grandfather was Henry Clay Tyler, an early settler from Boston and a jeweler who gave the Yazoo City courthouse cupola its clock.
When Stevens was four years old, her parents, she moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where the family lived at 3528 Carrington Road near Highland Street. Her father worked as an insurance salesman with offices in the Sterick Building, and her mother worked as a nurse. Young Estelle attended St. Anne's Catholic School on Highland Street and Sacred Heart School on Jefferson Avenue, finishing her last year of high school in 1955 at Memphis Evening School at Memphis Tech High School.
At the age of 16, she married electrician Noble Herman Stephens on December 1, 1954, probably in Memphis. They had one child (her only child), actor/producer Andrew Stevens. Although the couple divorced in 1957, both she and her son retained a variation of Noble's surname as their own professional surnames. While studying medicine at Memphis State College, she became interested in acting and modeling. While performing in a college production of Bus Stop, Stevens was discovered and offered a contract with 20th Century Fox.
Read more about this topic: Stella Stevens
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early and/or life:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“We have been told over and over about the importance of bonding to our children. Rarely do we hear about the skill of letting go, or, as one parent said, “that we raise our children to leave us.” Early childhood, as our kids gain skills and eagerly want some distance from us, is a time to build a kind of adult-child balance which permits both of us room.”
—Joan Sheingold Ditzion (20th century)
“Life on board a pleasure steamer violates every moral and physical condition of healthy life except fresh air.... It is a guzzling, lounging, gambling, dog’s life. The only alternative to excitement is irritability.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)