Famous TCKs

Barack Obama

The world's most famous TCK right now, and maybe that's a good sign (though few voters recognize the term).

Mohsin Hamid, novelist:

"So where does Hamid belong? Does he feel a Pakistani Muslim, or an American?

"I'm fully neither," he said, adding that he believed it was unwarranted to expect individuals to sign up for allegiance to the nation-state.

"What I feel like depends on the context you put me in," he said. "In the Pakistani context, my attitudes toward religion, to the state, to gender relations are perceptibly American. That makes me American." Yet when he is in the United States, he can feel quite Pakistani, he said."

International Herald Tribune

Mervyn Peake, author and illustrator

Mike Volpi, CEO of Joost

Michel Gondry - film director

Santiago Cabrera - actor, Hero

Dominique de Villepin, former Prime Minister of France

Julie Christie, actress - "Julie's father ran a tea plantation in India, where she grew up."

John Kerry, former US presidential candidate - Attended boarding school in Switzerland while his father was a US diplomat in Germany.

Teresa Heinz - Kerry's wife, born in Mozambique.

Elizabeth Edwards - wife of John Edwards, US vice-presidential candidate - "Edwards is the daughter of a Navy pilot and lived in a dozen places by the time she was 18. 'There is no better experience' in preparing someone for the madness of a presidential campaign, she says." New York Times, July 17, 2004

Katharine Gun, whistle-blower:

"Her decision to follow her conscience sounds almost unthinking - I didn't want to step back and think, 'But, hey, what happens if I do this, and then this happens and then that happens?'" she says. But she has clearly thought in detail about what made her that way... "One of the things the research says is that third-culture kids tend to be extremely empathetic, and because they've usually lived in at least one other foreign country, they somehow feel a global alliance... " Guardian

Scott Foley, actor "Foley relocated often during his childhood due to his father's career in international banking. He lived all over the world, including Sydney, Australia, and Tokyo, Japan."

Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist - born in Kenya

Joss Whedon, screenwriter and creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer - partly schooled in the UK

Kathleen Turner, actor - diplomatic "brat"

Hugo Weaving, actor - born in Nigeria, has lived in Australia, South Africa, England.

John Rhys-Davies, actor - "Rhys-Davies spent his formative years in Wales and East Africa, returning to the UK when he was nine."

Viggo Mortensen, actor: "I remember coming to the U.S. and not only having to learn the accent but the slang," Mortensen says, adding that being forced to adapt quickly helped him later on. "Out of habit you assume that you have something in common with people no matter how different they seem." Washington Post

Cordwainer Smith - A science fiction writer who spent many of his formative years in China and was bilingual in Chinese and English. I suspect that this is the reason for the unusual, even poetic, style of his writing. (His books at Amazon UK / US.)