The “Hall of Fame” of famous stutterers is crowded with names such as Moses, Alessandro Manzoni, Joe Biden.
Stuttering does not have to be an obstacle. Today we dominate with modern speech therapy techniques and everyone has a secret weapon. As Churchill who began speeches with a “mmmm…” and held the cigar between his lips to take time before speaking. The King of England George VI (we remember his relationship with the speech therapist in the film The King’s Speech) after much practice managed to fluently make the speech on the radio in which he announced to the country the declaration of war on Germany and the entry of the United Kingdom in the conflict.
Few people in the world are as famous as Marilyn Monroe. But few know that little Norma Jean suffered from a stutter so pronounced that it almost prevented her from speaking as a child. Her unmistakable whispered voice was the trick to regaining the fluidity of speech. But a tense situation was enough for the problem to resurface. During the filming of Some like it hot (1959), his famous line “It’s me, sugar” required 47 takes. Even the actor Rowan Atkinson, interpreter of Mr. Bean, is a celebrity with a stuttering problem. In an interview with a Time journalist, who asked him «Has he ever overcome his stutter?», The actor replied: «He comes and goes. When I play a role, and not myself, the stuttering disappears. This may have pushed me to become an actor.”
Among rock stars, Noel Gallagher of Oasis had to undergo several years of speech therapy to overcome his stutter. Another very famous voice is that of Ed Sheeranauthor of Perfect. The singer could not get rid of his stutter, despite speech therapy. At 9 years old, he became passionate about Eminem’s rap, starting to sing his hits hours and hours a day and his stutter disappeared. «Be yourself and accept your oddities – advises the singer – Being strange is something wonderful. Don’t consider it a problem, move forward one step at a time.”
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