It's Hammer time. (via Deanne Fitzmaurice / The Chronicle)

Yearbook Photos of Your Fave Bay Area Celebs

24 November 2017

V. Alexandra de F. Szoenyi

We were all awkward teenagers once.

It's refreshing, and encouraging, to know that even the biggest celebrities were all once regular teenagers just trying to get through the complexities of young adult life. The Bay Area has always been home to some great talent; catch a glimpse of a few before they got famous, in this little jaunt into NorCal history.

Today, Tom Hanks is one of the most famous actors in the world, but in 1974, Thomas Jeffrey Hanks was just a shy teenager graduating from Skyline High School in Oakland. The Concord native went on to study theater at Chabot College in Hayward, and then transfer to CSU Sacramento.
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San Francisco native Danny Glover is another widely-recognized actor who was once a highschooler in the Bay Area. He attended George Washington High School in SF before going on to San Francisco State University and the Black Actors' Workshop of the A.C.T.
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You thought Alicia Silverstone went to school in L.A.? AS IF! Miss Clueless herself actually went to San Mateo High School, where she was a cheerleader. The actress was born in San Francisco and grew up in Hillsborough.
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Before creating shows like Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune, and creating a media empire, Merv Griffin was just a kid from the Bay Area. He attended San Mateo High School, later going on to San Mateo Junior College, and the University of San Francisco.
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Before he became the untouchable MC Hammer, Stanley Kirk Burrell was voted Most Talented at McClymonds High School in Oakland. A native of Oaktown, the future megastar also worked as a young teen for the Oakland A's.
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In the Bay Area, it will always be "Winona Forever." The actress, who is currently starring in the hit show, Stranger Things, and was the "it" girl of the '90s, was born in Petaluma. She was born Winona Laura Horowitz, and studied at Petaluma High School and San Francisco's A.C.T.
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Homestead High School is where Steven Paul Jobs attended school as a teen, before he changed the world with Apple. Jobs was born in San Francisco, but attended high school (graduating in 1972) and college (De Anza College, where he unveiled the Macintosh in 1984), in Cupertino. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak also attended Homestead.
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George Walton Lucas' teen years, during the 1960s in Modesto, were the inspiration for his movie American Graffiti. Lucas attended Thomas Downey High School and Modesto Junior College, before creating legendary film franchises Star Wars andIndiana Jones, among others.
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High school photos are often embarassing, but not when you're a future supermodel. Christy Turlington was just a girl from Walnut Creek before she made it onto magazine covers and designer catwalks. She attended Monte Vista High School in Danville before making her way to New York to continue her modeling career.
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