John Stamos (1963)

 early life

Stamos was born in Cypress, California. He is the oldest child and only son of Loretta , a former swimsuit model who was raised in England and Bill Stamos, a Greek immigrant and restaurateur from Paraguay. Stamos has two younger sisters, Jannen and Alaina, who are both teachers. His family's last name was originally Stamatopoulos (Σταματόπουλος) but his paternal grandparents shortened the name to Stamos after they moved to the United States from Greece. ('-poulos' is a common Greek suffix in surnames, meaning "son of"; 'Stamato-' is the root.) His maternal grandparents were originally from Ireland.

When Stamos was a child, he was told mistakenly by his family doctor that he had a hernia. He underwent surgery, but it turned out that there was no hernia present, but the embarrassing thing for Stamos is, the procedure left him with an odd-looking belly-button, which he showed on Late Night with Conan O'Brien after O'Brien pressured him to do so.

 early career

Stamos began his acting career with a role on the television show General Hospital as Blackie Parrish, for which he received a Daytime Emmy Award nomination in 1984. Then General Hospital casting director Gary Price noted that Stamos did not read for any particular parts. His stint on General Hospital got him noticed with daytime viewers, but by 1984 Stamos decided to move on when he auditioned for, and got the lead role, in a short-lived CBS sitcom called Dreams, in which he played an aspiring musician in a band of the same name.

Later on he played a role in the sitcom You Again? with Jack Klugman.

 personal life

In 1994, he met Rebecca Romijn at a Victoria's Secret fashion show, where she was modeling. Two months later, the pair began dating. On September 19, 1998, the couple married. They separated in April 2004, and divorced on March 1, 2005.