All the more impressive that he turned out the way he did.

"Vonnegut definitely had survived a lot. His once wealthy family was impoverished by the Great Depression, causing grim strains in his parents' marriage. His mother committed suicide. His beloved sister died of breast cancer, a day after her husband was killed in a train accident. But the defining horror of Vonnegut's life was his wartime experience and surviving the Dresden bombing, only to be sent into the ruins as prison labour in order to collect and burn the corpses."

From: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/dec/03/kurt-vonnegut-...

Not exactly a life made in a bed of roses, to put it mildly. I realize he's not perfect, but then again, neither am I and probably neither are you, shooting your arrows from behind comfy anonymity.

Irrelevant even if true, which it isn’t, so you’re both mean-spirited and wrong. Does this kind of comment soothe some wound?

Your characterization doesn’t make any sense anyway. A nepo baby how? He wasn’t in the construction business, working a cushy job in dad’s company. He sold cars and did PR work while trying to write. His family’s past seems to have conferred him no advantage whatsoever.

"Comes from money" (often, but not always, coupled with family having an "in" with people in whatever artistic business their kid goes on to succeed in) is the secret to the success of an enormous proportion of artists in general.

Taylor Swift works hard and has talent and all, but also her parents could afford both the money and time required to get her to music and acting lessons in NYC, get her to auditions in Nashville to try to get a foot in the door, et c. They were a rich enough family that they "summered" in an expensive shoreline New Jersey zip code and her dad had a Christmas tree farm as a hobby. One wonders how many might-have-beens as good as her, or better, are instead waiting tables at Waffle House because they grew up in a mobile home and their parents couldn't even afford once-a-week piano lessons from the old lady who plays for services at the local Methodist church. I don't mean to knock her—it's not like it's her fault she had advantages. Parents with money are a key ingredient in tons of stories like hers, is all, and she's a good example of that in action.

Tons of successful actors are children of parents who were in the business. Actors themselves, directors, producers. Money, connections, and maybe existing name recognition go a long way. You can see the extreme (and extremely forced) version of this pretty often, with famous and/or rich parents playing key, credited roles in financing and putting together lead role debut vehicles for their actor kids.