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Bodily-Kinesthetic Celebrity Profiles

This article contains a short list of famous and historical figures who had highly developed physical skills depite a disability.

Bodily-Kinesthetic Celebrity Profiles

Here's a list of artists, atheletes, and actors whose physical intelligence propelled them into the limelight. They also happened to live with a disability. Their unique combination of intelligences -- strengths as well as weaknesses -- made them such successful people.

Auguste Rodin
French sculptor. His most famous work is The Thinker. He had a learning disability.

Admiral Peary
American arctic explorer and naval officer. He had a communicative disorder.

Vaslav Nijinsky
Russian ballet dancer and choreographer. He was mentally ill.

Tom Cruise
Hollywood super-star. He's severly dyslexic, but he's able to memorize lines.

Jim Abbott
American baseball player (pitcher). He was born without a right hand.

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Marlee Matlin
Film and stage actress. She won the Academy Award for her role in Children of a Lesser God. She is hearing impaired.

What do your kids think?
Ask your kids if they can think of any famous people who have high bodily/kinesthetic intelligence. Start them off with a few familiar names:

  • Jim Carrey
  • Mia Hamm
  • Gabrielle Reece
  • Serena and Venus Williams
  • Michael Jordan
  • Jon Moseley
  • Tiger Woods

    Brought to you by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD)

    Source: Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom by Thomas Armstrong (ASCD 1994)

    Linguistic Logical-Mathematical Intrapersonal Interpersonal
    Bodily-Kinesthetic Musical Naturalistic Spatial

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