Chris Gardner: The homeless man who became a multi-millionaire investor

When Chris Gardner and his young son were sleeping rough on the floor of a public toilet, he could never have dreamt that his life story would be turned into a hit Hollywood movie.

It was back in the early 1980s that Mr Gardner, then aged 27, and his toddler son were homeless for a year in San Francisco.

Enrolled on a low-paid trainee scheme at a stock brokerage, he didn’t have enough money to raise the deposit to rent an apartment.

So Mr Gardner, who was estranged from his partner, and Chris Jr would instead sleep wherever they could.

In addition to the toilet at a railway station, they’d bed down in parks, at a church shelter, or under his desk at work after everyone else had gone home.

They ate in soup kitchens, and what little money he had was spent on putting his son in day nursery so he could go to work.

Despite this adversity, Mr Gardner thrived in his job. A natural at selling stocks and shares, at the end of his training period his firm, Dean Witter Reynolds (DWR), made him a full employee.

Finally able to rent a home for himself and his son, his career then rapidly ascended into the stratosphere, and in 1987 he opened his own investment firm, Gardner Rich.