Robin Simone Givens is an actress, model, and director from the United States. She was born on November 27, 1964. She also went to Sarah Lawrence College and got a degree there.
Givens got her big break in 1986 when she was cast as Darlene Merriman on the ABC sitcom Head of the Class. She stayed on the show for all five years. Her troubled marriage to boxer Mike Tyson in 1988 and their nasty breakup got a lot of attention from the media. She later became a spokesperson for the National Domestic Violence Hotline for several years.
Table of Contents
Robin Givens’s Early Life
Robin Simone Givens was born to Reuben Givens and Ruth Roper (née Newby) on November 27, 1964, in New York City. Her parents split up when she was two years old, and her mother raised her and her sister, Stephanie, in Mount Vernon and New Rochelle, New York. She grew up in a Catholic family.
Her mother encouraged her and her brother to do creative things. Givens became interested in acting over time and went to New York City to take classes at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
Robin Givens went to New Rochelle Academy and got a diploma there. She then went to Sarah Lawrence College and earned her degree in 1984. She also went to Harvard Medical School for two years and studied there but did not finish her degree.
What Is Robin Givens’s Personal Life And Relationship?
Robin Givens met Mike Tyson in March 1986, and they married on February 7, 1988. After a miscarriage in May 1988, the marriage started to fall apart. In October that year, Givens asked for a divorce and said her husband had hurt her. On the other hand, Tyson said that she only wanted his money and not him. “Fire and Fear: The Inside Story of Mike Tyson,” Tyson’s biography from 1989, did say that he punched Givens.
On Valentine’s Day in 1989, Givens and Tyson got a divorce. Newspapers said Givens got more than $10 million in a divorce settlement, but she said that wasn’t true. When she broke up with Tyson, she got bad press, especially among African Americans. In one article, she was called the most hated woman in America.
Robins Givens’s second marriage to Svetozar Marinkovic, her tennis coach, lasted only from 1997 to 1998.
In 1993, she got a son named Michael through adoption. In 1999, she had a second son named William with her ex-boyfriend, Murphy Jensen.
Robin Givens has gotten in trouble with the law more than once. In January 2004, when she was driving her sister’s SUV, she seriously hurt a pedestrian named Maria Antonia Alcover, who was 89 years old. In June 2004, Alcover sued the two sisters in civil court for an amount that was not made public.
According to an article in Forbes from May 7, 2009, Givens was being sued by the Internal Revenue Service for unpaid federal income taxes, penalties, and interest that added up to $292,000.
Who Is Robin Givens’s Husband?
Mike Tyson, whose full name is Michael Gerald Tyson and whose nickname is “Iron Mike,” is an American boxer born on June 30, 1966, in Brooklyn, New York. At age 20, he became the youngest heavyweight champion in history.
When he was young, Tyson joined several street gangs. In 1978, he was sent to a reform school in upstate New York. At the reform school, social worker and boxing fan Bobby Stewart saw his potential and sent him to famous trainer Cus D’Amato, who became his legal guardian. As an amateur, Tyson had a record of 24–3, and he turned pro in 1985.
Mike Tyson’s Early Life
Tyson is known for his aggressive and scary boxing style and his controversial actions in and out of the ring. He was born in Fort Greene, New York City, on June 30, 1966. Purcell Tyson is Tyson’s biological father, but he thought Jimmy Kirkpatrick was his father.
When Mike Tyson was born, Kirkpatrick left the Tyson family. Mike grew up in a low-income family. When he was 10, his mother died, and Cus D’Amato, a boxing manager and trainer, took care of him.
Tyson lived in and around areas with a lot of crime, so he was caught many times doing minor offences. By the time he was 13, Tyson had been seen 38 times.
Bobby Stewart, a counsellor at a juvenile detention centre and a former boxer, saw how good he was at boxing. Tyson didn’t finish high school, but in 1989, Central State University gave him an honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters.
Why Did Mike Tyson and Robin Givens Divorce?
The world thought that “Iron Mike” Tyson and Robin Givens’ marriage was happy, but Givens soon said that Tyson was abusive and had mental health problems. During a joint interview with Barbara Walters on ABC’s 20/20, Givens said harsh things about the heavyweight boxing champion and called their marriage “torture, pure hell, worse than anything I could ever imagine.”
Robin Givens kept using ABC to talk about how abusive Mike was and how he had a “volatile temper,” while Tyson sat quietly next to his wife. “There were times when I thought I could handle it, but I’m afraid now,” she said. “I’m scared.”
In October 1988, just one month after this interview, Givens filed for divorce. The abuse by Givens was the reason for the divorce, and the judge gave Givens an order to stay away from her. Soon after this happened, Tyson told the media that Givens had tried to “steal” his things. Reports say that he also made fun of Givens’ mother, Ruth Roper.
After this, Robin Givens became well-known and faced criticism from Tyson’s fans and the media. Many people said that Givens was a gold digger and that she only married Tyson for his money.
In the same month, Givens sued Mike Tyson for $125 million. She said that Tyson’s comments and accusations were why people laughed at her and made her feel very bad. In February 1989, they were finally able to get a divorce.
So, this is a summary of what happened between Mike Tyson and his ex-wife, Robin Givens. Givens is now the mother of two children, William Givens Jensen and Michael Givens, and she is still working as an actress.