Bettye Jean visits young Gardner in foster care, bringing homemade candy he recognizes by her warm, familiar scent.

Freddie Triplett becomes Gardner's stepfather and begins terrorizing the family with drunken violence and his shotgun.

Freddie reports Bettye Jean for welfare fraud, sending her to prison and leaving Gardner without his mother.

Bettye Jean attempts to burn the house down with Freddie inside and is imprisoned again after the plan fails.

Uncle Henry, Gardner's most beloved paternal role model, drowns in a boating accident while Gardner is still a child.

Gardner enlists in the Navy after high school, leaving his mother and the Milwaukee ghetto behind.

Gardner travels to San Francisco to become the research assistant of pioneering heart surgeon Dr. Robert Ellis.

Gardner marries Sherry Dyson in a ceremony in Richmond, Virginia, after years of long-distance romance.

Gardner spots stockbroker Bob Bridges driving a red Ferrari in a hospital parking lot and resolves to enter the same profession.

Gardner is jailed overnight for unpaid parking tickets and cannot attend his scheduled Dean Witter interview.

Gardner arrives at a rescheduled Dean Witter interview in jeans and paint-speckled sneakers and is hired anyway.

Jackie hands Christopher over to Gardner at his rooming house, where children are forbidden, leaving them both homeless.

Gardner and Christopher find shelter at the homeless hostel run by Reverend Cecil Williams of Glide Memorial Church.

Gardner secures a small rental house with a rosebush in the yard, ending his family's period of homelessness.

Gardner founds his own brokerage firm, Gardner Rich and Company, in Chicago, built on a vision of conscious capitalism.

Chris Gardner's story begins in the Milwaukee ghetto, where his mother Bettye Jean suffers repeated imprisonments and his violent stepfather Freddie Triplett terrorizes the family. After losing his beloved Uncle Henry and enlisting in the Navy, Gardner makes his way to San Francisco, working as a medical research assistant before marrying Sherry Dyson. A chance parking-lot encounter with a stockbroker in a red Ferrari redirects his ambitions entirely, launching him into a new career with no experience and no safety net. A disastrous night with Jackie leads to his arrest and a legendary job interview at Dean Witter, after which he finds himself a homeless single father raising Christopher while working as a broker by day. Gardner's relentless drive eventually ends his homelessness and carries him all the way to founding his own firm, Gardner Rich and Company, in Chicago.

The headline events that define Chris Gardner's journey from Milwaukee to Wall Street.

Bettye Jean's father refuses to fund her college education after her mother dies, ending her academic ambitions.

Gardner stays with Uncle Archie and Aunt Clara during Bettye Jean's first imprisonment and discovers his love of reading.

Gardner wakes up to find Bettye Jean unconscious on the floor with a two-by-four near her bloodied head.

Ophelia returns from a detention center accompanied by a baby girl, DeShanna, whose father is left unexplained.

Gardner is bused to a white school in East Milwaukee and experiences racial prejudice from classmates firsthand.

Gardner is arrested for shoplifting after joining a gang and is corrected by Bettye Jean's look of deep disappointment.

Gardner and his friends break into a home-and-garden show, steal electronics, and Gardner attempts to sell them.

Gardner is held at knifepoint and sexually assaulted by one of the men he tried to sell stolen electronics to.

Gardner excels as a Navy medic at Camp Lejeune and earns the nickname Doc despite having no formal medical degree.

Gardner co-authors research papers and trains interns from Ivy League medical schools at Dr. Ellis's San Francisco lab.

Gardner decides to quit medical research after concluding that even top surgeons will earn very little under new healthcare changes.

Gardner begins a passionate affair with dental student Jackie, who becomes pregnant just nineteen days into the relationship.

Gardner travels to Louisiana to meet his estranged biological father Thomas Turner and gains closure on his fatherless past.

Gardner passes his required stockbroker licensing exam with a score of 88 percent.

Gardner and Christopher live in a motel frequented by prostitutes, who take pity on them and share their earnings.

Before Gardner could pursue happiness, he had to survive a childhood shaped by poverty, violence, and fracture. His mother Bettye Jean's own dreams were stolen by her family long before Gardner was born, and Gardner witnessed her suffering at Freddie's hands while navigating foster care, gang life, and a traumatic sexual assault as a teenager. His Navy years and medical apprenticeship under Dr. Ellis built real confidence, but a passionate affair with Jackie ended his marriage and left him starting over. Gardner found partial closure by meeting his estranged father Thomas Turner, then channeled everything into passing his stockbroker licensing exam. During the homeless period with young Christopher, they survived in a prostitute-frequented motel through unexpected community kindness before Gardner could finally begin rebuilding a stable life.

The formative struggles and quiet victories that built the man behind the dream.

Gardner makes a solemn vow at age eight that his future son will always know who his father is.

Uncle Henry plays Miles Davis's music at a party, transforming the entire room's mood and sparking Gardner's lifelong admiration.

Bettye Jean tells teenage Gardner watching college basketball that he could one day make a million dollars.

The family retrieves delusional Uncle Willie from the luxurious Palmer House Hotel, where Gardner glimpses a grand lifestyle.

Gardner embraces his dark-skinned identity and grows a full afro, inspired by the Black Power movement.

Gardner tracks down his rapist and knocks him unconscious by dropping a cinder block on his head.

Gardner falls in love at first sight with Sherry Dyson in a military surplus store and begins a long-distance relationship.

Gardner grows deeply dissatisfied with his orderly married life, finding it too rigid, and begins cheating on Sherry.

Christopher is born and Gardner bonds with him instantly, feeling he has known his son from a previous lifetime.

Gardner takes a sales representative job at Van Waters and Rogers, entering the world of sales at Jackie's insistence.

Bob Bridges offers to introduce Gardner to branch managers at several San Francisco brokerage firms after their parking lot exchange.

Gardner loses his only brokerage opening at E.F. Hutton when the manager who agreed to hire him is abruptly fired.

Gardner retreats to phone-only business at Dean Witter, using his non-identifiable voice as a shield against racist clients.

Gardner confronts racist Texas oil client J.R. face-to-face at Bear Stearns and converts him into a two-hundred-thousand-dollar-a-year account.

Gardner meets Nelson Mandela, who greets him with the words welcome home son, healing his lifelong wound of fatherlessness.

Gardner's inner life was built from a series of charged moments that gave him purpose, resilience, and direction. From his childhood vow to be a present father and his mother's declaration that he could be a millionaire, to his first encounter with Miles Davis's music and a glimpse of luxury at the Palmer House Hotel, Gardner was always collecting fuel for the future. His teenage embrace of Black identity and his brutal act of revenge against his rapist reveal a young man hardening into someone who refuses to be a victim. The turning points of his adult life — a disastrous marriage, the birth of his son, a sales job that went nowhere, and a string of brokerage rejections — all redirected him toward the broker he would become. His patient, phone-based reinvention at Dean Witter and his confrontation with racist client J.R. at Bear Stearns showed his ability to turn adversity into leverage, and a meeting with Nelson Mandela finally healed the deepest wound of his life.

The key decisions, discoveries, and emotional shifts that forged Gardner's identity and drive.