33 Shocking Confessions And Heartbreaking Revelations From Celebrity Memoirs

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In her memoir, Master of Me, Keke Palmer wrote about being sexually assaulted by her cousin. "I couldn't label it then but I came to realize that what was being done to me was sex play, immature sex play," she wrote. "As an adult now I realize my cousin was only regurgitating the things she'd seen. We were children that had seen too much and were trying to live out the things we saw without any concept of what they meant."
In a separate interview with People, she reflected on the experience, saying, 'People don't really think about child-on-child molestation, but it's something that exists. I felt weird and violated, but I didn't really know how to place it. I just knew I had all these weird feelings and thoughts, and I felt a little bit out of control and overwhelmed.'
In her memoir, Over the Influence, JoJo shared about being sexualized as a teenager in the music industry, and opened up about being sexually assaulted by a producer. "I was propositioned more than once by people I was working with. And while I loved knowing I was desired, I didn't want it to go farther than that," she wrote. She recalled being black-out drunk at Katy Perry's New Year's Eve party before waking up naked and alone in a hotel bathroom. After finding a used condom in the trashcan she was in 'hysterics,' and the man "sounded so surprised as he told me that I was essentially 'begging him for it.'"
It was also around this time that JoJo began self-medicating with Adderall and alcohol.
In her memoir, Bits and Pieces: My Mother, My Brother, and Me, Whoopi Goldberg wrote about her experience with drug addiction during the '80s. At first, she thought she "could handle the cocaine thing" because of her previous drug use. Shortly after, she "fell into the deep well" with cocaine and was a "very high-functioning addict."
She wrote that her wake-up call was the time she accidentally scared a housekeeper, who found Whoopi on the floor of a hotel closet with cocaine all over her face. 'I was letting something else run my life and take me over,' she wrote.
In his memoir, The House of Hidden Meanings, RuPaul shares that when he was still a minor, he had a relationship with a 36-year-old man named Andrew, a counselor at a gay center. He wrote that one day after a session, Andrew asked Ru to kiss him, which ended up being Ru's first "real kiss." He also wrote that Andrew eventually said they had to wait until Ru was 18 to have sex.
In her memoir, Rebel Rising, Rebel Wilson opened up about Sacha Baron Cohen's alleged inappropriate on-set behavior and sexual harassment.
While on the set of The Brothers Grimsby, Rebel claimed that Sacha asked her to film naked, but she doesn't do nudity. She added, 'SBC summons me via a production assistant saying that I'm needed to film an additional scene. 'Okay, well, we're gonna film this extra scene,' SBC says. Then he pulls his pants down ... SBC says very matter-of-factly: 'Okay, now I want you to stick your finger up my ass.' And I'm like, 'What?? ... No!!' ...'She continued, 'I was now scared. I wanted to get out of there, so I finally compromised: I slapped him on the ass and improvised a few lines as the character.'After the allegation became public, Sacha's rep released a statement saying, "While we appreciate the importance of speaking out, these demonstrably false claims are directly contradicted by extensive detailed evidence, including contemporaneous documents, film footage and eyewitness accounts from those present before, during and after the production of The Brothers Grimsby.'
In his memoir, From Under the Truck, Josh Brolin recalled the time while filming No Country for Old Men when he learned his son had gone missing. His son Trevor, who was about 18 at the time, had been out drinking with some friends but didn't come home. Coincidentally, two unidentified burn victims had been brought to a local hospital. "I started to slip into visions of what it was to have a son who'd pass. This can't be," he wrote. He added that he felt like he had "no control" over his body and began calling all the hospitals in the area.
He ended up locating Trevor at the final hospital he called. He was "fine" and recovering from alcohol poisoning.
In her posthumous memoir, From Here to the Great Unknown, Lisa Marie Presley claimed that she was molested by her mother's then-boyfriend, Michael Edwards. "I woke up to find him on his knees next to my bed, running his finger up my leg under the sheets, and if I moved, he stopped — so I moved," she recalled. Lisa Marie was 10 years old at the time. She explained that she told her mother and Edwards apologized the next day saying he was trying to "teach" her.
Lisa Marie wrote that the sexual abuse continued. She wrote, "Eventually, it became that he would touch me and spank me, telling me not to look — 'Don't look at me,' he'd say, 'Don't turn your head.' I assume he was jerking off."Priscilla Presley and Michael Edwards dated for about six years and Lisa Marie described him as "an actor and a model, a dramatic guy with a horrible temper."In a statement to Us Weekly, Edwards denies any sexual abuse claims made by Lisa Marie. "I never molested Lisa Marie and am shocked at the suggestion that I did," he said.
In her memoir, Cher: Part One, Cher opened up about the suicidal thoughts she had during her marriage to Sonny Bono. She wrote that she felt trapped in a "loveless marriage" and considered ending her life because of it. "I stepped barefoot onto the balcony of our suite and stared down. I was dizzy with loneliness. I saw how easy it would be to step over the edge and simply disappear," she wrote. "For a few crazy minutes I couldn't imagine any other option."
Cher added that she'd been at this place about "five or six times," but each time she thought about her child, family, and fans. She worried that the "people who look up to me" might think suicide was "a viable solution" and she didn't want that. "Then one morning everything changed," she wrote. "That night between shows I went out on the balcony again and this time I thought, I don't have to jump off, I can just leave him."
In his memoir, Sonny Boy, Al Pacino opened up about his struggle with sobriety as he rose to fame. He wrote that fame was "isolating me and affecting me deeply," and because of it, he turned to drugs and alcohol. "I thought I was fine. I didn't drink when I ­worked —​­ that was my big thing. Work was always first. It was what gave me identity and solace, made me feel I was closer to who I am," he wrote. "But God, drinking was a way of life for me."
In her memoir, Dinner For Vampires, Bethany Joy Lenz opened up about the emotional and verbal abuse she says she faced from her ex-husband and his family. "My husband's father had encouraged his three sons from a young age to take out their aggression against women on the drywall and furniture, and he set the example himself. 'Right in front of the woman, if needed,' Les [her father-in-law] would coach, 'so she can see how passionate you are about her and see how controlled you are to not harm her in spite of the fact that she makes you so angry.' And boy, did I make my husband angry. Everything I did, said, thought — my very existence, it seemed."
She wrote about how she tried to make their marriage work, even saying she attended therapy and set boundaries for them. She wrote, "'Start with something simple,' [Joy's therapist] advised. 'Violence, for example. Physical violence around you is not acceptable. Ever.' After that session, I told him this: 'If you throw something across the room again, I'm going to immediately remove myself and Rosie from that situation and we can try talking again the next day.'" When she told her husband this, he responded, saying, "I don't agree to that." Michael Galeotti, Lenz's former father-in-law, has refuted these allegations. Michael Jr., Lenz's ex-husband, has said he does not know what to make of the memoir and the claims made in it, but he does not want to cause any problems for their daughter.
In her memoir, Only Say Good Things: Surviving Playboy and Finding Myself, Crystal Hefner wrote about Hugh Hefner's distaste when she gained weight. "I quickly gained a few pounds without realizing it, like a first-year student putting on the 'freshman fifteen,'" she wrote, explaining her adjustment to the Playboy Mansion and having all the best foods within reach. She added that at 134 pounds, she didn't even notice the weight gain, "but Hef certainly did. One night when the twins and I were undressing for him, he gave my body a critical look and raised his eyebrows. 'Looks like somebody needs to tone up,' he said lightly, but with a warning note in his voice. He gave my hips a light tap, to call my attention to the offending area."
"I dropped those offending extra pounds fast," she wrote adding that she hit the gym immediately and limited her food intake.
In her memoir, Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed to Get Old, Brooke Shields shared that a doctor performed a "bonus" labia rejuvenation without her consent. ''After two kids, everything is looser,' he said. He acted as if he'd done me a favor and that I should, in fact, be grateful. There was a real 'I threw this in for free, little lady' vibe to his delivery. But I had never asked to be 'tightened' or 'rejuvenated' (translation: given a younger vagina). It was not something I wanted. I felt numb," she wrote.
In his memoir, Reality Check: Making the Best of The Situation, Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino opened up about his experience with drug addiction while filming Jersey Shore. He wrote that during Season 3, he smuggled and consumed 500 pills thanks to a trick he called "the old diet pill switcheroo." In Season 4, he smuggled 125 Roxicets with him to Italy, by pouring the pills into Altoid containers and stuffed them in his shoes. He explained that he removed the shoe's soles "and cut out enough room in the heel to place two Altoids tins in each shoe. I then replaced the insole and packed the kicks in a large suitcase with 20 other pairs."
During Season 4, he slammed his head into a wall and ended up in a neck brace. He wrote that he was going through an involuntary withdrawal after doing too much cocaine during an orgy. "I was in a horrible mental space when Ronnie [Ortiz-Magro] decided it was time to address his issues with me," he wrote. "I hit a wall, literally and figuratively ... to show Ronnie how ready I was to throw down."
In her memoir, The Girl With the Lower Back Tattoo, Amy Schumer opened up about her past abusive romantic relationship with a man she was sure was "going to kill" her. She wrote about how he "pushed me onto the hood of a parked car" and threatened her with a kitchen knife. "And that's when I was sure he was going to kill me," she wrote. After leaving their apartment, she said, "it was just like American Psycho, him chasing me and gaining on me at every turn."
"I'm telling this story because I'm a strong-ass woman," she added, "not someone most people picture when they think 'abused woman.' But it can happen to anyone…I found my way out and will never be back there again. I got out. Get out."
In her memoir, Tell Me Everything, Minka Kelly recalled the toxic relationship she had with her high school boyfriend, "Rudy." At one point, he wanted to film a sex tape and she agreed, though when watching it back days later she "hardly even remembered making the tape" in the first place.
She added, 'I'd become such a master at leaving my body when things were uncomfortable.' When Minka began gaining fame for her Friday Night Lights role, Rudy allegedly tried to sell the video to the tabloids. Minka had to pay $50,000 to buy it back.
In his memoir, If You Would Have Told Me, John Stamos recalled the moment he heard that his close friend and Full House costar, Bob Saget, had died. He explained that he'd seen reports but didn't believe them so he decided to text Bob. When Bob's wife Kelly Rizzo didn't answer at first either, he became worried. He wrote, "When I switch callers over to Kelly, all I hear is a wailing scream. I hit the ground in the parking lot and my knees slam down on the asphalt. 'Nooooooooooooooooooooo.'"
"My son is still sound asleep in the backseat of my car. I pull myself together to drive home and start making calls," he added. "First to Caitlin [McHugh Stamos, John's wife], she's in disbelief. She calls her parents to come watch Billy. Then to Dave [Coulier]. 'Dave, Bob Saget is dead.' ... I call Lori [Loughlin], who's on the eighth hole of Lake View Country Club golfing with her husband [Mossimo Giannulli]. 'Bob is dead, Lori.' She tells me later she dropped to her knees like me. Billy wakes up. 'Daddy?' I love you, son. ... I'm still not ready to accept that he's gone. Not sure I ever will be."
In her memoir, Leslie F*cking Jones, Leslie Jones opened up about her trauma from being sexually abused as a toddler. "It was one of my babysitters who messed with me," she wrote. "Man, I wish I could go back and fight that guy — that little girl couldn't protect herself." She added that in looking back at photos of herself, she can see where her smile began fading. She's unsure if either of her late parents knew about the abuse.
In her memoir, Hello Molly!, Molly Shannon told the gut-wrenching story of the car accident that killed her mother, cousin, and younger sister.
She was only four years old when the crash happened. Molly, her sister Mary, and her father, who drove the car then, were the only survivors. "The car was mangled badly on impact," she wrote. "A man passing the scene stopped. My mother was lying on the ground beside our car and she asked him, 'Where are my girls?... She wanted to gather her three little girls and she couldn't. Her heart must have broken in that moment. And those were her final words...My baby sister, Katie, and cousin Fran were killed instantly. Since Mary and I were in the very back of the station wagon, we just had a concussion and a broken arm, respectively. Katie was buried in the wreckage."
In her memoir, Finding Me, Viola Davis shared her experience growing up in extreme poverty in Central Falls, Rhode Island. She explained, 'We were 'po.' That's a level lower than poor."
She added that food stamps were never enough to feed her family and that none of the toilets in their home worked — she became "very skilled at filling up a bucket and pouring it into the toilet to flush it." She said they would also go "unwashed" and could never enter their kitchen because "the rats had taken over." The apartment building she lived in had even caught fire several times.
In his memoir, Pageboy, Elliot Page recounted the time at a party where a famous actor said he'd "fuck [Elliot] to make [him] realize [he wasn't] gay."
The actor continued to tell Elliot, "You aren't gay. That doesn't exist. You are just afraid of men.''I've had some version of that happen many times throughout my life," Elliot said in an interview with People. "A lot of queer and trans people deal with it incessantly. These moments that we often like don't talk about or we're supposed to just brush off, when actually it's very awful. I put that story in the book because it's about highlighting the reality, the shit we deal with and what gets sent to us constantly, particularly in environments that are predominantly cis and heterosexual. How we navigate that world where you either have more extreme, overt moments like that. Or you have the more, like, subtle jokes. [In Hollywood] these are very powerful people. They're the ones choosing what stories are being told and creating content for people to see all around the world."
In her memoir, I'm Glad My Mom Died, Jennette McCurdy claimed that when her series Sam and Cat got canceled she was offered $300,000 as a 'thank you gift' as long as she never spoke publicly about her experience at Nickelodeon.
She says she turned down the "hush money" but admitted to second-guessing her decision. She wrote, 'Nickelodeon is offering me three hundred thousand dollars in hush money to not talk publicly about my experience on the show? ... This is a network with shows made for children. Shouldn't they have some sort of moral compass? Shouldn't they at least try to report to some sort of ethical standard?'Nickelodeon has not commented on these allegations.
In his book, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, Matthew Perry shared that his relationship with alcohol began when he was just a teenager. "I had never been happier than in that moment," he wrote about the first time he drank.
He also shared that his substance abuse began after he hurt his neck in a jet-ski accident while filming Fools Rush In. An on-set doctor gave him Vicodin to relieve his pain. "As the pill kicked in, something clicked in me," he wrote. "And it's been that click that I've been chasing the rest of my life."
In his book Will, Will Smith shared that because of his method-acting for Six Degrees of Separation, he actually fell in love with his costar Stockard Channing. At the time, he had just welcomed a new baby with his then-wife, Sheree Zampino.
He wrote, "Sheree and I were in the first few months of our marriage with a brand-new baby, and for Sheree, I can imagine that this experience was unsettling to say the least. She'd married a guy named Will Smith and now she was living with a guy named Paul Poitier. And to make matters worse, during shooting I fell in love with Stockard Channing."He also explained that his marriage to Sheree was off to a "rocky start" because he found himself "desperately yearning to see and speak" to Stockard. He added, "I was like, 'Oh no! What have I done?' That was my last experience with method acting, where you're reprogramming your mind. You're actually playing around with your psychology. You teach yourself to like things and to dislike things. It is a really dangerous place when you get good at it. But once I had that experience, I was like, 'No more method acting.' For Six Degrees, I wanted to perform well so badly that I was spending six and seven and eight days in character before shooting, and you have to be careful with that."
In his book, Spare, Prince Harry revealed that for years he had trouble grieving his mother Princess Diana's death and even believed that she'd faked the car crash and escaped.
'Her life's been miserable, she's been hounded, harassed, lied about, lied to. So she's staged an accident as a diversion and run away,' he wrote. Even after four years he still hoped that she'd return. Years later, when he finally came to terms with her passing, he asked a driver to replicate the route that Diana took that led to the crash. The drive didn't give him the closure he wanted and he called it 'a very bad idea.''We zipped ahead, went over the lip at the tunnel's entrance, the bump that supposedly sent Mummy's Mercedes veering off course. But the lip was nothing. We barely felt it."
In her memoir, unSweetined, Jodie Sweetin recalled dealing with her drug and alcohol addiction as a teenager. She revealed that she was "high as a kite" after snorting meth in a bathroom stall during the 2004 premiere of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen's movie New York Minute.
She wrote, "I was pulling off the deceit. It was hard for people to believe I was doing that much drugs. I look at photos from that event, and I didn't even look strung out!"She also said in 1996 she had gotten so drunk at Candace Cameron Bure's wedding that she vomited and had to be carried out. She added, "I probably had two bottles of wine, and I was only 14. That first drink gave me the self-confidence I had been searching for my whole life. But that set the pattern of the kind of drinking that I would do."
In his book, Beyond the Wand: The Magic and Mayhem of Growing Up a Wizard, Tom Felton recounted the time his team held an intervention and suggested he go to rehab for his alcohol abuse. Then, while he was there he "escaped" less than 24 hours after checking in.
He told the story adding that he met "three kings" who helped him out that night. One, being a gas station attendant who offered Tom water and $20. Two, an Uber driver who brought him back to Hollywood. And three, the bartender at his usual bar who gave Tom a place to stay and a shoulder to cry on. 'All of a sudden, the frustration burst out of me,' he wrote. 'I was, I realize now, completely sober for the first time in ages and I had an overwhelming sense of clarity and anger. I started screaming at God, at the sky, at everyone and no one, full of fury for what had happened to me, for the situation in which I found myself. I yelled, full-lung, at the sky and the ocean. I yelled until I'd let it all out, and I couldn't yell anymore.'Tom also shared heartbreaking words his lawyer told him. 'My lawyer, whom I'd barely ever met face to face, spoke with quiet honesty,' he wrote. ''Tom,' he said, 'I don't know you very well, but you seem like a nice guy. All I want to tell you is that this is the seventeenth intervention I've been to in my career. Eleven of them are now dead. Don't be the twelfth.''
In her second book, You Got Anything Stronger?, Gabrielle Union shared the heartbreak she felt when she found out her partner Dwyane Wade was having a child with someone else, during the time she was dealing with her own fertility struggles.
She shared that she'd had "eight or nine" miscarriages due to her adenomyosis. "To say I was devastated is to pick a word on a low shelf for convenience, the experience of Dwyane having a baby so easily while I was unable to, left my soul not just broken into pieces, but shattered into fine dust scattering in the wind," she wrote.She and Dwyane welcomed their child Kaavia in 2018 via surrogate.
In her first memoir, Little Girl Lost, Drew Barrymore revealed that the first time she'd ever tried smoking weed was when she was only 10 years old.
She said, "When I was ten and a half I was sitting in the back seat of a car driven by a friend's mother. She started smoking pot. I'd wanted to try marijuana for a long time, but I was afraid that if I asked, she'd say, 'No way, Drew. You're too young.' However, she offered me some and I said, 'Sure, I'll try it.'"
In her book, Mean Baby, Selma Blair wrote that she struggled with alcohol addiction for years and revealed that the first time she got "very drunk" was at a Passover celebration when she was only seven years old. "When I drank, I didn't know what drama I would find, but I knew it was drama that I would feel," she said. "I needed it. I looked forward to it. It was always my way out."
She also wrote that alcohol put her in a dark place, and caused her to attempt suicide several times. After one attempt, she began attending Alcoholics Anonymous sessions. "With the introduction of AA, I felt hope for the first time in my life," she wrote.Selma also shared that she's been sober since 2016.
In her memoir, Melissa Explains It All, Melissa Joan Hart revealed that while she was on Sabrina The Teenage Witch she was also experimenting with weed, mushrooms, ecstasy, and mescaline. She went on to say that she had never "snorted or shot anything into [her] body."
She added, "The one time I was offered coke, which happened to be by Paris Hilton, I turned it down." She even tells a story about the "third or fourth time" she dropped ecstasy and she ended up partying at the Playboy Mansion in LA and showed up hungover to a Maxim photoshoot the next morning.A rep for Paris Hilton has denied that this interaction happened.
In his memoir, Miss Memory Lane, Colton Haynes claimed that he almost lost his role on Teen Wolf after MTV found out he'd done a photo shoot for gay magazine, XY, as a teenager.
Before publicly coming out as gay in 2016, Colton was urged to stay silent about his sexuality. He even recalled an instance where a producer told him not to come out, or else he would lose jobs. He said, 'It didn't matter who was on my team, the message I got was always the same: 'You will not work if you are yourself.'' However, Teen Wolf creator Jeff Davis fought to have Colton on the show. He'd said he spent 'years sending cease-and-desist letters to everyone who posted my XY shoot.'MTV has not commented on this allegation made by Colton.
In her memoir, Making a Scene, Constance Wu opened up about a time in her 20s when she was raped by a man she'd been on a few dates with. She added that she "didn't fight back because [she] didn't want to make a scene."
She said she spent several years denying to herself that it ever happened, and wrote that "hearing rape survivors' stories didn't seem to trigger me…it pissed me off in a way that I thought was activism." More than a decade later, Constance said she finally came to terms with what happened while on the plane coming back from filming Crazy Rich Asians in Singapore. "I was angry at myself for forgetting, angrier than I was at him for raping me," she wrote.
Finally, in her memoir, Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny, Holly Madison shared the details of her first night living in the Playboy Mansion. She says she learned that having sex with Hugh Hefner was a requirement to live there and he even offered her a quaalude, saying, "In the '70s they used to call these pills 'thigh openers.'" She refused the drug but still got drunk.
Holly wrote that Tina Jordan, Hugh's No. 1 girlfriend at the time, brought Holly into his bedroom, which she explained was "like an episode of Hoarders." She recalled hardcore porn being played on two TV screens as Hugh masturbated to other girlfriends acting out lesbian scenes. Holly remembered being pushed towards Hugh as a girlfriend urged him to "be with the new girl." She wrote, "It was so brief that I can't even recall what it felt like beyond having a heavy body on top of mine."