12-03-2025
What's A Really Awful Scandal Hollywood Just Casually Forgot About But You Can Never Forget?
Tragedies and scandals happen in Hollywood more often than studios, producers, and the media would like to admit. And often, these stories get brushed under the rug, remembered by only a maybe that's you!
Warning: Mentions of child molestation, rape, and other dark subject matter ahead.
For example, maybe you CANNOT believe people never talk about the fact that Jeepers Creepers writer-director Victor Salva is a convicted child molester and rapist who was able to continue making films, even for Disney, even after his conviction.
According to IndieWire, "The 59-year-old was convicted in 1988 of the sexual molestation of Nathan Forrest, the 12-year-old actor and star of his film Clownhouse. Salva videotaped the sexual act and was also convicted of possessing commercial videotapes and magazines containing child pornography.
Salva only served 15 months of his three-year sentence, and he somehow went on to have a career in Hollywood in the years that followed. Disney hired him to direct their supernatural drama Powder, and Salva found his greatest success with Jeepers Creepers the 2001 horror film that spawned a franchise."
Or maybe you can't believe more people don't know about the tragic story of Gabriella Cedillo, an extra on the film Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011). She sustained permanent brain damage after the car she was driving for a scene involving a stunt was hit by a large piece of metal.
Chicago Tribune / Tribune News Service via Getty Images
According to ABC7: "Gabriela Cedillo was just finishing college in September 2010 when the car she was driving in a Transformers 3 scene was struck by a piece of metal. It was attached to a tow cable to flip a stunt car in the westbound lanes of Cline Avenue in Hammond. Instead, the metal bar broke free, and it smashed through her windshield into the right side of her head."
In 2012, Cedillo received an $18.5 million settlement from the film's producers.
Or, perhaps, you'll never forget the fact that Kenneth Branagh cheated on then-wife Emma Thompson with Helena Bonham Carter in 1995.
Georges De Keerle / Getty Images
According to the Independent, "After two years of dating, Thompson and Branagh married on Aug. 20, 1989. [...] The relationship didn't last, and the couple ultimately announced their separation in 1995. It was later revealed that Branagh was having an affair with Helena Bonham Carter."
"Thompson would go on to tell the New Yorker that the real reason for the divorce was her discovery that Branagh had started a relationship with Bonham Carter, who was starring in his film Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
"I was utterly, utterly blind to the fact that he had relationships with other women on set," she told the outlet. "What I learned was how easy it is to be blinded by your own desire to deceive yourself.'"
So, tell us, what's a shocking, dark, or wild Hollywood scandal that truly got swept under the rug — one that people seem to have forgotten about? Tell us in the comments below or via this anonymous form and you could be featured in an upcoming BuzzFeed Community
