Memoirs give celebrities the chance to connect with their fans more deeply than an Instagram caption or X post ever could.
They’re also a clever way to capitalize on people’s appetite for gossip.
Some stars use their autobiographies to explain themselves after a public scandal, while others reveal messy stories about former co-stars to challenge their positive reputations.
Then there are those who spill juicy, little-known details about their relationships—or their exes’ bitter goodbyes.
From being pressured to play hide and seek at Tom Cruise’s mansion to being ghosted by one of the most famous singers of all time, here are some of the most surprising revelations detailed in celebrity memoirs.
#1 Prince Harry claimed Prince William once knocked him to the floor after criticizing Meghan Markle
It’s no secret that the Duke of Sussex has been estranged from his older brother, Prince William, since he stepped back as a working royal and relocated to California in 2020.
Three years after his departure from royal duties, Harry released a memoir titled Spare, in which he detailed a physical altercation he had with his “beloved brother and arch nemesis.”
The argument allegedly stemmed from William calling Harry’s wife, Meghan Markle, “difficult,” “rude,” and “abrasive.”
“It all happened so fast. So very fast,” Harry wrote. “He grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace, and he knocked me to the floor. I landed on the dog’s bowl, which cracked under my back, the pieces cutting into me.
“I lay there for a moment, dazed, then got to my feet and told him to get out.”
According to the 41-year-old, his brother later returned looking “regretful” and apologized.
#2 Rob Lowe learned from Warren Beatty that his girlfriend was cheating on him…with Warren Beatty
In his memoir, Love Life, Lowe recalled meeting his biggest idol, actor Warren Beatty, when he was 18. At the time, Lowe had been dating an unnamed “young, successful actress” who was close friends with Beatty.
One day, Lowe went to Beatty’s house with his girlfriend, and the Hollywood icon told him that he reminded him of his younger self. Beatty also told Lowe that his girlfriend reminded him of his own former girlfriend, Natalie Wood.
According to Lowe, Beatty then made a comment that hinted that his girlfriend was having an affair with him.
“It’s funny,” Beatty reportedly said. “Natalie was always getting asked by Frank Sinatra to come up to his house and lay by the pool. I never paid much attention to it, but years later, just a few years before Natalie d*ed, I asked her, ‘Hey, we’re both adults now, what exactly were you doing all those days at Sinatra’s?’
“And she looked me right in the eyes and said, ‘Oh Warren, what do you think we were doing? We were f***ing!’”
Lowe said Beatty then smiled at him. Lowe turned to look at his girlfriend, who “looked away, ashen-faced.”
“And the penny dropped. Thanks for the heads up, Warren Beatty. You’re my hero to this day,” the actor wrote.
#3 Matthew Perry self-sabotaged his relationship with Julia Roberts
Matthew Perry briefly dated Julia Roberts in the mid-1990s while he was starring in Friends. Their first contact came when one of the show’s creators asked him to convince the actress to guest-star in the beloved sitcom.
His move? He sent her flowers with a note that read, “The only thing more exciting than the prospect of you doing the show is that I finally have an excuse to send you flowers.”
After she appeared in the show, they continued talking via fax. The actor recalled, “Three or four times a day I would sit by my fax machine and watch the piece of paper slowly revealing her next missive. It was like she was placed on this planet to make the world smile, and now, in particular, me.”
A few months into the relationship, Perry, who was deeply insecure and struggled with substance dependence issues, broke up with Roberts, as he believed their romance was too good to be true.
“Dating Julia Roberts had been too much for me. I had been constantly certain that she was going to break up with me… I was not enough; I could never be enough; I was broken, bent, unloveable. So instead of facing the inevitable agony of losing her, I broke up with the beautiful and brilliant Julia Roberts.”
In his memoir, Perry also took a dig at Keanu Reeves when reflecting on the tragic losses of River Phoenix and Heath Ledger.
“It always seems to be the really talented guys who go down. Why is it that the original thinkers like River Phoenix and Heath Ledger d*e, but Keanu Reeves still walks among us?”
#4 Britney Spears underwent an abortion while dating Justin Timberlake
In her bombshell memoir, The Woman in Me, the Princess of Pop pulled back the curtain on her past relationship with Justin Timberlake.
One of the most surprising revelations from the book is that she had an abortion because Timberlake didn’t want to be a father.
“It was a surprise, but for me, it wasn’t a tragedy. I loved Justin so much. I always expected us to have a family together one day. This would just be much earlier than I’d anticipated,” Spears admitted.
“But Justin definitely wasn’t happy about the pregnancy. He said we weren’t ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young.”
The Toxic hitmaker said she would have happily had the baby, but her then-boyfriend “was so sure that he didn’t want to be a father.”
She also wrote that the abortion is, to this day, “one of the most agonizing things” she has ever experienced.
Spears and Timberlake were together for three years, from 1999 to 2002. Afterward, she began dating Kevin Federline, with whom she welcomed two sons, Sean Preston and Jayden James.
#5 Shirley MacLaine revealed that a co-star purposely farted in her face
Shirley MacLaine and Debra Winger played mother and daughter in the 1983 film Terms of Endearment.
The co-stars did not get off to a friendly start, as Winger allegedly farted in MacLaine’s face on their first day on set.
In My Lucky Stars: A Hollywood Memoir, MacLaine recalled that her on-screen daughter had an attitude and impolitely reminded the seasoned actress of where her mark was.
She wrote, “‘You’re over here,’ Debra said. The crew stopped talking. They could sense a stakeout… ‘I heard you,’ I said. ‘I know marks when I see them.’”
“‘Good,’ she said. ‘How’s this for a mark?’ She turned around, walked away from me, lifted her skirt slightly, looked over her shoulder, bent over, and farted in my face.”
#6 Mariah Carey’s sister threatened to sell her when she was a preteen
Mariah was estranged from her older sister, Alison, for years before she passed away.
In her 2020 autobiography The Meaning of Mariah Carey, the hitmaker claimed that Alison gave her Valium and tried to sell her to a pimp when Mariah was 12-years old.
“Through all the years, both my sister and my brother have put me on the chopping block, sold lies to any gossip or rag or trashy website that would buy or listen. They have attacked me for decades,” she penned.
“But when I was twelve years old, my sister drugged me with Valium, inflicted me with third-degree burns, and tried to sell me out to a pimp.”
Noting she was raised in a dysfunctional family, Mariah said her siblings were “very broken” and that she feels “sad for them.”
Alison denied the allegations following the release of the memoir and threatened to sue her sister in 2021 for $1.25 million over the “vicious, vindictive, despicable and totally unnecessary public humiliation.”
#7 Carrie Fisher had affair with Harrison Ford while filming ‘Star Wars’
Carrie Fisher confirmed that she and Harrison Ford were much more than Star Wars co-stars.
In 2016, the actress revealed in The Princess Diarist that she had a summer affair with Ford when filming 1977’s A New Hope. At the time, she was 19 and he was 34.
The actor reportedly made an advance in the backseat of a car after a party. After that, the co-stars began a secret romance, and Fisher expected Ford to leave his then-wife, Mary Marquardt, for her.
“I could charm the birds out of everyone’s trees but his… I couldn’t talk to Harrison. Basically about anything, but especially about the entity that was ‘us’ – not that there actually was such a thing,” Fisher confessed.
“Not only couldn’t I converse with Harrison, but given that my weekends with Harrison were a secret, it became something that was better left unsaid…
“I felt that I couldn’t confide in anyone else what was happening with Harrison, because Harrison was married. And not to me.”
Ford and Marquardt married in 1964 and had two sons together. Their marriage later ended in divorce in 1979.
#8 Jane Fonda regretted being submissive to husband Roger Vadim
In My Life So Far, Fonda opened up about her troubled marriage with Roger Vadim and how she had normalized a position of submission to the French director.
Fonda and her first husband were married from 1965 to 1973. The couple had a daughter, Vanessa Vadim.
In her memoir, the Oscar winner accused Vadim of infidelity and wrote about his gambling and drinking issues. She also said he forced her to have a ménage-à-trois without her consent.
“One night he brought home a beautiful red-haired woman and took her into our bed with me. (…) It never occurred to me to object,” Fonda wrote.
“I took my cues from him and threw myself into the thr**some with the skill and enthusiasm of the actress that I am. If this was what he wanted, this was what I would give him.
“Sometimes there were three of us, sometimes more. Sometimes it was even I who did the soliciting. So adept was I at burying my real feelings and compartmentalizing myself that I eventually had myself convinced I enjoyed it.”
#9 Leah Remini refused to play hide and seek with Tom Cruise
Remini, a former Scientologist, once attended a party hosted by one of the religion’s most notorious members, Tom Cruise.
In Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology, the actress recalled that the Top Gun actor suggested that guests play hide and seek on his property.
“At first I thought he was joking,” she admitted. “But no. He literally wanted to play hide-and-seek with a bunch of grown-ups in what was probably close to a 7,000-square-foot house on almost three full acres of secluded land.”
Rimini told the Hollywood actor that she couldn’t play because she was wearing Jimmy Choo heels.
“Well, good,” Cruise allegedly said. But he insisted on playing. “So you’re It, then.” He tagged Remini and ran to hide.
The actress wrote, “I pulled my husband aside and in a quiet voice whispered, ‘Uh, Angelo, you’re going to go ahead and do this, because I’m not doing it. I’m not trying to play a f**king game of hide-and-seek in five-inch stilettos. Okay?’”
#10 Lauren Bacall was ghosted by Frank Sinatra
Bacall revealed in her memoir, By Myself and Then Some, that Frank Sinatra ghosted her after abruptly breaking off their engagement.
The artists began dating after Bacall’s husband, Humphrey Bogart, passed away. Bacall said her relationship with Sinatra was unstable, describing the megastar as “adoring one day, remote the next.”
Shortly after they became engaged, the news spread. Sinatra, accusing Bacall of not keeping their romance private, told her he wanted to take an indefinite break.
Bacall realized the two would never be together again after he completely ignored her when they ran into each other at a dinner not long afterward.
“We had one person between us at dinner, but Frank didn’t acknowledge my existence. He did not speak one word to me – if he looked in my direction, he did not see me, he looked right past me. I was so humiliated,” Bacall penned.
“Actually, Frank did me a great favor,” she added. “He saved me from the disaster our marriage would have been. The truth is he was probably smarter than I: he knew it couldn’t work. But the truth also is that he behaved like a complete sh*t.”
#11 Keith Richards snorted his father’s ashes
The Rolling Stones guitarist wrote openly about his decades-long substance dependence issues in his memoir Life, including taking hard substances with Mick Jagger and an “acid-fueled road trip” with John Lennon.
“One song, one bump was the rule between Ronnie [Wood] and me,” Richards wrote of the Stones’ 1975 Tour of the Americas.
The musician, who has been clean since the 2000s, further shared that he snorted his deceased father’s ashes.
“As I took the lid off of the box, a fine spray of his ashes blew out on to the table… I couldn’t just brush him off, so I wiped my finger over it and snorted the residue.”
Richards also revealed that he called Jagger “Your Majesty” and “Brenda” to poke fun at what he perceived as the lead singer’s diva-like, authoritative attitude within the band.
After publishing the memoir in 2010, he apologized to Jagger and admitted some parts of his autobiography had “really offended” his bandmate.
#12 Demi Moore said her marriage with Ashton Kutcher began falling apart after a three-way
Moore’s memoir, Inside Out, details the breakdown of her marriage to Ashton Kutcher. The actors tied the knot in 2005 and divorced in 2013.
The Substance star explained that she tried to change herself to adapt to Kutcher and even agreed to bring a third person into their bed despite not wanting to.
“I put him first,” Moore admitted. “I wanted to show him how great and fun I could be.”
Moore later regretted fulfilling Kutcher’s fantasy, calling the decision a “mistake.” In 2010, when reports emerged that her husband had cheated on her, Moore claimed that Kutcher partly blamed the episode for his infidelity.
“Because we had brought a third party into our relationship, Ashton said, that blurred the lines and, to some extent, justified what he’d done,” she wrote.
#13 Shirley Jones revealed that her husband, Jack Cassidy, was very adventurous
Jones made fans’ jaws drop when she revealed the open-minded relationship she had with her husband, actor Jack Cassidy.
The Partridge Family actress shared that she and Cassidy engaged in a threeway with another woman. According to Jones, her theater-star husband was also into swinging.
“In the seventies, when s*xual promiscuity was the order of the day for many people, Jack did try to get me into a f**rsome with the handsome actor Pete Duel, who was just thirty years old, and Pete’s girlfriend,” Jones wrote in her autobiography.
“[They] came over for a swim party. We were all in the pool when Jack said, ‘Hey, let’s all take off our clothes and go inside and have a f**rsome!’”
However, Jones had her limits. She got out of the pool and declined the proposal.
“I never would have written this book if I weren’t the age I am now,” the Oklahoma! actress admitted after releasing the memoir at age 79.
#14 Will Smith and Jada Smith put on a show for the cameras for years after separating
Jada Smith surprised fans when she revealed in 2023 that she and actor Will Smith had been separated since 2016.
Despite living separate lives, the pair had been putting on a united front in public, with Jada accompanying Will to the Oscars in 2022, during which he infamously slapped Chris Rock on stage when he made a joke about her.
In her autobiography Worthy, Jada wrote that her marriage with Will had reached the point of “irreconcilable differences” in 2016. Their marital troubles stemmed from personal mental health struggles that they were unable to resolve.
“It was nobody’s fault. As much as I wanted him to love me, that would never happen if I didn’t love myself. And the same applied to him,” she penned.
“Will and I had pictures in our mind of what a happily married couple was. And our pictures didn’t match.”
Instead of divorcing, the actors decided to “separate in every way except legally.”
Elsewhere in the book, she discussed her platonic relationship with Tupac Shakur. She said the late rapper, whom she had once kissed as teenagers, unexpectedly sent her a letter asking her to marry him when he was in prison in 1995, but she turned him down.
#15 Drew Barrymore forgave her mother after being deeply neglected as a child
Barrymore opened up about her troubled childhood in her 2015 book Wildflower.
The actress, who rose to prominence as a child star in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, revealed that she was a “party girl” at age 8 and would go out with her mother and her mother’s friends up to five times a week.
By the age of 12, she had already been in rehab. At age 13, she began an 18-month stint in hospital, where she was treated for her substance dependence.
After a much-publicized legal battle, she became emancipated from her mother at the age of 14. Her father, actor John Barrymore, was only in her life sporadically.
Barrymore wrote of her mother, Jaid, “It is not who I am to harbor any anger for the fact that our life together was so incredibly unorthodox.
“I want only to say thank you to her, because I love my life and it takes every step to get to where you are, and if you are happy, then God bless the hard times it took you to get there.”
#16 Frank Langella slammed a number of famous stars in his ‘Dropped Names’ book
In Dropped Names, Langella threw shade at many renowned Hollywood actors. Among the targets of his attacks was Richard Burton, whom he claimed gave lengthy, drunken recitals of poet Dylan Thomas and other writers.
“By the time the bottle was nearly empty, so was my brain… Could anyone, I wondered, be so unaware of what a crashing bore he had become?” Langella wrote.
He also said of Charlton Heston, “It was as if he had appointed himself the forever Numero Uno on the call sheet of life.”
Additionally, the actor dedicated a segment to former first lady Jackie Kennedy Onassis, painting her as someone who could spend enormous amounts of money very quickly.
“I witnessed her quietly point, indicate, and say ‘there’ about sweaters in all colors, pots and pans, candles, pillows, dishes, and furniture when we went shopping. I once calculated $50,000 worth of purchases in twenty minutes.”
#17 Elton John revealed that two Hollywood actors nearly came to blows over Princess Diana
The English musician recalled hosting a star-studded party that had Princess Diana, Richard Gere, and Sylvester Stallone among its guests.
At one point, Gere, who had recently separated from Cindy Crawford, sat in front of the fireplace with Lady Di, who was separated from Prince Charles.
Elton John noticed that the two “seemed very taken with each other” and were soon “locked in rapt conversation.”
He wrote, “Diana and Richard Gere’s newly blossoming friendship was not going down well with Sylvester Stallone at all.
“I think he may have turned up to the party with the express intention of picking Diana up, only to find his plans for the evening ruined.”
When dinner was served, the two actors were missing from the dining room. John asked his now-husband, David Furnish, to look for them. He returned mumbling, “We have . . . a situation.”
“It transpired that he’d discovered Sylvester Stallone and Richard Gere in the corridor, squaring up to each other, apparently about to settle their differences over Diana by having a fist-fight.
“After dinner, Diana and Richard Gere resumed their position together in front of the fire, and Sylvester stormed off home.”
#18 Clive Davis said Janis Joplin wanted to seal a deal with an R-rated fantasy
Clive Davis is a 93-year-old music mogul who has worked with everyone from Billy Joel to Bruce Springsteen and Pink Floyd.
In The Soundtrack of My Life, Davis revealed that Janis Joplin had an unconventional proposal to celebrate him signing her band, Big Brother and the Holding Company, in the late 1960s.
The Grammy winner claims Joplin’s manager told him, “You know what Janis would really like to do?… She thinks it would be only fitting and proper that she ball you to cement the deal.”
The manager allegedly explained that it would be Joplin’s “way of showing this is a more meaningful relationship—not in lieu of signing, but in addition, a way to make the signing different from what it normally would be in the business world.”
According to Davis, he politely declined the suggestion and signed Joplin and her band anyway.
#19 Married Marlon Brando made a blunt proposal to Barbra Streisand
According to the songstress’ memoir, My Name is Barbra, Hollywood legend Marlon Brando made a very direct advance during a party they attended in 1966.
When he made the blunt proposal, Brando was married to French-Polynesian actress Tarita Teriipaia, who was in an adjoining room.
Instead of beating around the bush, the late actor allegedly told Streisand, “I’d like to f**k you.”
Streisand turned him down, and they became lifelong friends afterward.
The Grammy winner also spoke about Brando’s advances during a 2012 interview on CNN. She said the Godfather actor “wanted to take me to the desert, to see the wildflowers [and] sleep over in a ghost town.”
Again, she said it was an offer she could—and did—refuse.
“I was such a nice Jewish girl that I just said, ‘Marlon, I can’t stay overnight with you. I’ll go with you for the day.’”
#20 Alec Baldwin roasted “short and scrawny” Harrison Ford
Baldwin did not mince his words when describing how much he despises Harrison Ford.
In 1990, Baldwin starred as Jack Ryan in The Hunt for Red October. According to the actor, he was in talks with Paramount to reprise the role in the sequel, Patriot Games, but Ford ended up securing the role at the last minute.
Baldwin alleged that, when Ford was told by a filmmaker that Baldwin was already in negotiations with the studio, Ford bluntly responded, “F**k him.”
In Nevertheless: A Memoir, Baldwin got his payback. He wrote of the Hollywood icon, “The movies really do enhance certain actors, making them seem like something they really aren’t.
“Ford, in person, is a little man, short, scrawny, and wiry, whose soft voice sounds as if it’s coming from behind a door.”
#21 John Stamos did not confront Teri Copley when he found her cheating
The Full House alum claimed in If You Would Have Told Me that he walked in on his former girlfriend, Teri Copley, cheating on him with Tony Danza.
“I would’ve rather been punched in the nose again or something because the pain is so overwhelming,” Stamos wrote.
“Looking back, it’s like, probably, she wasn’t the right girl for me. So seeing him, realizing it was him and stuff, it was hard. I mean, it was awful.
Stamos was so angry that he almost punched Copley’s new man, but he quickly changed his mind.
“I was like, ‘I’m going to kick his…’ I didn’t know it was [Danza] yet. I see his abs. I’m like, ‘Maybe not. F**k it.’ And I ran,” the actor recalled. “I remember running down the driveway with tears streaming down my face.”
Copley, who dated Stamos for a year in the 1980s, claimed she had already separated from him at the time of the incident.
#22 Pamela Anderson accused Tim Allen of flashing her
The blonde beauty wrote about a disturbing incident that took place on the set of Home Improvement in 1991 when she was 23 years old.
“On the first day of filming, I walked out of my dressing room, and Tim was in the hallway in his robe,” she recalled in Love, Pamela.
“He opened his robe and flashed me quickly. He said it was only fair, because he had seen me n*ked. Now we’re even. I laughed uncomfortably.”
Allen’s alleged comment appeared to refer to Anderson’s photoshoots for the adult magazine founded by Hugh Hefner.
The actor, who was 37 at the time of the alleged incident, denied Anderson’s claims, telling Variety that he would “never do such a thing.”
Anderson appeared in the first two seasons of the ABC sitcom as Lisa the Tool Girl before leaving to focus on Baywatch.
The actress told Variety that she holds no grudges against Allen. “Tim is a comedian, it’s his job to cross the line. I’m sure he had no bad intentions.”
She added, “Times have changed, though. I doubt anyone would try that post #MeToo. It’s a new world.”
#23 Elliot Page slept several times with a ‘Juno’ co-star
Page rose to fame after starring as a pregnant teenager in the 2007 coming-of-age film Juno, a role that earned the actor an Oscar nomination.
In his memoir Pageboy, the 39-year-old revealed that he and co-star Olivia Thirlby were intimate several times during the filming of the movie.
He referred to Thirlby as the “first woman I had a suitably consensual s*xual relationship with.” The relationship happened years before Page came out or transitioned to become a trans man.
Page noted that the actress “seemed so much older, capable and centered. S*xually open, far removed from where I was at the time.”
The actor wrote, “We started having s*x all the time. What were we thinking? We thought we were subtle…. Being intimate with Olivia helped my shame dissipate.”
Page is now dating actress Julia Shiplett.
#24 Jennette McCurdy was offered $300,000 in “hush money” by Nickelodeon
In her book I’m Glad My Mom Died, McCurdy claimed that Nickelodeon once offered her $300,000 in “hush money” to ensure that she wouldn’t discuss her negative experiences with a man she referred to as The Creator.
The actress and author appeared in the Nickelodeon sitcoms iCarly and its spin-off Sam and Cat, in which she co-starred with Ariana Grande.
She claimed that during a dinner with The Creator, believed to be Dan Schneider, he persuaded her to drink when she was 18 and later “place[d] a hand on my knee.”
According to McCurdy, The Creator took off his coat, placed it around her shoulders, and began massaging her.
“I want to say something, to tell him to stop, but I’m so scared of offending him,” she wrote.
Referring to the damaging allegations that eventually came to light against The Creator, McCurdy said, “I feel like it’s been a long time coming, and should have happened a lot sooner.”
Schneider and Nickelodeon parted ways in 2018 after an investigation found that he was verbally violent toward employees. Schneider has denied the allegations.
#25 Carly Simon claimed Sean Connery asked to have ménage-à-trois with her and her sister
Simon claims that, when she was 20, she and her 22-year-old sister Lucy met Sean Connery aboard the SS United States traveling from England to New York.
The sisters started talking with Connery, then aged 35, and met him in his cabin after having a few drinks with him.
The James Bond actor allegedly proposed having the ménage-à-trois, or a “Simon sisters sandwich,” as one of Carly Simon’s friends called it. They quickly turned him down.
Still, Simon said her older sister Lucy was attracted to Connery and spent the following night with him at the time when he was married to actress Diane Cilento. Lucy returned the next day at 5:15 a.m.
Years later Simon would become connected to the James Bond franchise by singing the theme Nobody Does It Better for The Spy Who Loved Me.
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