CRAZIEST revelations from celebrity memoirs no one saw coming

If you think you have difficulty trying to contain the messiest and at times, darkest, secrets you are carrying in your memory, imagine the conundrum celebrities face with theirs.

In an industry where everyone is willing to put a microphone right in their face, for even a momentary opportunity of unguarded conversation — not only are celebrity secrets much sought after, they are actively bankable.

Many famous names, past and present, have filled pages worth several typed confessions and revelations — both their own and others.

Today, we shall go through some of the most eye opening secrets which were dished by the Hollywood elite over the years.

Get ready to devour some of the untold right down below:

Drew Barrymore — Little Girl Lost (1991)

In 1991, Drew Barrymore had only turned 16 years old but she had gathered so many secrets worth spilling by even that stage that her life’s story was compiled in a book called Little Girl Lost, co-written by Todd Gold.

The memoir recounts Drew’s incredibly rise to fame, thanks to roles in blockbuster hits like Steven Spielberg’s E.T. and the film adaptation of Stephen King’s Firestarter, her domestic struggles with a physically and emotionally abusive father and an absentee mother, and how she coped with all of that through means no child should have any access to.

Particularly excruciating to read are the instances where she describes her early substance abuse, which kicked off when she started drinking alcohol at the age of 9 and smoking pot by 10.

About further usage, which landed her in rehab by the age of 13, she wrote, “Eventually that got boring too, and my addict mind told me, ‘Well, if smoking pot is cute, it’ll also be cute to get into heavier stuff, like cocaine.’ My usage was gradual…What I did kept getting worse and worse, and I didn’t care what anybody else thought about me. The higher I got, the happier I imagined myself, the more miserable I actually was.”

Al Pacino — Sonny Boy (2024)

Named after the pet name given to him by his mother, Al Pacino’s memoir offers a candid look at not only his own life and career, but also the wildly tumultuous and simultaneously exciting time that was had during the ‘70s and onwards era in Hollywood.

By his own admission, one of his early encounters with his The Godfather co-star and Hollywood legend Marlon Brando left the Oscar winner particularly shaken, by merely witnessing the late star’s monumentally messy table manners.

When the two cinema icons had dinner together in the room of a hospital where they were shooting, Al recalled, “He was sitting on one hospital bed, I was sitting on the other...And he was eating chicken cacciatore with his hands. His hands were full of red sauce. So was his face. And that’s all I could think about the whole time.”

Further adding that once his colleague was done acting, the Serpico actor was still debating about whether he should get him a napkin when “he spread both his hands across the white hospital bed and smeared the sheets with red sauce, without even thinking about it and he kept on talking” — leading Al Pacino to wonder, “Is that how movie stars act?”

Jane Fonda — My Life So Far (2006)

Jane Fonda’s quite aptly titled memoir My Life So Far, as her life has only gotten more storied since the book’s release, makes for a great read for similar reasons Al Pacino’s does — yesteryear Hollywood stars just had a lot more to their fill, having explored the industry’s at once glamorous and dark tunnels before the constant social media surveillance and the like.

The actress who went on to dabble in multiple fields — such as politics, activism, fitness — and being the daughter of an established Hollywood star like Henry Fonda, she naturally had a lot to share once she decided to pen down her memories.

Going into great detail about her first marriage to legendary film director Roger Vadim, Jane wrote about her matrimonial struggles due to his infidelity and how she gave in to his fondness for threesomes to keep their relationship afloat.

“Then one night, he brought home a beautiful red-haired woman and took her into our bed with me,” she shared, while admitting that she was willing to engage in the sexual activity “if this was what he wanted” — “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,” concluded her confession.

Christina Crawford — Mommie Dearest (1978)

Often considered the foremost text when it comes to celebrity tell-all style memoirs, Mommie Dearest is not written by a Hollywood heavyweight, instead, it is written about one — silver screen legend, Joan Croawford.

In the book, Joan’s adopted daughter Christina Crawford (also briefly an actress) scaled great lengths to uncover the decades of extreme abuse which she alleged was perpetrated against her and her younger brother, Christopher, by their movie star mom — allegations which were at once refuted and validated by multiple other stars and close friends of the late Oscar winner.

Though Christina later claimed that the abuse wasn’t physical, the emotional burden of her mother’s controlling nature was too much for her to carry and in one confession from the book — which made for a very infamous scene from the 1981 movie adaptation of the same name — she detailed, “Shaking me by the hair of my head she screamed in my ear, ‘No wire hangers! No wire hangers!’ With one hand she pulled me by the hair and with the other she cuffed my ears until they rang and I could hardly hear her screaming…When she had totally destroyed my entire part of the bedroom she stood in the doorway with her hands on her hips, ‘Clean up your mess,’ she growled turning on her heel.”

Jennette McCurdy — I’m Glad My Mom Died (2022)

In recent memory, another young actress who was at odds with her mother is former child star Jennette McCurdy, and she also went on to share overwhelmingly agonising memories about her late stage mom.

The extent of her suffering is best captured in the title of the iCarly star’s memoir, as she admittedly never felt truly free until her mother was no longer attached to her mortal coil.

Jennette, who retired from professional acting in 2017 after working in the business since the age of six, shared in her book, “My mother emotionally, physically and mentally abused me in ways that will forever impact me. She gave me breast and vaginal exams until I was seventeen years old. These ‘exams’ made my body stiff with discomfort. I felt violated, yet I had no voice, no ability to express that.”

Pamela Anderson — Love, Pamela: A Memoir (2023)

Best known for being a ‘90s sex symbol, thanks to her red swimsuit clad appearances on Baywatch and multiple Playboy covers, Pamela Anderson has recently been introduced anew to an industry which has long viewed her as an archetypal “dumb blonde” caricature.

As part of her rebrand, the Naked Gun star decided to tell her side of the story via her memoir, Love Pamela — a text which takes the readers through multiple phases of her life, including the infamous leak of her sex tape with ex-husband Tommy Lee and her initial body image issues as a young actress.

Recalling one particularly uncomfortable and borderline criminal incident with Tim Allen from the set of Home Improvement (she guest starred on the show’s first two seasons), Pamela wrote, “On the first day of filming, I walked out of my dressing room, and Tim was in the hallway in his robe. He opened his robe and flashed me quickly — completely naked underneath. He said it was only fair, because he had seen me naked. Now we’re even. I laughed uncomfortably. It was the first of many bizarre encounters where people felt they knew me enough to make absolute fools out of themselves.”

Will Smith — Will (2021)

In his self titled memoir, co-authored with Mark Manson, the multi hyphenate star who started as a rapper, Will Smith bared it all for an intimate look at his life.

One jarring incident outlined from his childhood in the book, however, holds the key to his infamous reaction at the Oscars a year after Will’s publication — the time he slapped former friend and comedian Chris Rock for joking about his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith’s alopecia.

“When I was nine years old, I watched my father punch my mother in the side of the head so hard that she collapsed. I saw her spit blood. That moment in that bedroom, probably more than any other moment in my life, has defined who I am,” he wrote, while further admitting that “everything that I have done since then”, including his cheerful screen persona and the stellar career which followed his success as an adult “has been a subtle string of apologies to my mother for my inaction that day.”