THE WAR OF THE WORDS
There’s no holds barred in celeb memoirs as they tell all about their private lives
WHERE would we be without explosive celebrity memoirs?
We might not know about high-profile affairs, abortions, polygamy, sex tapes and the seedier side of Hollywood.
Some of the planet’s biggest names from the worlds of movies, music and TV have revealed industry secrets in best-selling page turners.
Australian actress Rebel Wilson is the latest big name to put pen to paper and her tell-all book is causing ripples.
The biggest headline-grabbing revelations from Rebel Rising surround Ali G funnyman Sacha Baron Cohen, and this week it was suggested that his high-profile break-up from wife Isla Fisher last year was connected to the new allegations.
The Borat star vehemently denies the accusations but this week Pitch Perfect actress Wilson doubled down, saying she wouldn’t work with Sacha for any money at all and that “no money ever. I have a no a-holes policy with work”.
This isn’t the first time a memoir rocked the gossip pages and websites. Here we take a look at some of the most memorable revelations.
BRITNEY SPEARS
In Britney Spears’s memoir, The Woman In Me, the singer revealed that she had an abortion after getting pregnant while she was dating Justin Timberlake. Britney wrote: “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. 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.”
JADA PINKETT-SMITH
Jada Pinkett-Smith is another celebrity who got incredibly candid about her life in her memoir, Worthy, after facing years of media scrutiny — namely over her marriage with Will Smith.
In the book, Jada made the shocking revelation that she and Will — who tied the knot back in 1997 — have secretly been separated since 2016. She later revealed that she was “shocked” when he referred to her as his “wife” at the infamous 2022 Oscars.
PRINCE HARRY
Where do I start? It was only last year when Prince Harry dropped many bombshells in the biggest book of 2023. Spare was the simple-yet-apt name for the book that revealed some incredibly private experiences like how he lost his virginity. He described the encounter, which was with an “older lady” while he was 17, as “humiliating,” writing: “I mounted her quickly, after which she spanked my ass and held me back... One of my mistakes was letting it happen in a field, just behind a busy pub. No doubt someone had seen us.”
One of the most shocking things detailed was an alleged physical assault that Harry claims took place in 2019. He said that his brother William, whom he calls his “archnemesis,” referred to Meghan Markle, as “rude” and
“abrasive,” before allegedly attacking him.
“He set down the water, called me another name, then came at me. It all happened so fast,” Harry writes, “So very fast. 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.”
PAMELA ANDERSON
In Anderson’s book, she opens up in detail about the infamous moment her and her then-partner Tommy Lee’s sex tape was stolen and leaked back in 1995.
Pamela, who was seven months pregnant with her second child, Dylan, when she realised the tape had been stolen, reveals in her book that she has “not watched it to this day.” When she and Tommy sought legal action, they were interviewed separately during their deposition — and she writes that in the room, there were naked photos of her everywhere. She claims that the lawyers told her she had “no right to privacy” because she’d appeared in Playboy, and asked her invasive questions about her sex life.
Elsewhere in the book, Pamela reflected on her childhood, revealing that she was sexually abused by a female babysitter growing up, who allegedly forced her to “play weird games on her body.”
KERRY WASHINGTON
Kerry Washington’s book, Thicker Than Water, saw the actor opening up about her secret abortion in detail for the very first time. The Scandal actress revealed that she had an unplanned pregnancy shortly after starring in Save the Last Dance in 2001. Out of fear of ruining her career, she writes that she chose to give the doctors at the clinic a fake name in order to protect her identity, and subsequently chose to keep the entire thing a secret. “I sat in the waiting room and completed the paperwork with false information: a made-up name, a pretend address, a nonexistent email,” she wrote, adding that she “wanted to be careful” and “wanted this procedure to remain private.”
The actor went on to recall feeling terrified when a nurse at the clinic told her she looked exactly like “movie star Kerry Washington”.
PARIS HILTON
Paris Hilton’s self-titled book is full of shocking revelations about her life — one of which being a disturbing relationship she had with her school teacher while she was 13 or 14 years of age.
Paris writes that the teacher told her he had a “crush” on her and repeatedly gushed about how “mature” and “intelligent” she was. “We talked for hours about how amazingly mature, beautiful, and intelligent I was, how sensual, misunderstood, and special. He reminded me that Princess Diana was 13 years younger than Prince Charles. And Priscilla Presley was my age when Elvis fell in love with her,” she writes.
Paris says that the relationship came to an end after her parents showed up while they were making out in his car outside her home.
‘I mounted her quickly, after which she spanked my ass and held me back, in a field... no doubt someone had seen us’