Buckle in, kids, you’re about to learn a bunch of things you never thought you would.
Marilyn Manson is a singer, artist, producer, writer…you name it, he’s done it. But there’s so much more to him than meets the eye, and we’re here to tell you about it all—the good, the bad, and the creepy.
“Marilyn Manson” is not his real name.
Shocker. His real name is Brian Hugh Warner, which is definitely not metal.
He picked the name Marilyn Manson by combining the names of two pop culture icons: Marilyn Monroe and Charles Manson.
Macaulay Culkin bought him his first cigarette.
Legit.
Manson was not a smoker, and had never touched a cigarette. However, for a scene in the film, Party Monster , he was required to smoke.
So his co-star, Macaulay Culkin, bought him his first pack of cigarettes.
He’s a painter.
He began his career as a painter in 1999.
His medium of choice is watercolor. He started out small, doing quick, 5-minute paintings that he would then sell to drug dealers.
He was once engaged to Evan Rachel Wood.
They met in 2007, while Manson was still married to Dita Von Teese. Evan was 18.
She doesn’t regret their relationship, or its end in 2011.
“I appreciate everything he taught me. I just don’t think we were right for each other.” She said.
He owns an absinthe company.
Called “Mansinthe,” it contains 66% alcohol and is an award-winning brand.
Manson designed the label himself, using a painting he created titled, “When I Get Old.”
Even though he was obsessed with absinthe, he has apparently abstained since 2015.
He was once blacklisted from major retailers.
Stores like Wal-Mart and Target refused to sell his album, “Mechanical Animals,” in 1998.
The reason? The cover featured his head on a naked alien’s body.
Wal-Mart still refuses to sell his albums, and cited Columbine as one of the reasons. They do, however, continue to sell guns.
He is a collector.
Some of his chosen collections are items you’d expect, like medical prosthetics and fake body parts. Classic Marilyn, am I right?
However, one of his more unexpected choices has to be his collection of vintage metal lunchboxes.
He wrote an autobiography.
Called The Long Hard Road Out of Hell , his writing is very clearly not for the faint of heart.
The 1998 book covers, among other things, details of his grandfather’s fetishes.
He is best friends with Johnny Depp.
The two have been thick as thieves for years now. Marilyn technically owns one of Johnny’s houses, has featured him in music videos, and even have matching tattoos.
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Yup, those are confirmed besties.
He made his acting debut in 1997.
His first film was David Lynch’s Lost Highway , where he played a porn actor.
He’s actually worked steadily in film and television since then, appearing in shows like Californication, Sons of Anarchy, and Salem.
He wears two different colored contacts.
You’d think the reason would be to be unnerving, right?
Nope. The contacts are a tribute to David Bowie, whose pupils were two different sizes. He suffered from anisocoria, and Manson wears the contacts to honor him.
He’s a huge video game fan.
So much so that he leant his voice to the game, Area 51 , and his entire likeness to Celebrity Deathmatch .
He also licensed his songs for a ton of different games, like Need for Speed and Saints Row .
He wrote a powerful essay about the Columbine shootings.
The Columbine shooter famously stated he was a fan of Marilyn Manson.
In response to the hyper-focused media attention, he wrote an essay condemning the trend of placing blame on everyone but the shooter.
His vocal cords form a unique pattern.
His voice has five different tones. When sound mixing engineer Robert Carranza put them into a phrase analyzer, the 5 tones formed…you guessed it, a perfect pentagram.
Well, what else would his voice look like on a computer?
He has some interesting bedroom habits.
He only has sex in the dark, due to his own self-described shyness.
He also insists on keeping his underwear around his ankles, just in case. “I have a phobia that the house is going to catch fire, and I don’t want to be naked.”
His mother had Munchausen by Proxy syndrome.
She directed her attention directly at Manson, which resulted in a brutal childhood for him.
He spent much of it in and out of the hospital, some of which he attributes to his mother’s illness.
He once smoked human bones.
Yup. You read that right.
Stolen from a New Orleans grave, the bones were not a pleasant thing to smoke.
“It smelled like burnt hair, gave you a really bad headache and made your eyes red.”
I mean, smoking people will probably do that to you.
He allegedly bought Nazi artifacts.
You know the side eye emoji? I’m that right now.
His former bandmate, Madonna Wayne Gacy, filed a breach-of-contract lawsuit against him that alleged he used band profits to buy Nazi artifacts.
WTF?
He has a heart condition.
Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome is a condition in which the heart beats rapidly due to an abnormal, extra electrical pathway in the heart.
This means his heartbeat can be rapid, and erratic. Jinkies.
The myths about him aren’t true.
Some of the myths surrounding him are insane. Some are pretty tame, like the one that alleges that he played Paul in The Wonder Years (he didn’t).
Others, like the one that says he had a rib removed in order to perform fellatio on himself, are a bit more off the wall.
Obviously, none of them are true.
He married Dita Von Teese in 2005.
Just over a year later, she left him on Christmas eve, allegedly leaving the house “empty-handed”.
Although she hasn’t said what exactly happened to cause the abrupt split, she did open up to Harpers Bazaar where she said, “Let’s just say that it must have been something pretty bad for me to move out of the house after six years together and to pack up my stuff on Christmas Eve.”
He began his career as a journalist.
A music journalist, to be exact. Hey, he’d fit in here at Diply!
Before he hit it big, he interviewed stars like Trent Reznor, who was so impressed with him that he later signed him to his record label.
He’s a huge “Willy Wonka” fan.
So much so that he actually auditioned for the role of Willy Wonka for Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory .
He lost out on the role to his BFF, Johnny Depp.
