While it’s easy to think that celebrities have perfect lives , that couldn’t be further from the truth in a lot of cases. In fact, most celebrities have their demons , just like the rest of us.
But for the celebs in this list, each of whom have written memoirs about their own experiences, things get pretty dark. Here are the details that these celebs got candid about in their memoirs.
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Drew Barrymore opened up about her struggles with addiction in ‘Little Girl Lost.’
The 1991 memoir, which Barrymore penned when she was just a teenager, explores her experiences with alcohol and drugs, which she started using in her preteen years.
Barrymore began drinking at age 9.
By the time she was 10, she was using marijuana, and by 12 she had begun using cocaine. She discussed in numerous interviews as well as the book that she had access to drugs and alcohol through parties when she was a child.
Melissa Joan Hart’s memoir detailed her extensive drug experimentation.
Though she never saw herself as addicted by any means, Hart’s memoir, Melissa Explains It All , provides a look at the drug experimentation she did around the time she was starring in Sabrina the Teenage Witch .
“I experimented with weed, ecstasy, mushrooms, and mescaline for about a year and a half.”
In fact, she even shares a story where she once took ecstasy during a party at the Playboy Mansion, and then went to a Maxim photoshoot still high.
Ozzy Osbourne opened up about trying to kill his wife, Sharon, one night.
In his memoir, I Am Ozzy , Osbourne recalls waking up in a prison cell in 1989 and not remembering why he was there, only to be told that he’d tried to murder his wife.
He opened up about it in a 2020 documentary as well.
In Biography: The Nine Lives of Ozzy Osbourne , Sharon also shares details of the incident , saying, “He was calm — very, very calm — and he lunged across at me. I felt the stuff on the table and felt the panic button and just pressed it. Next thing I know the cops were there.”
Jessica Simpson opened up about an emotional affair she had with Johnny Knoxville.
In her memoir, Open Book , the singer and actress discussed her deep connection with Knoxville, who was her costar in the 2005 film Dukes of Hazard . She was married to Nick Lachey at the time.
“I could share my deepest authentic thoughts with him, and he didn’t roll his eyes at me,” she wrote.
” He actually liked that I was smart and embraced my vulnerabilities . He believed in me and made me feel I could do anything.”
Leah Remini explained how kids were treated in her former Scientology community.
Remini is frequently outspoken against Scientology, which her family followed. In her memoir, Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology , she describes how children are largely left to their own devices within the religion.
“In Scientology, minors are considered spiritual beings and not children in need of protection and guidance.”
“The Sea Org members believed that their kids could make up their own minds,” she wrote. “As a result, these kids could no longer live with their parents…. Even if that meant they ended up practically squatting, or sleeping in a stranger’s apartment, their parents felt that it was the child’s decision to make.”
Before starring in ‘Teen Wolf,’ Colton Haynes did a provocative photoshoot for XY magazine.
The now-openly gay actor modeled for the lesser-known magazine with his then-boyfriend. Years later, as Haynes recalls in Miss Memory Lane , it almost cost him the role in the MTV series.
In fact, there was a team dedicated to scrubbing the images from the internet in order to “protect his image.”
“When I moved to L.A., I was basically told that I needed to change everything about myself… But when I first started working, [the images] started popping up on blogs. My team acted almost like a firing squad .”
Michael J. Fox had a near death experience on the set of ‘Back to the Future Part III.’
He recalls the incident in his memoir, Lucky Man . During the scene where Marty gets hanged by a rope, Fox is doing the actual stunt.
And while practice runs went smoothly, the actual take did not.
When it came time to shoot the scene, Fox was unable to keep the rope from tightening, and fell unconscious: ” I swung unconscious at the end of the rope for several seconds before Bob Zemeckis, fan of me though he was, realized even I wasn’t that good of an actor.”
Viola Davis opened up about growing up in poverty.
Her memoir, Finding Me , showed that the actress’s life was far from glamorous in her early years. She mentioned the poor living conditions she and her family faced throughout the years, including a lack of proper plumbing.
And at one point, her home’s kitchen was infested with rats.
“I never, ever went into the kitchen,” she wrote. ” Rats had taken over the cabinets and the counter. The plaster was constantly falling off the wall, revealing the wooden boards holding the house together.”
In his memoir, ‘Will,’ Will Smith opens up about his first serious relationship.
He discusses the relationship he had when he was a teenager with a girl named Melanie, who ultimately went on to cheat on him while he was on tour.
In his heartbreak, he began sleeping around.
He wrote, “I had sex with so many women, and it was so constitutionally disagreeable to the core of my being, that I developed a psychosomatic reaction to having an orgasm. It would literally make me gag and sometimes even vomit.”
Jennette McCurdy’s new memoir is full of many shocking revelations.
From the title alone, I’m Glad My Mom Died details a lot of the trauma and abuse the young star faced during her time as a child actress.
Which included the abuse she endured from the creator of ‘iCarly.’
In her book, she only mentions the man as “The Creator,” adding that after Sam & Cat ‘s cancelation, Nickelodeon essentially offered her hush money: ” They’re giving you $300,000 and the only thing they want you to do is never talk publicly about your experience at Nickelodeon.”
