Britney Spears, Jada Pinkett Smith, Prince Harry: The year's most shocking celebrity memoir secrets
Celebrities have embraced honesty this year, delivering memoirs with shocking confessions about their lives and careers.
Britney Spears seized the opportunity to tell her life story after a highly publicized conservatorship that ended in 2021.
Jada Pinkett Smith surprised everyone with the bombshell that she and Will Smith have been separated for the past seven years, including during the infamous Oscars slap.
And Prince Harry spilled all kinds of royal secrets, including everything from his relationships to his private parts.
But they weren't the only ones – read on for more celebrity memoir secrets from 2023.
Britney Spears
Copies of the book "The Woman In Me", Britney Spears's autobiography, is seen in the shelves of Casa del Libro bookshop on October 26, 2023 in Madrid, Spain. (Photo by Carlos Alvarez/Getty Images)
Fans eagerly awaited Britney Spears' memoir, "The Woman in Me," and the singer did not disappoint with her honesty.
Excerpts shared by People and The New York Times covered several topics, the most shocking of which was her claim that she became pregnant by Justin Timberlake while they were dating, and he insisted she have an abortion.
"I’m sure people will hate me for this, but I agreed not to have the baby," she wrote. "I don’t know if that was the right decision. If it had been left up to me alone, I never would have done it. And yet Justin was so sure that he didn’t want to be a father.
"To this day, it’s one of the most agonizing things I have ever experienced in my life."
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Spears also claimed Timberlake cheated on her and she admitted in turn to kissing choreographer Wade Robson. She wrote that when she and the 'NSYNC singer broke up, it was over text.
Elsewhere, she spoke about the erratic behavior that led to her conservatorship, writing it "was never as wild as the press made it out to be."
The mom of two admitted to taking Adderall, but claimed she "never had a drinking problem," and that her headline-making decision to shave her head was borne out of grief.
"I am willing to admit that in the throes of severe postpartum depression, abandonment by my husband, the torture of being separated from my two babies, the death of my adored aunt Sandra, and the constant drumbeat of pressure from paparazzi, I’d begin to think in some ways like a child," she wrote of this difficult time.
"I’d been eyeballed so much growing up. I’d been looked up and down, had people telling me what they thought of my body, since I was a teenager. Shaving my head and acting out were my ways of pushing back," she wrote in an excerpt shared with People.
Jada Pinkett Smith
Jada Pinkett Smith speaks onstage at An Evening with Jada Pinkett Smith in Conversation with Lena Waithe during the 2023 Miami Book Fair at Miami Dade College on November 12, 2023 in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Jason Koerner/Getty Images)
Jada Pinkett Smith described her memoir, "Worthy," as a "no holds barred" look at her life.
"I just wanted to take the opportunity to share my journey," the 52-year-old told Fox News Digital. "I feel like as women, our journeys are still pretty taboo. I don’t think many of us feel safe to share them. So, I wanted to share my journey in hopes it might help somebody through theirs."
In "Worthy," Pinkett Smith revealed she and Will Smith hadn’t been a couple since 2016, when they decided to "separate in every way except legally."
"It was heartbreaking," Pinkett Smith admitted. "It was very difficult. And I think that’s why we really wanted to take our time to uncouple consciously in trying to figure out how we wanted to separate. And in that process, we really wanted to learn a lot about ourselves and one another to the point that we eventually decided that we didn’t want to be divorced," she said.
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The "Girls Trip" star also revealed she thought the Oscars slap, when Smith hit presenter Chris Rock on stage, had been a skit, admitting she thought "the whole confrontation looked fake."
She claimed she was "unclear" about why Smith was so upset because "we had been living separate lives and were there as a family, not as husband and wife."
She also doesn’t consider her "entanglement" with August Alsina an affair because "I associate affairs with cheating" and she and Smith were already separated.
John Stamos
Actor/author John Stamos attends the Tribeca Storytellers: John Stamos at the Tribeca Music Lounge during Art Basel Miami Beach at Miami Beach Botanical Garden on December 08, 2023 in Miami Beach, Florida. (Photo by Mireya Acierto/Getty Images)
"Full House" star John Stamos wrote candidly about childhood sexual abuse, hating his ex, Rebecca Romijn, and his struggles with alcohol in his memoir, "If You Would Have Told Me."
Per People, Stamos claimed in his memoir that he was molested by a babysitter when he was "10 or 11," but didn’t tell anyone about it at the time, reflecting, "I think I told myself, like, 'Ah, it's girls, man.’"
As for his marriage to Romijn, after their divorce, he told People he was "shattered for way too long" about the breakup.
"In my mind back then, she was the Devil, and I just hated her," he said. "I couldn't believe how much I hated her, and it ruined my life."
Through his work with AA’s 12-step program and working on his memoir, he came to terms with the relationship, saying, "You start thinking, it's like, 'Oh, she wasn't the Devil. Maybe I was as much to blame as her.'"
The actor turned to rehab to deal with his alcohol abuse after getting a DUI in 2015, saying that not only do his wife Caitlyn McHugh and son Billy keep him focused on maintaining his sobriety, but so does "that picture of me in handcuffs on that street" from his arrest.
Stamos also claimed he caught his then-girlfriend Teri Copley in bed with Tony Danza, though a representative for Copley told Fox News Digital, "John has a very different recollection of what transpired decades ago."
Matthew Perry
New York Times bestselling author Matthew Perry speaks about his book with Matt Brennan during the 28th Annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books at the University of Southern California on Saturday, April 22, 2023 in Los Angeles, CA. (Dania Maxwell
The late Matthew Perry released his memoir, "Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing," in 2022, but some of the startling revelations from the "Friends" star resurfaced in the wake of his death this year.
Perry suffered from two near-death experiences, the first in 2021 after his heart stopped while under anesthesia during surgery prep. Prior to that, in 2018, the actor’s colon burst, resulting in a two-week coma and five months total in the hospital.
He also revealed the origins of his substance abuse problems, recalling his first drink happened at 14 and he began drinking regularly while living with his father in Los Angeles.
In 1997, he had an accident on a jet ski and was given Vicodin for the first time, and he wrote that a year and a half later he was taking 55 pills a day.
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Perry also had some star-studded romances in his time, including brief encounters with Valerie Bertinelli and Gwyneth Paltrow.
The "Friends" star admitted to having asked out co-star Jennifer Aniston before their time on the show, but her "deafening lack of interest" eventually killed his crush.
The Canadian-born star detailed his short relationship with Julia Roberts, who made a guest appearance on "Friends," admitting he wasn’t able to deal with his own insecurities about their romance.
"Dating Julia Roberts had been too much for me. I had been constantly certain that she was going to break up with me. Why would she not? I was not enough; I could never be enough; I was broken, bent, unlovable," he wrote. "So instead of facing the inevitable agony of losing her, I broke up with the beautiful and brilliant Julia Roberts."
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Prince Harry
Prince Harry's memoir 'Spare' is seen in a bookstore in Krakow, Poland on February 26, 2023. (Photo by Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Prince Harry released his memoir "Spare," in January of this year, but the fallout from the book has been ongoing.
Among the claims is an account of a physical altercation between himself and his brother, Prince William.
Harry wrote that the Prince of Wales allegedly called Meghan Markle "difficult," "rude" and "abrasive" after the two brothers met at Harry’s then-home, Nottingham Cottage, according to the Guardian, which obtained an excerpt of the book.
After a heated shouting match, Prince Harry alleged, per the outlet, "It all happened so fast. So very fast. He grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace, and he knocked me to the floor."
He goes on to say that Prince William apologized, but refused to admit that he had gotten physical with him.
In an interview with Anderson Cooper on "60 Minutes," the Duke of Sussex said he doesn't speak to William or his father, King Charles III.
"We aren't – we haven't spoken for quite a while. Um, no, not recently," Harry said.
The 39-year-old also shocked readers with numerous references to his private parts, including an incident where he suffered from frostbite on his "nether regions."
Ed Begley Jr.
Ed Begley Jr. at Oceana's 5th Annual Rock Under the Stars held on August 12, 2023 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty Images)
In an interview with with The Wall Street Journal promoting his memoir, "To the Temple of Tranquility – and Step on It," Ed Begley Jr revealed how he learned the shocking truth about his biological mother.
"Just before I turned 16, I was with my father en route to take my driver’s license test. On my birth certificate, the box for my mother’s name was blank. Amanda had died of cancer in 1957, when I was 7," he recalled.
"I asked about the empty space. Dad was silent but eventually told me that my real mother was Sandy, someone I long thought was a family friend."
He continued, "Later he told me Sandy had been an NBC page with whom he had an affair. The result was my sister, Allene, then me, 11 months later. Nothing in our family was what it seemed. Our older brother Tom turned out to be our cousin."
Begley went on to explain that he realized he should have felt "grateful" to learn about his biological mother, and that his lack of gratitude contributed to a substance abuse problem until he got sober in 1979.