Recently, we wrote about wild celebrity facts, and now we’re back for more. Here are 33 more shocking facts about celebrities you won’t believe are true.
1.
Charlize Theron witnessed her mother kill her father. Born to Gerda Maritz and Charles Theron in South Africa in 1975, Charlize witnessed plenty of family violence. When she was 15, Gerda shot Charles in self-defense in front of Charlize. “My father was so drunk that he shouldn’t have been able to walk when he came into the house with a gun. My mom and I were in my bedroom leaning against the door because he was trying to push through the door,” Theron recalled. “So both of us were leaning against the door from the inside to have him not be able to push through. He took a step back and just shot through the door three times. None of those bullets ever hit us, which is just a miracle. But in self-defense, she [Charlize’s mother] ended the threat.”
2.
Tina Fey was stabbed in her front yard as a kid and still has a scar on her face because of it. She was only five years old and was playing in the yard when a stranger approached with a knife, cutting her cheek. Fey was apparently confused, thinking she had been marked with a pen. “I proceeded, unaware of it. I was a very confident little kid. It’s really almost like I’m kind of able to forget about it until I was on-camera,” Fey said.
3.
In another darker entry to this list, Matthew Broderick once caused the death of someone while driving. Broderick (with then-girlfriend Jennifer Grey as a passenger) drove on the wrong side of the road in Ireland in 1987 and caused a crash that killed 63-year-old Margaret Doherty and her 28-year-old daughter, Anna Gallagher. He was only charged with careless driving and paid a $175 fine. This occurred only days before Dirty Dancing was released, catapulting Grey into stardom.
4.
Phill Lewis, who you may remember as Mr. Moseby in The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, also killed someone while driving. The actor drove drunk and fatally hit a 21-year-old woman in 1991. He served one year in prison in the middle of his career, then went right back to a booming acting career, appearing in a number of sitcoms before beginning his tenure with Disney.
5.
David Bowie didn’t have heterochromia, as many believe. His eyes appear different because their pupils are very different sizes, which is called anisocoria. He was not born with this condition; he actually had gotten into a fight with his friend George Underwood as a teenager. The two apparently had a crush on the same girl, with Bowie “boasting” to Underwood about being a “casanova.” Underwood got upset and punched Bowie in the eye, scratching it accidentally with his fingernail. Funnily enough, there were no lasting hard feelings, and Underwood would go on to become a huge collaborator of Bowie’s.
6.
Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson reportedly had a breast reduction due to having gynecomastia, where a man’s breast tissue swells. In the 2000s, he’s said to have undergone gynecomastia surgery, which is a reduction of breast tissue. According to the World Entertainment News Network, he said of the surgery: “It was an aesthetic thing. I went in and showed the doctor, and he said, ‘Are you crazy?’ I was walking around with my shirt off all the time, so I had it done.”
7.
Prolific singer Johnny Cash was one of the very first Americans to learn of Stalin’s death. During the Cold War, Cash was tasked with intercepting and decoding messages from the Soviets, and it’s long been rumored that he was the one to alert US officials — who alerted then–President Eisenhower — that Stalin had died. His daughter Roseanne confirmed the rumor: “He told me and my siblings about it many times over our lives.”
8.
Cash also caused a massive wildfire in 1965 that almost completely destroyed a population of endangered birds. Cash’s autobiography states he was leaving a fishing trip when he pulled over to deal with his camper’s squeaky wheel. He found oil dripping onto the hot wheel, which started a grass fire that quickly grew and burned 500 acres of the Los Padres National Forest, which is a sanctuary for the endangered California Condors. In the end, 49 of the 53 Condors there were killed. Cash was sued by the government and in the deposition, said, “I don’t give a damn about your yellow buzzards. Why should I care?” He settled with the government and paid a $82,001 fine.
9.
Bryan Cranston and his brother were once murder suspects. The two were working temporarily at a restaurant in Florida to make some money while on a long trip around the US. The restaurant’s chef, Peter Wong, apparently “hated everyone” and was unpopular amongst the staff, who would joke about how they’d “do away” with him. Having earned enough money, the brothers left to go north. Around the same time, Peter Wong went missing. When investigators questioned the restaurant staff, they pointed to the Cranstons. “Little did we know they put out an APB [all-points bulletin] on us and to find us, we were somewhere in the Carolinas, I think, at that point,” Cranston recalled. Luckily, investigators found the real murderers before the Cranstons.
10.
That’s not the only wild story from Cranston’s life. He also met prolific cult leader Charles Manson in 1968, just a year before Manson’s followers brutally murdered Sharon Tate and her friends. Cranston was horseback riding with his cousin at Spahn Ranch, where Manson and his followers resided. Cranston tweeted that he “saw the little man with crazy eyes whom the other hippies called Charlie.” Cranston was only 12 at the time.
“I didn’t actually meet Charles Manson, but I was as close as I am to you,” Cranston claimed in an interview where he also spoke about the encounter, sitting right next to the interviewer. “We were renting the horses, and this young guy, bearded guy, came in screaming, ‘Charlie’s on the hill!’ And about a dozen people galloped away,” Cranston recounted. “I couldn’t take my eyes off him.” A year later, after Manson’s arrest, Cranston recognized him immediately.
11.
Speaking of Manson — he was friendly with a number of big players in Hollywood, including Dennis Wilson and Mike Love, the co-founders of the Beach Boys. In fact, Manson and his friends actually moved into Wilson’s house. Wilson later allegedly told Love that he’d seen Manson murder a Black man (though this is contested), causing Wilson to break off the friendship.
12.
And speaking of the Tate murder…Sharon Tate and her friends were not the intended targets, according to prosecutors — Tate just happened to live in the house once owned by music producer Terry Melcher, who had rejected proposals to make a record with Manson. Melcher, the son of famous actor and singer Doris Day, testified at Manson’s trial that he had met Manson through Dennis Wilson and gave him an audition but ultimately decided not to work with him.
13.
Steve McQueen came very close to being killed by the Manson family that night. He had been invited to Tate’s house, and the only reason he didn’t go, according to his then-wife Neile Adams, was that he “ran into a chickie and decided to go off with her instead.”
14.
Rick James was also supposed to be at Tate’s. His manager Jay Sebring — who was murdered that night — invited James and his girlfriend, but James was high and drunk and did not go. He saw the headlines about the murders when he woke up.
15.
Speaking of killers, Debbie Harry — who became famous as the frontwoman of Blondie — was once given a ride by Ted Bundy. Leaving a serving shift late at night in the 1970s, she was trying to get home but couldn’t find a cab and was tired of walking in her heels. A car was circling, with a man offering her a ride, and she decided to get in, but quickly saw that was a mistake. “For one, it was very hot in the car, and the windows rolled up nearly to the top,” she recounted in 2002. “The guy had a white shirt, and he was very good-looking. Then I realized this guy had the worst BO I have ever smelt. Then I looked over at the door to crank down the window and saw there was no door handle, no crank. I cast my eyes around and saw that the car had been gutted. There was nothing in there. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.”
Harry tried to open the door from the outside, sticking her arm through the opening in the window, but Bundy saw what she was doing. “As soon as he saw that, he tried to turn the corner really fast, and I spun out of the car and landed in the middle of the street.” Having escaped Bundy, who would later confess to 30 murders (many of which were of young women), Harry said, “I was so lucky.”
16.
One more celeb/murderer connection…Sean Penn was once in jail with the infamous Night Stalker serial killer. In fact, the murderer, Richard Ramirez, essentially sent Penn fan mail asking for an autograph. Penn, who was spending 60 days in jail at the time for reckless driving and punching an extra, said Ramirez wrote, “Hey, Sean, stay tough and hit them again — Richard Ramirez, 666.” Penn replied with a note saying he felt “absolutely no kinship” with Ramirez, despite both being inmates and said, “I hope gas descends upon you before sanity does, you know? It would be a kinder way out.”
17.
Oh, and speaking of celebrities in jail, Jordan Belfort and Tommy Chong were cellmates. In case you forgot, Belfort is a former stockbroker and criminal who Leonardo DiCaprio famously portrayed in The Wolf of Wall Street, which was based on Belfort’s memoir. Belfort began his memoir in prison for his financial crimes — after he got the idea from his cellmate, Tommy Chong, who was serving time for selling drug paraphernalia. The two had become friends and regaled each other with funny stories from their lives. After a few nights of this, Chong suggested Belfort write a book.
18.
Steve Buscemi, a former firefighter, spent five 12-hour days digging people out of the rubble after 9/11, looking for survivors. Feeling depressed and anxious after the attacks, he headed for the site and found his old engine company, asking if he could join them. The Brotherhood of Fire Facebook page later pointed out, “Very few photographs and no interviews exist because he declined them. He wasn’t there for the publicity.”
19.
Speaking of 9/11, James Cameron missed the world-altering event entirely because he was filming the Titanic wreckage. He was filming the documentary Ghosts of the Abyss, which involved underwater footage of the Titanic wreckage and Titanic star Bill Paxton, on September 11, 2001. Twelve hours after the attacks, Cameron surfaced from an underwater dive and asked Paxton, “What is this thing that’s going on?” and Paxton replied, “The worst terrorist attack in history, Jim.” Cameron hypothesized he “was presumably the last man in the Western Hemisphere to learn about what had happened.”
20.
According to his brother Jermaine, Michael Jackson was meant to have a meeting at the World Trade Center on 9/11. He missed the meeting by oversleeping because he’d been up late the night before talking with his family.
21.
And Mark Wahlberg and Seth McFarlene were both meant to be on flights that crashed that day. Wahlberg had decided last-minute to go to a film festival in Canada instead, and McFarlene was hungover and missed his flight by 10 minutes.
22.
In an even wilder 9/11 example, actor and comedian Steve Rannazzisi claimed to have been in the towers during 9/11. He said he’d been working at Merrill Lynch on the 54th floor of the Twin Towers during the 9/11 attacks. “The first tower got hit, and we got jostled all over the place,” he recounted. “Then the Port Authority came on the loudspeaker, ‘Explosion in Tower 1, things are being taken care of, everyone remain where you are, stay calm, we’re figuring things out.’ And I was like, ‘I’m going to check this thing out. I went downstairs, went outside, saw all the pandemonium, and then about five or six minutes later, ‘bang’ [the second tower was struck]…” He admitted in 2022 that this story was a falsehood: “I don’t know why I said this. This was inexcusable. I am truly, truly sorry.”
23.
Frank Sinatra’s mom, Dolly, was a fierce advocate of women’s rights and performed illegal abortions in the ’30s and ’40s, which reportedly led to at least six arrests. She was also arrested for demonstrating in favor of women’s suffrage. Oh, and she also apparently ran a bootleg bar during Prohibition. Basically, Dolly is my idol.
24.
Another star with a prolific relative is Olivia Newton-John. Her grandfather, Max Born, was a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who was friends with Einstein and worked as Oppenheimer’s supervisor. The two came up with the famous Born-Oppenheimer approximation in quantum physics.
25.
Joaquin Phoenix was raised in the Children of God cult, along with his late brother, River Phoenix. His parents were “archbishops” of the religious organization, preaching about the group in Venezuela and Trinidad. The group has been accused of using sex as a recruitment tactic, and Phoenix said his parents left after they discovered this, as their involvement had been “idealistic” and “innocent.” Phoenix was three when they left. The cult was accused of child abuse, which it denied, but River Phoenix claimed he had his first sexual experience in the cult when he was just four.
26.
Rose McGowan also grew up in the same cult, living in a Children of God commune in Italy until she was nine. Her parents fled after the cult began pushing child-adult sexual relationships, leading her father to fear that Rose would become a victim.
27.
David and Patricia Arquette grew up in a commune started by their parents. Along with other advocates of the Subud spiritual movement, they bought an old Christian summer camp and settled there with their families. The Arquette family slept in one room with no running water or electricity for four years.
28.
Jackie Chan starred in a porn film very early in his career. In 1975, he starred in All in the Family, along with a well-known porn star of the time. It was apparently also a comedy. Speaking about the role years later, Chan said, “I had to do anything I could to make a living 31 years ago, but I don’t think it’s a big deal; even Marlon Brando used to be exposed in his movies. The porn movie at that time was more conservative than the current films.”
29.
And one of Sylvester Stallone’s first roles was in a softcore porn film called The Party at Kitty and Stud’s. He only auditioned for the film because he’d been evicted and was sleeping at the Port Authority Bus Terminal. He said he’d had to choose between doing the movie or robbing someone, saying he was at “the very end” of his rope. Starring in the film gave him $200 and got him out of being unhoused.
30.
Another wild celeb story involves Sylvester’s costar, Dolph Lundgren, who memorably played the ruthless boxer Ivan Drago opposite Stallone in Rocky IV. In 2009, masked burglars broke into Lundgren’s house, not realizing who it belonged to, and tied up his wife, Anette Qviberg, forcing her to hand over money and jewelry. The thieves then saw family photos featuring Lundgren…and quickly fled, terrified of the famously strong and tall celebrity.
31.
You probably already know Jane Fonda comes from a famous family, but you likely didn’t know she also comes from royalty. Fonda is related to Jane Seymour, one of Henry VIII’s six wives (which include Anne Boleyn — notably, the wives are the subject of the musical Six.) In fact, she was named after Jane — and says she went by Lady until the fourth grade in reference to Seymour.
32.
Metallica is one of the few musical acts to have performed in Antarctica. After this show, which took place in 2013, they became the first-ever band to have performed on every continent. In fact, they performed in every single continent over the course of one calendar year.
33.
And finally, Michael Keaton’s real name is Michael Douglas. Actors often have to register a different name with SAG-AFTRA, the actor’s union, if their birth name is taken (Emma Stone’s real name is Emily Stone for this reason, for example). But it’s rare that the other name belongs to a celebrity of the same level, and it’s funny to me that two prolific actors have the exact same name.
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