The most explosive moments from celebrity memoirs: Stars who made first time confessions about affairs, alcohol and drug abuse and even murder in shocking in tell-all books

Over the years many celebrities have divulged their deepest and darkest secrets through the release of shocking tell-all memoirs for the first time.

Sharing some never-before-heard tales affairs and even murder to sell copies of their books, we have heard it all when it comes to jaw-dropping bombshells.

In her own 2023 memoir, Paris Hilton reveal she was groomed by an eighth grade teacher and raped by an older man as she shared shocking details of her ordeal.

Meanwhile, the late Lisa Marie Presley recalled harrowing insights into her marriage to Michael Jackson in her posthumous book.

And notably, Prince Harry hit the headlines when he admitted he lost his virginity to an unnamed older woman at the age of 17 in his explosive autobiography.

Here, MailOnline takes a look at some of the most shocking admissions from celebrity memoirs as they give insight into their wild lives.

Paris Hilton

In her 2023 autobiography, Paris Hilton shocked her fans when she revealed she was groomed by an eighth grade teacher and raped by an older man.

In Paris, The Memoir, she recalled living with her grandmother in Palm Springs and said she would often visit the Westfield Century City shopping centre in Los Angeles with her friends.

The socialite said older men would often hang around the stores and speak to them and one day they invited Paris and her friends back ‘to their house’.

Paris said she was offered ‘berry wine coolers’ to drink and one of the men was particularly forceful about getting her to drink it.

She said: ‘When I had maybe one or two sips, I just immediately started feeling dizzy and woozy. I don’t know what he put in there; I’m assuming it was a roofie [Rohypnol].’ 

‘I became aware of a crushing weight on me. Suffocating me. Cracking my ribs. I felt a jolt of panic and tried to get up, but the impulse was lost, as if something had severed my spinal cord. 

‘When I tried to scream, there was no air in my lungs. All that came out was a small, raspy ‘stop… what’s happening… stop…’ until this guy clamped his hand over my mouth – like, aggressively – like, hard. He clamped down on my face and whispered: “It’s a dream. It’s a dream. You’re dreaming.”‘

Paris added the experience made her feel ashamed and she went to boarding school in Utah for two years soon after. 

The reality star claimed she was sexually abused after being forced to undergo cervical exams performed by staff members in the early hours of the morning while attending the school.

Paris previously said her childhood was ‘stolen’ by the alleged abuse at Provo Canyon School where she spent 11 months when she was 17 years old.

She claimed a teacher told her as a young teenager: ‘I’ve got a crush on you’ before asking for her phone number and warning her not to tell anyone.

She wrote: ‘Mr. Abercrombie called me almost every night, and 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 thirteen years younger than Prince Charles. And Priscilla Presley was my age when Elvis fell in love with her.’

Eggheads star CJ De Mooi

CJ De Mooi, real name Joseph Connagh, became a panellist on the BBC Two show Eggheads in 2003 after winning a series of game shows.

The TV quiz show star sparked a flurry of headlines when his autobiography was published in 2015. 

In it, he described being confronted by a knifeman whom he attacked and threw into one of Amsterdam’s famous canals when he was a penniless teenager in 1988. 

CJ confessed ‘I fully suspect I killed him’ as he recalled the incident in his controversial autobiography. 

The panellist, who is originally from Rotherham, Yorkshire, said he is convinced he delivered a fatal blow as he fought off the man.

After throwing him into the water, CJ said he then left the scene without reporting the incident to the police.

He wrote: ‘He caught me on the wrong day and I just snapped – I punched him so hard in the face, knocked the knife out of his hand and threw him in the canal.’ He added: ‘I fully suspect I killed him.’

In May 2016, Dutch authorities said Mr Connagh was wanted for alleged ‘murder, manslaughter and assault’ and he was arrested at London Heathrow Airport after holidaying in South Africa.

But the warrant was torn up at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in October 2016. 

Dutch authorities later dropped the extradition attempt – but de Mooi was left in serious financial trouble.  

In his book, CJ also revealed how he became a prostitute in London and then Amsterdam after finding himself homeless and penniless in his late teens.

He said he wound up working as a rent boy in a brothel in the Dutch capital after fleeing from his Rotherham home at the age of 17. He later moved to Cologne, Germany, where he was scouted as a model.

Lisa Marie Presley 

The late Lisa Marie Presley revealed shocking details about her marriage to Michael Jackson in her posthumous memoir From Here To The Great Unknown.

In the book, which was completed by Lisa Marie’s daughter Riley Keough from recordings she made prior to her death in January 2023 at age 54, the daughter of Elvis Presley claims that Jackson confessed to her that he was ‘still a virgin’ when they began dating.

At the time, the singer–songwriter — who died in 2009 at age 50 — was 35, while Lisa was a decade younger. The couple tied the knot in May of 1994, just months after they began dating.

In her book, which was released in October, Lisa Marie revealed how Jackson declared his love for her while she was still married to her first husband, Danny Keough.

‘Michael said, “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m completely in love with you. I want us to get married and for you to have my children,”‘ she wrote.

‘I didn’t say anything immediately, but then I said, “I’m really flattered, I can’t even talk,”‘ she continued. ‘By then, I felt I was in love with him too.’

Presley and Keough split shortly after the exchange, and she began her relationship with the King of Pop, but he surprised her with a bombshell shortly after they got together by allegedly telling her he ‘was still a virgin.’

The daughter of Priscilla Presley added that Jackson had shared of his past romantic history, but he said none of his past relationships had been significant.

‘I think he had kissed Tatum O’Neal, and he’d had a thing with Brooke Shields, which hadn’t been physical apart from a kiss. He said Madonna had tried to hook up with him once, too, but nothing happened,’ she recounted.  

Prince Harry

Prince Harry has recounted losing his virginity to an unnamed older woman at the age of 17 in his explosive autobiography.

The Duke of Sussex, 38, explained how his anonymous first lover treated him like a ‘young stallion’ and detailed how the steamy exchange took place in a field behind a ‘very busy pub’.

In 2001, the royal was still a student at Eton College in Windsor when one of the Royal Family‘s bodyguards Marko paid him a visit.

At the beginning of the meeting, Prince Harry says he suspected Marko had heard about the one-night stand – which he described as a ‘humiliating’ experience. 

Over lunch in a cafeteria in the city centre, the bodyguard – who had a ‘sombre look’ on his face – told the Prince that he had been sent to ‘find out the truth’.

The father-of-two wrote: ‘I suspected he was referring to my recent loss of virginity, a humiliating episode with an older woman who liked macho horses and who treated me like a young stallion. 

‘I mounted her quickly, after which she spanked my ass and sent me away. One of my many mistakes was letting it happen in a field, just behind a very busy pub. No doubt someone had seen us.’

However, the real reason Marko had been sent to check up on Harry was because King Charles’ press office had been informed a newspaper had evidence of him taking drugs -which Harry said was ‘all lies’.

Britney Spears 

Britney Spears’ memoir The Woman In Me is packed with bombshell revelations, reflecting on a life in the spotlight full of ups and downs.

In the book she reveals harrowing details about the secret abortion she underwent, aged 19, claiming she can still remember the ‘excruciating’ pain.

The pop superstar candidly recalls her decision to terminate a pregnancy in 2000 during her relationship with Justin Timberlake, 42.

Britney explains how she was left ‘crying and sobbing’ after choosing to undergo the procedure at home in a desperate bid to keep the abortion completely secret from the public and her own family.

‘It was important that no one find out about the pregnancy or the abortion, which meant doing everything at home,’ she wrote.

Recalling the procedure, Britney describes the physical pain as ‘excruciating’.

‘I kept crying and sobbing until it was all over,’ she states. ‘It took hours, and I don’t remember how it ended, but I do, 20 years later, remember the pain of it, and the fear.’

The singer made it clear that she was aware some might judge her for the decision, but insisted that it was a situation she had never expected to go through.

She explained that she did not go through with the pregnancy because N*Sync star Justin ‘wasn’t ready’ for the responsibilities of parenthood and thought, at 19, the pair were both too young.

The Toxic hitmaker who dated Justin from 1999-2002, details the moment she had to make the ‘agonising’ decision after conceiving in late 2000. 

She writes: ‘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.

‘He said we weren’t ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young. I’m sure people will hate me for this, but I agreed not to have the baby. 

‘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.’

‘Abortion was something I never could have imagined choosing for myself, but given the circumstances, that is what we did.’

In the book, Britney also reveals she was raised ‘not to get an abortion’ due to religious reasons and what she had learned from her family.

Tom Felton 

Tom Felton opened up about how his ex-girlfriend staged him an intervention and his lawyer gave him a poignant warning about his life as he spoke about his alcohl abuse in his memoir.

The Harry Potter star candidly admitted he turned to drinking heavily to ‘escape’ his 20s as he detailed his mental health struggles in Beyond the Wand: The Magic and Mayhem of Growing Up a Wizard.

In his book, Tom said his alcohol abuse was just a ‘symptom’ of his ‘deeper’ struggles as he detailed regularly drinking a few pints and shots of whisky before going to rehab three times.

Tom said his manager, who was also his then-girlfriend, staged an intervention for him along with his agents after they became concerned about his alcohol use and urged him to get help.

But he said it was the poignant warning about his life from his lawyer, who he had ‘barely met face to face’, at the intervention that ‘hit him the hardest’, leading to his three rehab stints.

Tom recalled his lawyer’s words: ‘”Tom,” he said, “I don’t know you very well, but you seem like a nice guy. All I want to tell you is that this is the seventeenth intervention I’ve been to in my career. Eleven of them are now dead. Don’t be the twelfth”.’

The actor, known for playing Draco Malfoy in the film adaptations of the Harry Potter novels by J. K. Rowling, said it was then that he finally checked into rehab in Malibu, but then promptly left less than 24 hours later.

Reflecting back on his alcohol abuse, Tom said his drinking was a ‘symptom’ of his ‘deeper’ mental health struggles and used to spend a lot of his time at dive bars and ‘craving normality’ while living in Los Angeles.

‘The alcohol, though, wasn’t the problem. It was the symptom. The problem was deeper,’ he said.

‘I went from being not particularly interested to regularly having a few pints a day before the sun had even gone down, and a shot of whiskey to go with each of them.’

Joan Collins 

Joan Collins shared how she decided to get an abortion after falling pregnant with Warren Beatty’s baby in her 2013 memoir. 

She met Warren in Hollywood when she was 26 and he was 22, with them being an item for almost two years before calling it quits on their relationship. 

The veteran actress said she felt keeping the baby would have ‘ruined my life’ and added that if she hadn’t had the illegal abortion ‘it would have been the death of my career’. 

‘He took none of the responsibility for me becoming pregnant. That was the woman’s department. I tried to convince myself that we were doing the right thing as Warren consulted a piece of paper on which were written the directions. I was in my mid-20s. I had a thriving career. But a baby would change all that,’ she wrote. 

‘I would have to stop working. Fox would cancel my contract. I might lose my figure. I might be a lousy mother. He and I were not suited to each other in the long run.”

‘Although I wasn’t madly in love with Warren, he and I were actually very compatible, even if he needed to have sex several times a day, which often wore me out.

‘He likes to mould his women. I had to stop drinking because Warren never drank. I had to take vitamins because he did. He would be calling me 36 times a day. And he was insatiable — three, four times a day, every day. I felt like an oyster in a slot machine.’

Jada Pinkett Smith

Jada Pinkett Smith revealed that she and husband Will Smith had secretly been separated for seven years – as she admitted that the pair, who tied the knot in 1997, are still trying to ‘figure out’ what the future of their marriage looks like. 

In her 2023 autobiography, opened up about a number of difficult topics – including her battle with ‘depression’ and ‘despair’, which began when she turned 40. 

Jada was the product of a tempestuous childhood in Baltimore, scarred by her mother’s heroin addiction and father’s alcoholism.

Against the backdrop of her turbulent home life, Jada grew to become a drug dealer by the time she befriended Tupac Shakur in high school.

In her autobiography, she writes that she discovered during adulthood that she was suffering from ‘complex trauma with PTSD and dissociation.’ 

Carrie Fisher

After previously keeping quiet about whether anything romantic happened between herself and Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher finally admitted everything in her book. 

In her memoir, she revealed that they had a whirlwind three-month-long, drink-sozzled, drug-addled affair while filming the first Star Wars movie at Elstree studios in Hertforshire in 1976. She was an innocent of 19 and Ford a 33-year-old married father of two.

She recounted how they spent their first night together after a birthday party for Star Wars director George Lucas and although Harrison was married to his college sweetheart Mary Marquardt at the time, they ended up in bed. 

‘I looked over at Harrison. A hero’s face — a few strands of hair fell over his noble, slightly furrowed brow,’ she wrote. ‘How could you ask such a shining specimen of a man to be satisfied with the likes of me?’

‘It was so intense,’ she said. ‘It was Han and Leia during the week, and Carrie and Harrison during the weekend.’ 

She also admitted that their co-star Mark Hamill — who played Luke Skywalker in the trilogy — almost discovered their affair when he unexpectedly dropped in on Ford’s flat. 

The actress described her affair with Ford as ‘a very long one-night stand’, adding: ‘I was relieved when it ended. I didn’t approve of myself.’

Jennette McCurdy 

Jennette McCurdy previously detailed her traumatic childhood in her best-selling memoir I’m Glad My Mom Died, which was released in August 2022.

She spoke in detail about her time on Nickelodeon and alleged that she was subjected to inappropriate behavior from an unnamed staffer whom she referred to as ‘The Creator’ with many speculating it was Dan Schneider.

‘I feel like The Creator has two distinct sides. One is generous and over-the-top complimentary… The other side is mean-spirited, controlling and terrifying,’ Jennette wrote.

The actress claimed she was required to her pose in swimsuits, given unwanted massages, and told to drink alcohol by The Creator during her time on iCarly, which first aired when she was 15 – in September 2007 – and concluded when she was age 20 – in November 2012.

She also wrote in her book that she was forced to film a kiss scene with her costar, Nathan Kress, seven times while ‘The Creator’ yelled things at her like, ‘Move your head around a bit more.’

Jennette added that it was first time ever locking lips with someone, and that she was severely uncomfortable doing it in front of so many people and cameras.

‘My mind is saying who cares that this is your first kiss, that your first kiss is on-camera. Get it over with. Do what you’re told,’ she wrote.

‘My body is saying no, I don’t want this. I don’t want my first kiss to be like this. I want my first kiss to be a real first kiss, not a kiss for a TV show.’

She also claimed that she was ‘terrified of being looked at as a sexual being’ and that ‘The Creator’ once gave her a shoulder massage against her wishes.

Holly Madison 

In her tell-all memoir Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures And Cautionary Tales Of A Former Playboy Bunny, Holly Madison, she reveals the ‘oppressive routine of strict rules, manipulation, and [her] battles with ambitious, backstabbing bunnies,’ inside the Playboy Mansion. 

The model famously had a seven-year open relationship with Playboy founder Hugh Hefner when she was in her 20s and he in his 70s. They split in 2008.

Far from a glamorous lifestyle, Holly reveals that when she moved into the 29-room mansion, she was immediately put off by the yellow carpets that had been stained by dog urine, and claims all rooms were stocked with ‘trays of Johnson’s Baby Oil, Vaseline and Kleenex’.

‘Prior to moving into the Mansion, I’d been a fairly confident person, but it didn’t take long for my self-worth to crumble,’ Holly writes in the extract.

She said life in the Mansion became so depressing that she even contemplated suicide. 

The girlfriends – who had a strict 9pm curfew on nights they didn’t go clubbing with Hefner – secretly kept boyfriends on the side, and would tape up the air vents in their room so they could smoke meth without anyone knowing.

She revealed Hugh would also pay for any plastic surgery they wanted, and gave them a $1,000-a-week clothing allowance.

‘Frankly speaking, I’ve always been pretty uncomfortable with Hef’s fascination with extremely young women,’ Madison wrote in the book.

‘He was obsessed with women looking as young as humanly possible. Everything — absolutely everything — about that skeeved me out.’

Matthew Perry 

Matthew Perry’s memoir made headlines due to its openness and the candour with which he described his health struggles during extensive media rounds.

Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing documented his time on the beloved sitcom, Friends, while also revealing harrowing details about his lengthy battle with addiction. 

He revealed that he had spent $9 million trying to get sober, admitting that he had been to 6,000 AA meetings, gone to rehab 15 times, and been in detox 65 times. 

As well as his revelations about the horrific effects of drug and alcohol addiction – which saw him suffer a burst colon and go into a coma – Perry made a chilling statement in the book’s prologue.

‘I should be dead,’ he wrote. ‘My mind is out to kill me, and I know it. I am constantly filled with a lurking loneliness, a yearning, clinging to the notion that something outside of me will fix me.’

A jet ski accident in 1997, on the set of his film Fools Rush In, saw him hospitalized and later become addicted to the opioid painkiller Vicodin. 

He said at one point he was taking 55 Vicodin pills a day, and his weight dropped to 128 pounds.

In 2000 he was taken to hospital with pancreatitis, and in 2018 his colon burst. 

He announced that he had overcome addiction in 2021 and was leading a healthier lifestyle.

Matthew’s shock death came almost exactly one year after it’s release.