" James Hetfield , beat guitar musician and vocalist for Metallica . Went from being a janitor and workingin a sticker manufacturing plant to being in the biggest alloy ring of all time . "
I love a good celebrity memoir. Some my favorites includeIsEveryone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)byMindy KalingandThe Woman in MebyBritney Spears. While it seems like just about everybody in Hollywood has a memoir these days, there are still quite a few interesting celebs who have yet to commit their life stories to paper or who passed before they could write one.
Recently, weaskedtheBuzzFeed Communitywhich celebs they’d love to read a tell-all memoir from.
Here are 18 of their top answers:
1.“Justin Bieber! On the surface, he seemed to have grown up in front of our eyes with cameras on his every move, but almost his entire life has been flooded with rumors and conspiracies that he has neither confirmed nor denied. It would be interesting to get his truths about his life and fame straight from him.”
Justin has been subjected to many rumors, especially when he was a teenager. In 2011, a 19-year-old womansuedhim, claiming that he slept with her backstage at a concert the year prior and was now the father of her newborn child. He would have only been 16 at the time of the alleged encounter. She laterwithdrewher paternity case.
Since the end of 2015, Justin has faced conspiracy theories that he hooked up withKourtney KardashianBarker, which hedenied. There’s also been speculation that he’s the father of her oldest son, Reign, which Reign himself hasdenied.
2.“Keanu Reeves. He seems to have gone through a lot and still remains humble.”
PerBritannica, Keanu was born in Beirut, Lebanon. After his parents' divorce, he lived in Syndey, then NYC, then Toronto with his mother, who was a costume designer. According toPeople, in 2000, he and his girlfriend at the time, Jennifer Syme, had a daughter named Ava, who was stillborn. They broke up shortly after the loss but remained close. A little over a year later, Jennifer died in a car accident. In 2019, Keanu told theGuardian, “With any character, the way I think about it is, you have the role on the page, you have the vision of the director, and you have your life experience… I thought [my experience with bereavement] was one of the foundations of the role for John Wick. I love his grief.”
3.“Sir Daniel Day-Lewis would likely write an interesting tome.”
Daniel is known for his often extreme approach to method acting. For example, to prep for the role of Gerry Conlon inIn the Name of the Father, he spent two days in a prison cell without anything to eat or drink. In 2008, he told theGuardian, “You have to learn. You need to understand what it is like to be interrogated by three two-man teams over a period of two days. If an innocent man signs a confession, which pisses away his life, it is part of your responsibility to touch on why a human being would do that. So my curiosity leads me into those places. But I don’t want to make too much of the details. They are just that — details. When you don’t know from experience, or you can’t explore through the imagination, you better do some sort of practical work that is at least going to stimulate the imagination, because finally the whole thing is just an act of imagination.”
And according to theGuardian, while starring inMy Left Footas artist Christy Brown, who had cerebral palsy, Daniel had crew members push him around in a wheelchair, lift him, and spoonfeed him. Spending so much time in the wheelchair caused damage to two of his ribs. He won his first Oscar for the role.
4.“Lorne Michaels.”
Lorne has been in charge ofSaturday Night Livesince its inception in 1975, aside from a brief hiatus from 1980-1985. Fans of the show often speculate when he’ll retire or who will replace him, but he has no plans to leave. In 2024, he toldThe Hollywood Reporter, “I think the times, and also there are not many network shows left, and this one has taken on [an importance]. It’s more about keeping it on course than anything else, and obviously, I really love it. And every year, there are more and more people that I rely on for other things, but, in the end, you really need someone to say, ‘This is what we’re doing.’ So, I don’t really have an answer; I just know that this is kind of what I do and as long as I can keep doing it, I’ll keep doing it. There’’s no immediate plan.”
5.“Pedro Pascal!!! I bet he has the best stories!!”
Pedro wasbornin Santiago, Chile. His parents, who became political refugees after joining the opposition movement against Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship, fled the country with their children and sought political asylum when he was 9 months old. He toldOrange Coast magazine, “It was the mid-’70s, and my parents were young and liberal. It was a dangerous time, and they were lucky they got out with their lives.” Initially, they went to Denmark, then they moved to San Antonio, Texas. When Pedro was 11, they relocated to Newport Beach, California.
As he toldInterview Magazine, he became close friends with Sarah Paulson when they both attended NYU. When they were both working as actors, she supported him emotionally and, at times, financially. She toldEsquire, “He’s talked about this publicly, but there were times when I would give him my per diem from a job I was working on so that he could have money to feed himself.”
6.“Paris Jackson!”
Paris is the daughter of Michael Jackson, who died when she was only 11. In 2017, she toldRolling Stonethat, at 15, she dealt with drug addiction, depression, and suicidal ideation. For her sophomore year and half of her junior year, she attended a therapeutic boarding school. In a 2020Instagram storypost, she shared, “As a girl who also went to a behavior modification ‘boarding school’ for almost two years as a teenager, and has since been diagnosed with PTSD because of it, and continue to have nightmares and trust issues, I stand with [Paris Hilton] and the other survivors.”
7.“Nicole Kidman, and/or Katie Holmes.”
Nicole and Katie have both been previously married to Tom Cruise. Nicole was married to him from 1990-2001. At the 2015Women In The Worldconference, she said, “Out of my divorce came work that was applauded, so that was an interesting thing for me. That culminated in winning an Oscar, and that caused an epiphany which was, ‘This isn’t the answer’. I was holding a gold statue, and I was the loneliest I’d ever been.”
PerUSA Today, there has been speculation that Scientology, the religion that Tom and his two children with Nicole practice, played a part in their divorce. However, asGlamournotes, in 2013, Nicole reportedly said, “I’ve chosen not to speak publicly about Scientology. I have two children who are Scientologists — Connor and Isabella — and I utterly respect their beliefs.”
Katie was married to Tom from 2006-2012. PerThe Hollywood Reporter, in 2013, Tom Cruise sued Bauer Media for defamation over a story alleging he’d abandoned their daughter, Suri. Lawyers questioned whether or not he believed Katie ended their marriage “in part to protect Suri from Scientology. He answered, “Listen, I find that question offensive. I find it — those statements offensive. And like with any relationship, there are many different levels to it. You know, I — I find it very offensive. There is no need to protect my daughter from my religion.” The lawyers continued, “And Ms. Holmes has never indicated in any way that was one of the reasons she left you? … To protect Suri from Scientology?” Tom replied, “Did she say that? That was one of the assertions, yes.”
8.“Taylor Swift.”
As Taylor toldCMT Insider, when she was 10, a TV program she watched about Faith Hill inspired her to pursue a country music career. Every day, she begged her parents to take her to Nashville, when they finally relented over spring break. She said, “I was 11 and I had this little demo CD — a karaoke CD of me singing songs by Dolly Parton and the Dixie Chicks andLeAnn Rimes. And I marched up and down Music Row with these demo CDs, and I’d walk in and hand them to the receptionist while my mom and my little brother were parked outside in a rental car.” When things didn’t turn out the way she imagined, she “went back to Pennsylvania and started writing songs and playing guitar.”
At 13, shelandeda development deal with RCA Records, and her family eventually moved to Tenessee. Per theTelegraph, Sony also contracted her as a songwriter. At 14, she “genuinely felt that [she] was running out of time” and left both labels and set up her own showcase performance, which led to her signing with Big Machine Records. At 16, she released her debut album, and it was only up from there.
Of course, Taylor has famously chronicled her relationships, friendships, and other life experiences (such as dealing with bullies and moving to NYC) in her songs. Some of the most defining narratives of her career have been her feud withKanye Westand herdecision to re-recordher first six albums after the sale of her masters.
9.“Dove Cameron. She’s such an incredible person who’s been through so much in her life, but she’s very strong, and I love her for it.”
Dove experienced significant loss during her Disney Channel days. She told theArmchair Expertpodcast, “At the point thatLiv and Maddiewas airing and I was working, my father had taken his own life. That’s gonna affect any kid, like, when you’re 15 and that happens. And within, like, the same calendar year, we were in, like, 900 million homes and, like, translated into all these different languages. There was no way for me to wrap my head around it, understand it, conceptualize it. Like, it was really like, we were at his funeral, and then, like, on Bainbridge Island, and then a couple months later, I was, like, at the Grove with people asking me to sign glossies. And I didn’t know how to really reconcile with that. It didn’t hit me that I was, like, a famous person until years later.”
PerTeen Vogue, she changed her legal name to Dove, which was her father’s nickname for her, in honor of him.
Then, in 2019, Dove’s friend andDescendantscostar,Cameron Boyce, died at age 20. When she got a tattoo in honor of him, she toldVogue, “My friend Cameron passed away a few months ago, and he was starting this organization called Wielding Peace. He wanted to get influential people holding things that looked like they were in the shape of a gun…but then it would be something artistic or peaceful. He did it with a bouquet of flowers, actually. I think that’s really beautiful, and I’ve been trying to think of a tattoo to get for him since he passed. I just felt that this one was really appropriate.”
In 2020, Dove felt pressured tocome outpublicly after fans accused her of “queerbaiting” because she used an emoji of two women kissing to promote her song. She toldArmchair Expertthat she was “confused” by the criticism and “hated” having to come out publicly. She said, “And also, at that time, I’d never said it publicly, but all my friends, all my family, they knew I was queer…I just hated that I had to say it. I had a feeling that people were going to say I wasn’t queer enough…I didn’t really have an issue being second-guessed, because I truly was like, ‘I know what I am.'”
10.“James Hetfield, rhythm guitar player and singer for Metallica. Went from being a janitor andworkingin a sticker factory to being in the biggest metal band of all time.”
According toUltimate Classic Rock, James worked in a sticker factory and as a janitor after graduating high school, spending his lunch breaks working on song ideas. Per the band’swebsite, the same year James graduated, he met drummer Lars Ulrich through a newspaper ad. After recruiting bassist Ron McGovney and lead guitarist Dave Mustaine, the group chose the name Metallica.
11.“Dua Lipa! Her parents and her sister’s story, plus her relationships with celebrities.”
Dua’s parents, Anesa and Dukagjin Lipa, are from Kosovo, but they left the country amidst conflict. She told theGuardian, “So much has happened in my grandparents’ lives and my parents' lives… When you try to come to it and grasp everything there, it’s alot…Once the Serbians came in, they wanted a lot of the historians to rewrite the history of Kosovo. To change it – that Kosovo was always part of Serbia and never part of Yugoslavia. And my grandfather [Seit Lipa, the head of the Kosovo Institute of History] was one of those people who wouldn’t, so he lost his job, because he didn’t want to write a history that he didn’t believe to be true.” In 1992, Anesa and Dukagjin relocated to London for refuge. They worked as servers while studying for new careers.
PerPeople, Dua’s little sister, Rina, is a former competitive dancer turned model/actor. As she toldBritish Vogue, she was six when the family moved home to Kosovo. She said, “For the next eight years, I called the youngest country in Europe home, dancing at the National Theatre of Kosovo and running wild in the Rugova mountains. Even though I moved back to England at 14, my formative years living in the capital of Kosovo, Prishtina, are woven into who I am, like threads in a tapestry. My older sister, Dua, my younger brother, Gjin, and I still call it home.”
And Dua Lipa is currently in arelationshipwith Callum Turner, but she’s dated several other notable celebs. Most notably, shereportedlydated LANY singer Paul Klein for five months between 2017-2018 and model Anwar Hadid from about 2019-2021.
12.“Dame Judi Dench. I wish she’d been able to do a joint tell-all with Dame Maggie Smith. It would be equal parts hilarious and biting.”
Maggie and Judi were friends from 1957, when theymetin an Old Vic theatre dressing room, until Maggie’s death in 2024. Theystarredin five movies together, includingA Room with a ViewandLadies in Lavender. They also did multiple stage productions together. Judi plants trees in honor of her late friends, and on the day of Maggie’s funeral, the gardener brought Judi a piece of fruit from Maggie’s tree. She told theBBC, “Joe, who works for me, came in, and he had one little crab apple. And so I had it in my pocket at her funeral, which was a very nice thing to have.”
13.“Rob Thomas from Matchbox Twenty. I have seen a few interviews, and it sounds like he had an interesting, albeit troubled, childhood, and it would be interesting to read about it.”
According toPeople, Rob was born in Germany while his dad was stationed in the army, but the family relocated to Orlando when Rob was six months old. Two years down the road, his parents divorced, and Rob’s mom took him and his older half-sister, Missy, to South Carolina to live with their grandma, who illicitly sold marijuana and moonshine at her roadside market. They bounced around for a while, then when Rob was 12, his mother was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease. He became her main caretaker, and 17-year-old Missy left home to get married. After entering remission, his mom adopted a party lifestyle, and Rob left home as a teenager. He said, “I would sneak into [friends'] houses at night and stay in their closets. Sometimes friends would leave the family car open and let me sleep in it.”
At school he joined the chorus because of a girl and started “writing really cheesy love songs so [he] could play them to all the girls at parties.” However, he later dropped out. Per theLA Times, he experienced homelessness for three years. He toldRolling Stonethat he " stole a lot of things,” and he spent two months in jail for stealing a Camaro.
However, according to theLA Times, he kept playing music, and in Orlando, he connected with his future bandmates. After his first band, Tabitha’s Secret, broke up, producer Matt Serletic introduced Rob, Paul Doucette, and Brian Yale to Kyle Cook and Adam Gaynor. The musicians formed Matchbox Twenty.
14.“Dame Emma Thompson, because 1) I love her, and 2) she seems like she’s reached the point where she no longer GAF about what people think of her, and I aspire to be that amazing.”
During her Cambridge years, Emma’s life was “completely changed” by the discovery of “Gilbert and Gubar’s bookThe Madwoman in the Attic, which is about Victorian female writers and the disguises they took on in order to express what they wanted to express.” She was friends with fellow actor Simon McBurney. She toldNew York Magazine, “Yes, we both had cropped punk short red hair. And dyed it together, and wore these leather jackets and went around on a Honda 250, and were probably very unpleasant…When Simon left university and went to study mime at the [Jacques] Lecoq School in Paris, I followed him and did a very interesting course with a French clown called Philippe Gaulier on his intellectualized notion of buffoonery.”
She also said, “I always wanted to be a comedian. I wanted to be Lily Tomlin. American women were being funny way before our lot started. I remember sharing a bedroom with French and Saunders [the duo that createdAb Fab] at Edinburgh when we were all in shows, and I was desperately in love with somebody who lived with a ballet dancer. I said, ‘I can’t compete with a ballet dancer!’ And they said, ‘But you’re funny, and that’s much, much more attractive.’ And of course they were wrong.”
15.“Idina Menzel.”
According toNew York Magazine, Idina grew up the daughter of a pajama salesperson father and a therapist mother. Her parents wouldn’t let her be a child actor, so when she was 15, she’d pretend to be 18 and illegally drive herself to work as a wedding and bar mitzvah singer. The NYU graduate was actually a rock singer when she got cast inRent, where she met her first husband, Taye Diggs. She had trouble finding footing in her career until booking the starring role as Elphaba inWicked. The show launched Idina to Broadway icon status, and she and her costar, Kristin Chenoweth, were plagued byrumorsof a backstage feud.
Two decades after the show opened, Kristin addressed the feud rumors, tellingVulture, “After a certain amount of time after we opened, my mom was dealing with cancer. I was emotional, and I was thinking about some other things. To me, there was no way that I would win a Tony. Yes, it’s the two girls as leads. But it’s Elphaba’s story. I needed to deal with that part of me. I was very emotional. I tried to push it out. I mean, if only people knew.” Idina added, “Unfortunately, people like to do that to women. They can’t be supportive of one another. You have to put all this conflict in there…We were tired and extremely supportive of one another. We’d been doing it for, before San Francisco, three years of workshops.”
16.“Amanda Bynes. She must have really gone through some things we don’t know about.”
Amanda was a child star on Nickelodeon, most notably starring inThe Amanda Show. In 2013, after a series of legal issues and mental health issues, she wasplacedunder a conservatorship. Then, in 2022, it wasterminatedwith the support of her parents and her lawyer.
17.“Mark Hamill. I have read some of Carrie Fisher’s memoirs, and I think Mark might have had similar experiences.”
In her memoirThe Princess Diarist, Carrie revealed that, on the set of the firstStar Warsmovie, she had an affair with costar Harrison Ford, who was 14 years older than her and married. Mark toldThe Hollywood Reporter, “I was so self-involved at that point, they could’ve been doing it in front of me and I wouldn’t have noticed. I was single and had my own agenda.”
A past relationship turned him off from dating other actors. He said, “If the relationship doesn’t last and you’re on a TV series and you got four more seasons to go, it can be really awkward. It happened to me. I was with a girl [Anne Wyndham] who was playing my sister on a soap opera,General Hospital.”
However, Mark wasn’t single for long. Per theSpokesman-Review, a year after the first Star Wars movie was released, he married dental hygenist Marilou York.
18.And finally: “Reneé Rapp! I love her, and she is amazing, and I think she would have a lot for us to learn from and about.”
Reneéwonthe 2018 National High School Musical Theatre Award and made her Broadway debut only a year later. She famously played Regina George inMean Girls: The Musical. However, she told theGuardianthat the experience worsened her eating disorder because certain production members would allegedly “say some vile fucking things” about her body. It reached the point that her parents flew to NYC in an attempt to convince her to leave the role. In 2020, she moved to onscreen work, landing a leading role inThe Sex Lives of College Girls.
She toldCall Her Daddy, “The first year of doingCollege Girlswas terrible. It sucked so bad, because at the time, I was in a heteronormative relationship, and I hated going to work because I was like, ‘I don’t think I’m good enough to be here. I don’t think I can be here. I don’t think I can be doing this’…and then I would come home, and I would psyche myself out, literally…I called one of my friends and I was like, ‘I am straight, like, I think I’m just straight; I can’t do this.’ …I was in a panic constantly, and I wasn’t [straight], but I was so freaked out by the idea of my sexuality not being finite or people laughing at me, or me laughing at myself, that I hated the first year of filming.”
Reneéannouncedher departure from the show in 2023. Having previously identified as bisexual, shecame outas a lesbian onSaturday Night Livein 2024. She toldThemthat the original line was, “We need assistance from our little bisexual intern Reneé,” but she asked writer Celeste Yim, “Can we change that ‘bisexual’ to ‘gay’?” Reneé recalled, “They were so sweet — and obviously, they were going to be so sweet. But to me, I was thinking about being so afraid to publicly change my identity. I didn’t want anybody to be upset with me.”
remark : Some response have been edited for length / uncloudedness .
