1.
Osama bin Laden was a major Whitney Houston fan, according to Kola Boof, who claims to have lived with Bin Laden for a few months. “He said that he had a paramount desire for Whitney Houston, and although he claimed music was evil, he spoke of someday spending vast amounts of money to go to America and try to arrange a meeting with the superstar,” she said. She even claimed Bin Laden planned to kill Bobby Brown, whom she was married to at the time.
2.
Colin Farrell was once an attempted murder suspect. On The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Farrell revealed in a “true confessions” game that as a teenager, he’d been brought in for questioning about an attempted murder — which, by the way, was never solved — because he looked like the pencil sketch of the perpetrator.
“I was in Sydney, Australia, and I was pulled in by the cops. And they showed me a photo of the pencil sketch of the guy that had attempted to murder this other gentleman, had beat him up and left him in his own apartment and set the apartment on fire and split, thereby leaving the guy to burn to death, and it was me. They said, what do you think about that picture? And I went, ‘I think I’m in trouble,'” Farrell revealed. “Yeah, it was terrifying. I was there for about six hours, and then thankfully, a friend of mine had kept a journal, and that particular night, and that particular time, we were at a party on the other side of town doing Ecstasy.”
3.
Maybe I’m the last one to know this, but I only just learned that Snoop Dogg was charged with first-degree murder in 1993. Snoop’s bodyguard at the time, McKinley Lee, shot and killed Snoop’s rival gang member, Phillip Woldermariam, from Snoop’s car while Snoop was driving. According to Lee, Woldermariam was reaching for his gun and fired on him before he could draw his weapon. Snoop’s lawyer also claimed self-defense and said Woldemariam had threatened Snoop’s life numerous times.
Complicating things, though, was that Snoop didn’t immediately turn himself in; instead, he chose to perform “Murder Was The Case” at the MTV VMAs about a week later. Police went to the awards to arrest him, but he was able to elude them and showed up at the police station to surrender later that night. After a 1995 trial, both Lee and Snoop were acquitted.
4.
As a kid, Terrance Howard witnessed his dad stab a man to death while they were in line to take photos with a department store Santa, in what became known as the “Santa Line Slaying.” Terrance said the man, who was also there with his family, made a racist comment to Terrance’s father Tyrone after he thought he skipped in line. Tyrone was arrested and pleaded self-defense; he ended up being convicted of manslaughter and spent eleven months in prison.
5.
Leighter Meester made headlines when it was reported that she had been born in jail as her mother was serving a sentence for helping smuggle 1,200 pounds of weed out of Jamaica. Meester later clarified her mother gave birth in a hospital before returning to prison — with Meester spending three months in a halfway house. Meester’s aunt, who had been arrested with her mother, actually escaped prison and became the first woman on the US Marshals 15 Most Wanted List in the US “My family has a crazy history. Probably the craziest I’ve ever heard of,” Meester admitted in 2012.
6.
When Angelina Jolie was 22, she hired a hitman to kill her. She was suicidal, but she was worried that the people in her life would blame themselves if she died by suicide. She found a hitman in New York — which she said wasn’t difficult — but he ended up talking her out of it. “He was a decent enough person and asked if I could think about it and call him again in two months. Something changed in my life, and I figured I’d stick it out.”
7.
Julia Roberts, who would later star in Runaway Bride, really was a runaway bride. In 1991, days before she was going to marry Kiefer Sutherland, Roberts called off her wedding. On the day she was supposed to be married, she instead went on a date with Jason Patric, who was friends with Sutherland (but had recently been uninvited from the wedding), then ran away with him to Ireland.
8.
Nick Cannon has claimed multiple times that Mariah Carey would sometimes play her music when they would have sex — in particular, her song “Hero.”
9.
Usher also listens to his own music while having sex. “Some may say this would be rather narcissistic, but yeah,” he told Oprah Winfrey. “I think I do a pretty good job at it. I’m a good motivator for the moment.” He revealed he puts on a playlist during sex, saying, “I like to set the mood.” As for songs he likes to listen to, he named “Lessons for Loves” and “Dive,” adding that “Climax” would be a good one towards the end of the session.”
10.
Fran Drescher claimed that when she was younger, she was abducted by aliens who put a chip in her head — and that the same thing had happened to her ex-husband, Peter Marc Jacobson. “You know, it’s funny because Peter and I both saw [aliens] before we knew each other, doing the same thing, driving on the road with our dads,” she recounted. “We were both in junior high. A few years later, we met, and we realized that we had the same experience. I think that somehow we were programmed to meet.” She continued that they both have scars in the same spot, where the chips are, though “the aliens programmed [them] to think” the scars were from something else.
11.
In his book, Van Halen member Sammy Hagar wrote that he had an alien abduction experience, too. He told MTV, “Aliens were plugged into me. It was a download situation. This was long before computers or any kind of wireless. There weren’t even wireless telephones. Looking back now, it was like, ‘F***, they downloaded something into me!’ Or they uploaded something from my brain, like an experiment – ‘See what this guy knows.'”
12.
Speaking of Van Halen, I can’t believe I didn’t know about their legendary “Lost Weekend,” where they created a contest to have two fans party with them for a weekend. The guy who won brought his best friend — who, like him, was underage (one was 19, and the other was 20) — and had a wild weekend with Van Halen, where they were provided with essentially limitless alcohol, cocaine, and women. Apparently, at one point, a groupie did a striptease for one of the boys, Kurt Jefferis, and then David Lee Roth told the groupie to “take [him] in the shower for a while.” They then went into the other room, and MTV network executive Richard Schenkman (who was coordinating a camera crew to film parts of the weekend that ended up being blocked from some of the wilder events) claims, “they rubbed egg salad all over her.”
14.
Diane von Furstenberg and her husband Barry Diller also cloned their dog to create twin Jack Russel Terriers — which cost over $100,000.
15.
Taylor Momsen’s bandmate Ben Philips once revealed that Momsen had her dog neutered, then brought his testicles into the studio and set them on fire.
16.
We can’t 100% confirm this, but it’s been reported that Brad Pitt brings his own toilet seat to hotels and “unfamiliar house[s]” as “It grosses him out, not knowing who used the bathroom before him.” Oddly, though, there were reports in 2005 that Pitt had bought a jailhouse toilet with a matching sink and wanted to install it in his home with Jennifer Aniston, which Aniston apparently disagreed with.
17.
Billie Eilish was almost named “Pirate,” and it ended up being one of her middle names because when Billie’s mother was pregnant, Finneas was in a pirate phase. “They called me pirate for months, and they were kind of planning on naming me Pirate,” she revealed. “And soon before I was born, my grandfather died, and his name was William, AKA Bill, Billie. And that’s where my name came from.” Her full name is Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O’Connell.
18.
Kit Harington didn’t know his first name until he was 11. He’d always gone by Kit, and he didn’t realize his name was Christopher until he filled in an exam form at school. “There was the space for my name and I put down Kit Harington because that’s what my parents had called me from day one, and the guy came up to me and said, ‘No, your name’s Christopher,” Kit recalled. “I was like, ‘I think I know,’ and they all went, ‘No, no, no, it’s Christopher!'” When asked why his parents wouldn’t tell him his real name, Harrington said, “I haven’t got a clue! I think they could see that I wanted to be Kit, but Christopher was a bit of a tradition.”
19.
George Clooney used to have a 294 lb. pet pig named Max who slept in his bed. He bought him for his girlfriend, Kelly Preston, then kept him after they broke up. Clooney was highly attached to the pig and once joked about marrying him if he would fit in a wedding dress. Once, Max even saved his life before an earthquake: “About three minutes before, Max woke me up and kept nudging me, like he was trying to warn me. That’s how smart he is,” Clooney recalled.
20.
Kanye taking the mic from Taylor Swift at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards will go down in pop culture history — but I was shocked to learn that this wasn’t even the first time Kanye had done this. In 2006, he’d gone onstage at the MTV European Music Awards after the French group Justice won Best Video and taken the mic from them to rant about how his video for “Touch The Sky” should have won, saying, “If I don’t win, the awards show loses credibility.”
21.
Let’s end on some quick fire facts. First: Anthony Michael Hall’s real name is Michael Anthony Hall.
23.
Paul McCartney was once arrested and deported from Germany on suspicion of arson after he lit a condom on fire.
24.
McCartney was also arrested and deported from Japan after being caught with half a pound of weed.
28.
Danny DeVito used to be a hairdresser, and he would sometimes do dead women’s hair for their funerals.
31.
And finally, this one’s small, but I just think it’s hilarious: 5SOS once crashed Justin Bieber’s party and claimed “he had his own album on loop for, like, two or three hours.”