As a celebrity, stories about their relationships, friendships and even feuds are often written about them and not by them. So, as memoir-lovers can attest to, celebrities have more and more opened up about their experiences and stories in tell-all memoirs.
And while some memoirs can shine a light on family dysfunction (we’re looking at you, Prince Harry!), or give further understanding of who some private celebrities are (like Barbra Streisand or Kerry Washington), they can also shine a light on some not-so-positive experiences with exes too.
Just ask Britney Spears, who, in her memoir The Woman in Me, got ultra-candid about her ups and downs with her famous ex, Justin Timberlake. In it, not only did Spears admit that Timberlake cheated on her, but shared how he reacted when she unexpectedly got pregnant.
To find out more stars who weren’t afraid to expose their exes in tell-all memoirs, scroll below!
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Demi Moore
Image Credit: Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty Images Demi Moore went all out in exposing her ex-husband Ashton Kutcher in her 2020 memoir, Inside Out. Among her confessions was that Kutcher wanted to do threesomes, a request Moore granted but later came back to bite her when he cheated on her with a 21-year-old.
“He admitted it right away,” she wrote. “Then I had to hang up and go walk the red carpet praying with every step that this information hadn’t gone wide yet, that nobody would thrust a microphone in my face and ask how I felt about my husband of six years f-cking a 21-year-old he’d been hanging out with in a hot tub the weekend of our anniversary. I really thought I might throw up.”
“Because we had brought a third party into our relationship, Ashton said, that blurred the lines and, to some extent, justified what he’d done,” she remembered. “I think he felt remorse, but he was also looking for a way to deflect blame, to maintain his own perception of himself as a decent family guy. Ashton did not compensate for his behavior by being extra solicitous and kind.”
“In retrospect, I think all of this was his way of trying to get out of our marriage,” she added.
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Gabrielle Union
Image Credit: River Callaway/Variety via Getty Images While Gabrielle Union and Dwyane are still together, Union talked about their brief breakup in her memoir You Got Anything Stronger? In it, she opened up about finding out Wade was expecting a baby with another woman.
“The me of today would not have stayed with him, but would I be who I am now without that pain? That fiery explosion that created life and light?” she wrote. “The advice I would give myself now would be to leave. ‘You don’t have to do this. You don’t think you have an option, but you do. Save yourself.'”
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Elliot Page
Image Credit: Michael Buckner/Variety via Getty Images In Elliot Page’s memoir, Pageboy, the actor exposed Kate Mara as he revealed they had a relationship while she was still dating actor Max Minghella.
“The first person I fell for after my heart was broken was Kate Mara,” Page wrote.
Soon, however, the secretness of their relationship began to take a toll. “Everything with Kate was becoming more complicated, more loaded. I was feeling let down. Perhaps the excitement no longer outweighed the challenges,” he remembered. “I was chasing something that could not be, letting lust overwhelm me.”
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John Stamos
Image Credit: Anna Webber/Variety via Getty Images John Stamos ruffled quite a few feathers with his memoir If You Would Have Told Me. In one memory, Stamos said his ex Teri Copley cheated on him on his bed with none other than Tony Danza.
“The blinds are closed, but the door is slightly open. I take a peek inside and see four feet protruding from the shabby-chic, floral-print duvet that once kept me warm,” Stamos detailed. “My Tiny Dancer is in bed with Mr. Porsche Speedster. They are sleeping. I can’t tell who he is, but I recognize Teri’s ass barely covered by the sheets. It looks like her new poster.”
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Britney Spears
Image Credit: John Salangsang/Variety/Penske Media via Getty Images Britney Spears’ memoir The Woman in Me went unapologetically after her ex, Justin Timberlake.
In one moment, Spears revealed Timberlake had cheated on her with “another celebrity.” As for a name, Spears didn’t specify who it was with. “The woman now has a family,” the outlet stated, noting that Spears “doesn’t want to embarrass [her.]”
She also revealed she once got pregnant throughout their two-year relationship and had an abortion. “I loved Justin so much. I always expected us to have a family together one day,” she wrote. However, Timberlake “definitely wasn’t happy about the pregnancy. He said we weren’t ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young.”
“I don’t know if that was the right decision,” she continued. “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.”
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Tiffany Haddish
Image Credit: River Callaway/WWD via Getty Images In her 2017 memoir The Last Black Unicorn, Tiffany Haddish bravely opened up about suffering physical abuse at the hands of her ex-husband, William Stewart.
“He grabbed me by the collar,” she remembered, per Buzzfeed. “He was like, ‘It’s time to go to the room now,’ in front of everybody.”
“Just snatched me by my shirt, and pulled me to the elevator and threw me in it…once we got to our hotel room, he was so quick,” she wrote. “He snatched me by the neck and slammed me into the wall.”In 2018, Stewart, who was not named in the book, sued Haddish for defamation, per Essence. In 2021, the case was dismissed.
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Mariah Carey
Image Credit: Christopher Polk/Variety via Getty Images In Mariah Carey’s memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey, the singer talked about her anxiety-inducing first marriage to Tommy Mottola.
“In the beginning…I was walking on eggshells,” Carey remembered, per Buzzfeed. “Then it became a bed of nails, and then a minefield. I never knew when or what would make him blow, and the anxiety was relentless.”
“It felt like he was cutting off my circulation, keeping me from my friends and what little ‘family’ I had,” she said. “I couldn’t talk to anyone that wasn’t under Tommy’s control. I couldn’t go out or do anything with anybody. I couldn’t move freely in my own house.”
The pair ended up splitting after five years together in 1998.
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Minka Kelly
Image Credit: Stewart Cook/Variety/Penske Media via Getty Images Minka Kelly opened up about her on-and-off relationship with Friday Night Lights co-star Taylor Kitsch in her memoir, Tell Me Everything.
At first, their budding relationship was great, but time soon began to take a toll. “All the good feelings that had been present at the outset began to deteriorate,” she wrote, per Today Show. “I guess that’s just what happens when you work together on a show; it’s a lot of pressure, and filming scenes again and again with the same people can sometimes bring out aspects of personalities that are less than stellar.”
With time, Kelly said their relationship got more toxic and dependent, and it started sucking the energy she used to have with the relationships in her life. “All the effort I might have invested in connecting consistently with the girls on the show went to Taylor. So when my relationship with Taylor became toxic, I had no one to turn to,” she said.
Kelly also added that when she and Kitsch were broken up, it seemed the whole set would take his side. Plus, he refused to be in the same makeup trailer with her at the time time.
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Jessica Simpson
Image Credit: Dimitrios Kambouris/Footwear News via Getty Images In her memoir Open Book, Jessica Simpson talked about the toxic behaviors John Mayer had during their relationship.
“He’d dump me, then come back saying he had discovered he loved me after all,” Simpson wrote. “I always saw it as him mercilessly taking me in from the cold. Every time John returned, I thought it was a continuation of a love story, while my friends saw a guy coming back for sex with some foolish girl.”
“I felt the full intensity of his obsession with me,” she remembered. “?And it was a drug to me. He studied every inch of my body, every detail of my face. He photographed me constantly, to the point that I worried he was keeping souvenirs before dumping me again.”
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Busy Philipps
Image Credit: JC Olivera/Variety via Getty Images Busy Philipps made us all furious in her memoir This Will Only Hurt a Little when she revealed her ex-boyfriend Craig Cox once stole her script idea and gave her no credit for it.
“In order for them to do this insanely s— thing to me, they vilified me and told me I was crazy,” she remembered. “The story became that I was the one who had tried to STEAL ideas from them, that I was ALWAYS just looking out for myself. THEY had come up with this AMAZING STORY, and I was the less-than-talented girlfriend trying to glom on to their talent and carve out a piece for myself. A piece that I didn’t deserve.”
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Carrie Fisher
Image Credit: Michael Buckner/Variety/Penske Media via Getty Images In her shocking memoir Wishful Drinking, the late Carrie Fisher admitted to an affair with Star Wars co-star Harrison Ford when he was a married man.
“A tug-of-war involving my wine-sodden virtue was underway, and I was unclear how it would turn out — but I realized who it was I wanted to win: my costar, the one with the scar on his chin, the dialogue in his head, and the gun in his belt — not now, just when in character, but still,” Fisher remembered of their first time, per Buzzfeed. “After a mad scuffle, Mr. Ford threw my virtue and me into the back seat of his studio car and commanded the driver to ‘Go! GO!’ We went, followed by the crew.”
“Harrison made me feel nervous. I got tongue-tied in his company, and clumsy,” she remembered. “I was with him when we worked together and tried to avoid him otherwise, so as not to annoy him. It was more comfortable to hang out with the cast and crew, who were more fun and less immune to my charms. But when I look back with squinting eyes, I figure Harrison was scoping out the set in those early days. Not to have an affair, necessarily, but not not to, either.”
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