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2025 is almost over (mercifully), and in reviewing the year, I realized I wrote a lot about celebrities and the wacky, wild, and occasionally disturbing things they get up to. So consider this a year-end “best of” post — the most fascinating entries (for better or worse) from all of those stories, collected in one place:
We made no friends in Hollywood by sharing these stars' most embarrassing moments on the job:
1. Taylor Kitsch pooped his pants while waiting to be called back for an audition. During an August 2025 appearance on Today With Jenna & Friends, the Friday Night Lives star revealed that in his early L.A. days, he was living out of his car, hustling between auditions, and relying heavily on caffeine. One morning, he grabbed an extra-strong coffee from a food truck on the way to an audition. Shortly thereafter, sitting in the waiting room in his clean, carefully chosen audition clothes, he felt something go very, very wrong in his bowels. Before he could make it to the bathroom, he crapped his pants.
2. Imagine being a young actor appearing in your first massive film opposite a massive star. You'd surely hope you didn't do anything that would wake you in a cold sweat in the middle of the night for the rest of your life. Unfortunately for Damson Idris, he accidentally spat on BRAD PITT in the middle of shooting a scene.
3. It’s been years since the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot, but Kate McKinnon recently confessed on The Drew Barrymore Show that one of the movie’s big moments was ruined not by technical issues, not by a stunt malfunction… but by her blasting an ear-rattling fart. She said it was hands down the most embarrassing on-set moment of her career. (I would hope so, lol.)
We talked about the BIG roles stars missed out on — and surely regret:
4. During a recent interview on Hot Ones, Macaulay Culkin revealed that he found an unread screenplay for Wes Anderson's Rushmore in his house, and still can’t believe he missed it! The Home Alone star was on a break from acting back then and figured he was keeping up with submissions, but this one slipped through. His reaction now is part amused, part horrified: "I mean, I can't imagine anyone but Schwartzman doing that part, but at the same time — oh, man, that would have been a ball and a biscuit, that one." It’s an alternate timeline — with Culkin as Max Fischer — that underscores how easily a single unopened envelope can change a career.
5. Earlier this year, with the sequel to 2006's The Devil Wears Prada set to film, Kate Hudson confessed on Capital Breakfast that she turned down the role Anne Hathaway made famous. "That was a bad call,” Hudson, 45, said. “It was a timing thing, it was one of those things where I couldn’t do it, and I should’ve made it happen, and I didn’t. That was one where when I saw it I was like, ‘Ugh.'" She went on to say, “Everything happens for a reason.” Dunno, Kate. I think that's just what we tell ourselves when we make epic mistakes, lol.
6. It's pretty common knowledge now that Will Smith turned down the lead role in The Matrix, but he recently told radio station Kiss Xtra that he also turned down a big part in another massive film. "I don't think I've ever said it publicly," Smith began, "but I am going to say it because we are opening up to one another. Chris Nolan brought me Inception first and I didn't get it. I've never said that out loud. Now that I think about it, it's those movies that go into those alternate realities... they don't pitch well." Damn. Passing on The Matrix and Inception? What a slap to the face.
We named the celebs who committed horrific crimes and are in jail for a LONG time:
7. Jared Fogle made national headlines in 1999 when — as a student at Indiana University — he lost 245 pounds on a self-created diet where he exclusively ate Subway every day: a small turkey sub, a large veggie sub, baked potato chips, and diet soda. He was soon hired by Subway to be their spokesperson, and appeared in over 300 commercials between 2000 and his arrest in 2015.
8. Sometimes called the King of R&B, R. Kelly is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, selling over 75 million records. "I Believe I Can Fly" and "Ignition (Remix)" are probably his best-known songs. Allegations of sexual abuse of minors followed Kelly for most of his career, but for a long time, he escaped accountability.
9. Reality TV star Josh Duggar is the oldest child of Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar, who became famous for their extremely large family of 19 children, as featured on the TLC reality show 19 Kids and Counting. The show often focused on Duggar and his wife, Anna, as they started their own family, but behind-the-scenes his carefully crafted wholesome image was a lie.
We talked about actors who cheated on their spouses or long-term partners with co-stars:
10. Want to hear how a Lifetime movie launched one of the most scandalous affairs of the late 2000s? Well, that's what happened when LeAnn Rimes and Eddie Cibrian met filming Northern Lights in 2008. At the time, Rimes (the singer and actor) was married to dancer Dean Sheremet, and Third Watch star Cibrian was married to Brandi Glanville, who would later channel the fallout into a Real Housewives career. The affair started on set — with kisses caught on a restaurant security camera, according to US magazine — and was obvious to Sheremet when he visited. He said, "There was this bar that everyone hung out at after set and I remember coming down the stairs and seeing the two of them shooting pool together. I could just tell by the body language that everything had changed. My stomach dropped... I literally felt like I got hit."
By 2009, Rimes and Cibrian had separated from their spouses, finalizing divorces the following year. The backlash was brutal, especially for Rimes, who'd built her career as a sweet country ingénue, and was suddenly painted in a negative light. She later told People, "I did one of the most selfish things that I possibly could do, in hurting someone else. I take responsibility for everything I've done. I hate that people got hurt, but I don't regret the outcome." Despite the scandalous start, their love has lasted...they are still married today.
11. In the late '90s, Billy Bob Thornton and Laura Dern were in a serious relationship and even lived together. But then Thornton was cast alongside Angelina Jolie in the air traffic controller comedy Pushing Tin. While filming, Thornton and the nearly 20 years younger Jolie hit it off, and in May 2000, they married in Vegas in a move that shocked everyone, but no one more than Laura Dern. She told Talk magazine, "I left our home to work on a movie (likely the Hallmark movie A Season for Miracles) and while I was away, my boyfriend got married. I've never heard from him again. It's like a sudden death. You don't get to mourn or negotiate."
Meanwhile, the Thornton-Jolie relationship was...strange. They wore vials of each other's blood around their necks, made out on red carpets (and bragged about having sex in the limo on the way over), and gave interviews that made even hardened publicists need a vacation. The couple divorced in 2003.
12. In late 2016, Ewan McGregor — who had been married to Eve Mavrakis for 22 years — joined the cast of FX's third season of Fargo, playing the dual role of the Stussy brothers, one of whom was lovers with Nikki, played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who was also married. Well, life imitated art as photos emerged in October 2017 of McGregor and Winstead kissing and getting cuddly at a London restaurant. The previous May, McGregor had separated from his wife (though they were still legally married), and — wouldn't you know it? — that same month, Winstead announced the end of her marriage.
All drama aside, McGregor and Winstead have since married and welcomed a son, and last year, when McGregor received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, his daughters, Winstead, and their son were all by his side.
We told you about celebrities who died in front of their fans:
13. On Dec. 8, 2004, "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott — formerly of the legendary heavy metal band Pantera and widely regarded as one of the best guitarists of all time — was doing a club show with his new band, Damageplan. Only 90 seconds into their first song, Nathan Gale, 25, a six-foot-three, 250+-pounds man with a shaved head, strode through the crowd and onto the stage. Fans watched in horror as Gale, at point-blank range, raised a pistol and shot Abbott in the forehead.
14. On June 10, 2016, 22-year-old Christina Grimmie — the talented young singer who'd placed third on Season 6 of The Voice — had just finished a performance in Orlando, Florida, and was holding a meet-and-greet inside the venue. She was in good spirits as she worked through the line of fans, signing autographs and taking selfies. The joyful night took a horrific turn, though, when it was 27-year-old Kevin James Loibl's turn to meet Grimmie. According to a fan behind Loibl: "The one guy in front of us was walking up to meet her. Her arms were open, waiting to greet him with a hug. Then there was a sound of three pops, like balloons. People had brought balloons to the show, and the security guards were popping them, so at first I thought it was that."
15. Owen Hart may have been born into a legendary wrestling dynasty (his dad was Stu Hart; his brother was Bret "Hitman" Hart), but he was a star in his own right and at the center of some of the biggest '90s storylines of the WWF (now the WWE). However, on May 23, 1999, during the WWF's Over the Edge pay-per-view event in Kansas City, Missouri, his life (and those storylines) ended. Hart was set to make a dramatic entrance as his superhero persona, the Blue Blazer, by being lowered from the arena rafters into the ring. Tragically, a malfunction occurred, and Hart fell a long distance — approximately 78 feet — landing chest-first on the top rope. He was rushed to the hospital but pronounced dead not long after arriving; the cause of death was internal bleeding from blunt force trauma, resulting in a severed aorta.
We dished on the surprising stories of celebrities who just vanished one day...never to be seen again:
16. Barbara Newhall Follett came from a family of very bright people (her sister, for example, was the first woman graduate student at Princeton), but she was the brightest of them all. She wrote poetry at age 4 and in 1927, and at just 12, she published her first book, The House Without Windows, to critical acclaim (The Saturday Review of Literature called the book “almost unbearably beautiful”). Her next novel came out two years later to more critical acclaim. But fame faded, her father (and champion) left the family, and her life slowly unraveled.
In 1939, at age 25, after a fight with her husband (whom she suspected of an affair), Barbara walked out of their apartment with the equivalent of just under $700 in today's dollars. She left no note. No trace. Her husband didn’t report her missing for two weeks. She was never seen again.
17. Jim Sullivan was a folk-rock musician in the style of Gram Parsons or Nick Drake who appeared in the classic film Easy Rider. His 1969 debut album U.F.O. was filled with lyrics about desert roads, aliens, and leaving Earth behind — the kind of stuff that didn't exactly scream "chart-topper," lol — but it built a cult following years later.
In March 1975, Sullivan left L.A. to drive to Nashville in hopes of kickstarting his music career. En route, he checked into a motel in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, then bought a bottle of vodka and drove out of town. He was spotted 26 miles away at a ranch...and then never again. His car was later found abandoned with his wallet, ID, guitar, and belongings still inside.
We surprised you with famous actors who had music careers before making it big onscreen:
18. This factoid about Maya Rudolph — the comedy star from Bridesmaids, Saturday Night Live, and The Good Place — is bound to blow the minds of Gen X'ers and '90s music fans.
First, a little background: You probably recognize the band below — it's Weezer, specifically the lineup from their 1994 debut album, which featured hits like "Buddy Holly" and "Undone (The Sweater Song)."
Before recording Weezer's second album, bassist Matt Sharp started a side project, a band called The Rentals, which scored a big MTV hit of their own, "Friends of P." That's where Maya Rudolph came in. Right after graduating from college — and before Rudolph had a single acting credit — she joined The Rentals as they toured behind their first album.
"It was such a fun job out of college," Maya told the New Yorker. "I got to live on the road for six months. We opened for Blur and for Alanis Morissette, and we got to spend Thanksgiving with her and play hacky sack with her band and go bowling."
19. Academy Award-winning actor Brie Larson (Captain Marvel in the Marvel Cinematic Universe) also had a surprising — and brief — music career back when her acting career was in its embryonic stages.
Larson began playing guitar at age 11 and soon started writing, recording, and uploading songs to her website. This led to her song "Invisible Girl" (written after she failed to win the role of Wendy in 2003's Peter Pan) getting some airplay on a Los Angeles radio station. Things kept looking up for Larson when the 16-year-old got signed to a major label deal and released her debut album Finally Out of P.E.
We called out celebs who had shameful events in their pasts:
20. Mark Wahlberg was a troubled teenager with a violent past. In 1986, Wahlberg hurled rocks and racial epithets at Black school children, and two years later, a 16-year-old Wahlberg was arrested for assaulting a Vietnamese man in a racially motivated attack. The incident left the victim permanently injured, and Wahlberg was convicted of felony assault (He spent 45 days in jail). He has since apologized publicly and claimed he’s changed.
21. Christian Bale threw a massive tantrum while filming 2009's Terminator Salvation after a crew member accidentally walked into Bale’s shot. The star's expletive-filled tirade lasted several minutes, with Bale berating and humiliating the crew member. Unfortunately for him, someone recorded the entire thing — and once it leaked online, his reputation took a hit. He later apologized, saying, "I was out of order beyond belief. I make no excuses for it."
22. In 1995, Hugh Grant was arrested in Hollywood for receiving oral sex in a public place from a sex worker named Divine Brown. The British star, who was dating fellow actor Elizabeth Hurley at the time, quickly released a statement: "Last night I did something completely insane. I have hurt people I love and embarrassed people I work with. For both things I am more sorry than I can ever possibly say." Grant later pleaded no contest to the crime and, after paying a fine, was placed on two years' probation and ordered to complete an AIDS education program.
And we talked about celebs who had very, very, VERY awkward moments:
23. In early 2021, the hashtag #HereForCharli trended on Twitter, leading to TikTok sensation Charli D'Amelio writing in a since-deleted tweet: "I am looking through the 'hereforcharli' hashtag, and oh my goodness you are all so sweet to me. You have no idea how much your kind words warm my heart. I am so lucky to have you all by my side!! I love you bebs." The only problem? The hashtag was not for D'Amelio but Charli XCX, whose friend and collaborator SOPHIE had just died from an accidental fall. Yikes. I bet you just shifted in your seat from secondhand embarrassment, huh?
24. Rappers like to project an image as hard and badass, and 50 Cent is no different. Here's one of his lyrics: "The drama really means nothin' to me. / I'll ride by and blow your brains out." Damn, 50 Cent! Go easy! But in May 2014, the rapper looked softer than a kitten's fur while throwing out the first pitch at a New York Mets game. His pitch didn't just miss home plate — it soared wildly off course, veering nearly sideways toward a cameraperson. It wasn't merely a bad pitch; it was possibly the worst pitch ever thrown, landing closer to first base than the catcher. The rapper later joked about how he would forever be immortalized in baseball blooper history, so he gets points for having a good attitude, but damn...embarrassing isn't a strong enough word!
25. On The Today Show in 201, Kathie Lee Gifford enthusiastically praised Martin Short’s decades-long marriage to his wife, Nancy Dolman. She gushed about their “beautiful” relationship and even asked how they managed to stay so in love after all those years. There was just one massive problem — Nancy Dolman had passed away two years earlier, in 2010, after a long battle with ovarian cancer. Short, ever the class act, didn’t correct her on-air. Instead, he graciously smiled and nodded along. Backstage, producers quickly realized the mistake. After the commercial break, a clearly embarrassed Gifford apologized and expressed her deepest sympathies to Short.
26. In 2020, Madison Prewett, a contestant on The Bachelor, appeared to leave a fawning comment on one of her own Instagram posts, writing, "Beautiful date Madi. You are so genuine and real." It seemed — oh, honey, noooo — she intended to post the compliment from a fake fan account but forgot to switch accounts. Fans on Reddit roasted her, saying, "Nothing says 'genuine and real' like having a fake instagram acct to comment compliments on your public one!!" and "Omfg commenting without switching to a fan account of yourself is embarrassing enough, but commenting that you're so genuine and real is SENDING ME what a nightmare combination of cringe." Prewett later claimed it was a friend's comment mistakenly posted from her account. Sure, Jan. Sure.
27. And lastly, sometimes stars can mean well but still seriously embarrass themselves. Take Glee star Heather Morris, who, in June 2023, posted an interpretive dance tribute to George Floyd on social media. Yes, you read that right — an interpretive dance tribute to George Floyd (honestly, it sounds like something her Glee character Brittany Pierce would've done). In the video, Morris performed an emotional dance, set to spoken word audio addressing racial injustice. While intended as a heartfelt tribute, many viewers found the performance insensitive and self-indulgent, criticizing Morris for making the tragedy about herself. As one person wrote on Twitter: "this girl had not even 1 friend to tell her this was stupid. Heather Morris (Brittany) doing an interpretive dance to represent George Floyd's death I really thought I'd seen it all."
Thanks for reading this year! I appreciate each and every one of you*. There's more fun in store for 2026, I promise!
*except for that guy with the weird username who keeps leaving mean comments.
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