1.
When Mark Wahlberg was a teenager, he was involved in a number of hate crimes. First, when he was 15, he was charged with chasing and throwing rocks at Black children with his friends, yelling “Kill the n*****s”. He also harassed Black children at the beach the next day. Then when he was 17, he attacked two Vietnamese-Americans, one of whom was a veteran. He knocked one out and punched the other, calling them racial slurs. He was high on PCP at the time. He ended up serving just 45 days in jail for the latter crime.
After becoming famous, Wahlberg sought a pardon for the attack that landed him in jail, writing “I am deeply sorry for the actions that I took on the night of April 8, 1988, as well as for any lasting damage that I may have caused the victims. Since that time, I have dedicated myself to becoming a better person and citizen so that I can be a role model to my children and others.” While he eventually dropped the pardon, he claimed in 2020 that he really had changed, “I took it upon myself to own up to my mistakes and go against the grain and not be a part of the gang any more – to say that I was going to go and do my own thing.”
2.
When Jon Hamm was in college at the University of Texas-Austin, he was accused of violently hazing a pledge member of his Sigma Nu fraternity. The pledge, Mark Allen Sanders, claimed seven men, including Hamm, beat him, hit him with a paddle, shoved his face in the dirt, lit his pants on fire, and led him around “with the claw of a hammer beneath his genitals.” His injuries included a fractured spine, and he says he nearly lost a kidney. He was originally charged with assault, which was deferred and ultimately dropped. The whole lawsuit was eventually dismissed, but the incident caused the UT Texas chapter of Sigma Nu to disband permanently.
When asked about the incident in 2018, long after Hamm had found fame, Hamm reportedly got angry and said he was “essentially acquitted,” calling the reports “sensationalized” and said “it was a bummer of a thing that happened.” Hamm also reportedly accused the reporter of writing a “hit piece.”
3.
During World War II, Coco Chanel was named as a Nazi informant by friend Vera Bate (who herself confessed to being a German agent). The French government arrested Chanel, who had several ties with Nazi intelligence organization Abwehr and its members. Chanel was eventually released due to a lack of evidence and possible help from friend Winston Churchill. Chanel’s Nazi ties remained hidden for decades, though her “fear and hatred for Jews” was allegedly “notorious.”
4.
Boy George was found guilty of attacking the Norwegian model and escort, Audun Carlsen, in 2007. Carlsen accused him of beating him, handcuffing him to the wall, and beating him with a chain in a drug-fueled paranoid episode wherein Boy George thought Carlsen had hacked his computer.
Boy George denied the assault occurred, but did concede he had handcuffed Carlsen to his wall in an attempt to find out if he’d hacked his computer. While O’Dowd (Boy George’s real last name) pled not guilty, he was ultimately sentenced to 15 months in jail. He still performs: the photo below is from a 2023 performance.
5.
In 1991, Rick James and his girlfriend Tanya Anne Hijazi were arrested on suspicion of imprisoning and torturing a 24-year-old woman over the course of three days. The two allegedly threatened the victim with a gun, tied her up, burned her, forced her to orally copulate Hijazi, and forced her to smoke crack cocaine. A year later, the two also allegedly kidnapped and assaulted music executive Mary Sauger. James ultimately served over two years in prison. He later continued to write music and tour.
6.
Jack Nicholson has been accused of assaulting women multiple times throughout his career. In the ’90s, he was accused of assaulting a sex worker after refusing to pay her fee. Nicholson settled with the woman, Catherine Sheehan, who later claimed in 2000 that the damage to her brain stem was “actually killing her” and blinding her intermittently when she sued him for more money. Nicholson had previously been charged after attacking a driver’s windshield in a road rage incident and was accused of hitting a woman and rupturing her breast implants in 1996. He then continued to act and win prestigious awards for many years.
7.
Michael Fassbender was accused of domestic abuse by ex-girlfriend Sunawin “Leasi” Andrews in 2010, filing a restraining order against him. The claims — which included that the injuries Andrews sustained sent her to the hospital — were first reported in 2010, and have resurfaced in the years since. Andrews ended up withdrawing her petition after her temporary restraining order against him expired. Fassbender has had a number of major roles since the allegations, including in the X-Men series.
8.
In 1985, Vince Neil (lead singer of Mötley Crüe) was convicted of drunk driving and vehicular manslaughter after veering his car into traffic and hitting another car, killing his own passenger and seriously wounding the inhabitants of the other car. The man who was killed was Hanoi Rocks drummer Nicholas Dingley — the band’s guitarist, Andy McCoy, later claimed that Neil never apologized for the crash. Neil did express remorse for the incident, which saw him pay $2.6 million to the victims and their families. He advocated against drunk driving and later acknowledged he “deserved to go to prison” but that “the power of cash” stopped that from happening, calling it “fucked up.” Mötley Crüe still tours.
9.
Sean Penn was accused of attacking Madonna when they were married. He allegedly tied her to a chair for nine hours, until she was able to escape and run to the police station. Originally, Penn was charged with battery and inflicting “corporal injury and traumatic conditions,” but Madonna later pulled the complaints, though she did file for divorce. Penn went on the find widespread Hollywood fame.
10.
Kobe Bryant was accused of sexual assault in 2003 by a 19-year-old employee of the lodge and spa he was staying at. She ended up deciding not to testify, leading to the case being dismissed. Bryant did acknowledge that the two had had sex, and that he did not ask for consent, though he claimed the intercourse was consensual. He later said, “After months of reviewing discovery, listening to her attorney, and even her testimony in person, I now understand how she feels that she did not consent to this encounter,” and settled with the victim in civil court.
11.
Mike Tyson was convicted of the rape of an 18-year-old back in 1992. He claimed they had consensual sex; however, he was found guilty and served three years in jail. Tyson still went on to compete in boxing.
12.
Cristiano Ronaldo is another athlete who was accused of rape. An American woman accused the soccer star of sexual assault in Las Vegas in 2009 and was paid $375,000 in “hush money,” signing an NDA. The woman, Kathryn Mayorga, later claimed she had been coerced into signing the NDA, and asked for the NDA to be voided (especially considering court documents had already been leaked).
However, the civil lawsuit against Ronaldo was dropped after Mayorga’s lawyer engaged in serious misconduct, reaching out to the source of the document leak to not only get copies for themself, but also get copies of reporting and communications between Ronaldo’s lawyers and investigators in the case. Because of the way Mayorga’s misconduct had tainted the case and Ronaldo’s image, the lawyer was forced to reimburse Ronaldo’s legal fees.
13.
Rita Marley alleged in her book No Woman, No Cry: My Life With Bob Marley that Marley forced himself on her after she refused sex (due to his extramarital affairs). She referred to this as rape in an interview with the newspaper The Voice, but then later accused them of blowing it out of proportion, saying: “The way the guy put it in the newspaper, he made it look like Bob had me by the neck. When you think about it, you ask yourself whether a husband can actually rape his wife.”
14.
John Lennon himself admitted to violence towards women in an interview with Playboy in 1980. “All that ‘I used to be cruel to my woman, I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved’ was me. I used to be cruel to my woman, and physically — any woman. I was a hitter. I couldn’t express myself and I hit. I fought men and I hit women,” he said. “That is why I am always on about peace, you see. It is the most violent people who go for love and peace. Everything’s the opposite. But I sincerely believe in love and peace.”
“I am not violent man who has learned not to be violent and regrets his violence. I will have to be a lot older before I can face in public how I treated women as a youngster,” he continued. Outside claims of violence from Lennon include one from his ex-wife Cynthia Lennon and an instance where he almost beat a friend to death for calling him gay.
15.
Sinead O’Connor accused Prince (after his death) of being a “violent abuser of women” in her memoir Rememberings, detailing an incident where she fled his house in the middle of the night after a physical assault. He allegedly hit her with something hard enclosed in a pillowcase after suggesting a pillow fight, then chased her down with his car and then on foot when she tried to leave, threatening to “kick the shit out of [her.]” She also claimed in a prior interview that he’d beaten multiple women, who landed in the hospital.
Ex-girlfriend Charlene Friend also accused Prince of physical and mental abuse, including filming them having sex without her permission, starving her, and threatening “to have [her] killed after we broke up, saying no one else could have [her].”
16.
The Who’s Pete Townsend was arrested in 2003 after it was found his credit card was used to access a child sex images site. Townsend claimed that he had accessed the site as research in a campaign against child sex images, attempting to prove the financial link between Russian orphanages and British banks. He was cleared of possessing any images but was placed on a sex offender registry for five years. The Who toured as recently as last year.
17.
Horatio Sanz was accused of assaulting an underage fan at an SNL afterparty where fellow SNL alums Will Ferrell, Tina Fey, Maya Rudolph, and Rachel Dratch were also allegedly present. The woman says she was 15 when she started conversing with Sanz online. She says Sanchez groomed her for cybersex and assault in the early 2000s. Though Sanchez and NBC denied the allegations, they settled with the anonymous woman in 2022.
18.
We tend to gloss over the fact that Angelina Jolie accused Brad Pitt of assaulting her and their children on an airplane in 2016. Court documents allege that Pitt grabbed Jolie’s head, then shook her and pushed her into a wall. When their children attempted to intervene, Pitt allegedly choked one and hit another. Pitt’s reps vehemently denied these accusations, and charges were not pursued. Pitt continues to be a successful A-lister.
19.
And finally, we can’t write this post without talking about Michael Jackson. I am sure you’ve heard the credible child sexual abuse allegations against him, but Jackson is notable in that his legacy remains largely intact, despite his history of sharing a bed with young boys.
He was investigated as early as 1993 on molestation allegations and was again booked in 2003 on molestation charges, though he was acquitted. In the 2010s, two men with documented relationships with Jackson claimed that they had been molested many times by Jackson and filed suits against Jackson’s estate and companies. Both men later told their story in the HBO special Leaving Neverland — all allegations were denied by Michael Jackson’s estate, which sued HBO over the documentary.
What other crimes and horrible acts have celebs allegedly committed that get glossed over? Let us know in the comments.
