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Highlights From the 50 Juiciest Celeb Memoirs of All Time

Highlights From the 50 Juiciest Celeb Memoirs of All Time

By EW Staff

April 27, 2017 at 02:52 PM EDT

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50. Carole Bayer Sager, They’re Playing Our Song

Credit: Simon and Schuster

When she was dating Paul Simon, the singer once overheard her mother tell her father: “Midgets! That’s what they’ll have. They’ll have midgets.”

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49. Stewart Granger, Sparks Fly Upward

Credit: Granada Publishing

The actor on his dalliance with the very bossy Hedy Lamarr: "If only she'd shut up and stopped giving orders, the ordeal might have been consummated.”

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48. Rob Lowe, Stories I Only Tell My Friends

Credit: Henry Holt and Co.

The actor does omit some incidents from his memoir, but he’s quite forthcoming about his infamous sex-tape scandal: “Sometimes being a trailblazer is overrated. If the Kim Kardashians and Colin Farrells and all the like had let their video oeuvre out into the zeitgeist before me, mine may have been met with a mere titillated shrug.”

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47. Martin Short, I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend

Credit: Harper

When Short was at a party at with both Mike Nichols and Warren Beatty, "Warren said, 'I met Eleanor Roosevelt.' Mike called out, 'Did you f--- her?'"

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46. Katharine Hepburn, Me

Credit: Ballantine Books

The actress remembers her decades-long affair with Spencer Tracy: “We did what he liked. We lived a life which he liked. I struggled to change all the qualities I felt he didn’t like. Some of them which I thought were my best I thought he found irksome. I removed them, squelched them as far as I was able…”

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45. Esther Williams, Million Dollar Mermaid

Credit: Harvest Books

The actress’ kiss-off line to Jeff Chandler — who had a penchant for cross-dressing — was epic: "Jeff, you’re too big for polka dots."

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44. Christina Crawford, Mommie Dearest

Credit: William Morrow and Company

Joan Crawford’s daughter remembers her allegedly abusive mother: "From her throne in the eye of the hurricane, brandishing her wand of obsession, rules the queen of chaos herself: Mommie Dearest."

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43. Richard Pryor, Pryor Convictions

Credit: Pantheon

"On television, people talked about having happy lives, but in the world in which I grew up, happiness was a moment rather than a state of being…. It never stayed long enough for you to get to know it good. Just a taste here and there. A kiss, a sniff, a stroke, a snort."

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42. Carrie Fisher, The Princess Diarist

The beloved actress looked back fondly on her fling with Harrison Ford during the filming of Star Wars: "My affair with Harrison was a very long one-night stand."

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41. Brandi Glanville, Drinking & Tweeting

Credit: Gallery Books

The Real Housewife dishes on her husband’s then-affair with LeAnn Rimes on the set of Northern Lights: "LeAnn had 'accidentally' smeared some cake frosting on her top...[She] asked my husband, not realizing that I was standing behind the both of them, if he wanted lick it off her….This woman asked my husband if he wanted to eat the frosting mess she'd dropped on her nonexistent chest? ... He hadn't realized I was there, either, and he laughed with hungry eyes at the suggestion.”

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40. Lauren Bacall, By Myself and Then Some

Credit: HarperCollins

The actress famously describes being seduced by Humphrey Bogart on the set of To Have and Have Not: “About three weeks into the picture, I was sitting in the dressing room at the end of the day, combing my hair. Bogie came in to bid me good night. He was standing behind me, and we were joking as usual, when suddenly he leaned over, put his hand under my chin, and kissed me. It was impulsive. He took a worn pack of matches out of his pocket and asked me to put my phone number on the back. I did.”

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39. Tab Hunter, Tab Hunter Confidential

Credit: Algonquin Books

The actor on his sexuality: "In my personal life, I was quite a different Boy Next Door that the one that Mr. and Mrs. Middle America — and their fan-club daughter — imagined me to be."

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38. Brooke Shields, There Was a Little Girl

The actress spoke frankly about her mother’s alcoholism: "It would probably have been easier for me to admit to her disease if I was ever physically abused. My particular abuse was much more subtle and created a longer-lasting impact. Because every time Mom drank, she left me. … I felt abandoned by her when she drank, but as long as I wasn’t hurt and she was accounted for and alive, I could justify that everything was all right."

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37. Shirley MacLaine, My Lucky Stars

Credit: Bantam

Working with Debra Winger on the Terms of Endearment set was not easy. "Hey, Mom, get over here. These [placement marks] are yours.".... 'I heard you,' I said. 'I know marks when I see them.' 'Good,” [Winger] said. 'How's this for a mark?' She turned around, walked away from me, lifted her skirt slightly, looked over her shoulder, bent over, and farted in my face."

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36. Ava Gardner, The Secret Conversations

Credit: Simon and Schuster

The actress was contracted to write a memoir but after hours of conversation with her ghostwriter, changed her mind; this book is drawn from those tapes. On the time she nearly killed Howard Hughes: “I hit him with an ashtray. I think it was onyx. Anyway, it was heavy…. Louis Mayer nearly had kittens when he heard about it. He was convinced I’d killed the guy.”

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35. Lena Dunham, Not That Kind of Girl

Credit: Random House

In her essay collection, the actress remembers her rape: "I also know that at no moment did I consent to being handled that way. I never gave him permission to be rough, to stick himself inside me without a barrier between us. I never gave him permission. In my deepest self I know this, and the knowledge of it has kept me from sinking."

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34. Mario Lopez, Just Between Us

Credit: Celebra

The TV host and actor on losing his virginity at age 12: “What happened next was mostly a blur. I remember a lot of kissing and touching, but past that, I was clueless. I knew nothing about a woman’s body. All I could do was try desperately to piece together the fragmented and unreliable information that I’d heard from my older cousins."

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33. Jon Cryer, So That Happened

Credit: Berkley

Two and a Half Men co-star Charlie Sheen told him that his fits of anger were induced by testosterone cream. "Three times a day you rub the cream on your thighs, and it's deceptive, because you feel the same, but suddenly you're flying into a rage."

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32. Tatum O’Neal, A Paper Life

Credit: William Morrow Paperbacks

In her memoir, the actress claimed that her friend Melanie Griffith, then 18, "dragged me into an opium-fueled orgy" when she was 12.

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31. Jodie Sweetin, Unsweetined

Credit: Gallery Books

When she attended the LA premiere of New York Minute, a Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen film, in May 2004, she writes, “I knew I couldn’t last a New York minute without doing more meth. I had it in my purse, with a straw, in a little baggie inside a lip-gloss container. Often I would do meth quickly in public bathrooms, blowing the smoke into wet paper towels so you couldn’t see it. At the premiere, though, I just snorted it because I knew I couldn’t bring a whole pipe."

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30. Mia Farrow, What Falls Away

Credit: Nan A. Talese

The actress was not happy with former partner Woody Allen: "You’re not supposed to f--- the kids!"

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29. Diahann Carroll, The Legs Are the Last to Go

Credit: HarperCollins

On the possessiveness of Sidney Poitier, with whom she had a long affair: “Sidney called me at my hotel . . . ‘You b----, whore, tramp,’ he yelled. ‘I know he just left your bed. I won’t have you running around with other men. You belong to me!'"

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28. Melissa Gilbert, Prairie Tale

Credit: Gallery Books

The actress wrote that Johnny Depp once asked to feel her at-the-time lactating breasts at a party, and that she replied, "Yeah, do whatever you want."

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27. Frank Langella, Dropped Names

Credit: Harper

The actor is frank about colleagues like Charlton Heston: "It was as if he had appointed himself the forever Numero Uno on the call sheet of life."

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26. Scotty Bowers, Full Service

Credit: Grove Press

The longtime Hollywood pimp hardly held back, describing one actor who "liked what is commonly known as 'water sports' or a 'golden shower' ... On an even more provocative level, [he] occasionally enjoyed it when his sexual partners — especially young ladies — 'dropped a deuce' or defecated on him."

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25. Patti Lupone, A Memoir

Credit: Crown Archetype

The actress and singer recalls actor Paul Sorvino, whom she worked with on the doomed production of The Baker’s Wife: "On the first day before he was officially introduced to us, whenever a new cast member would enter the rehearsal room, he would hit a high C. It was like having Howdy Doody at Auschwitz."

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24. Tina Turner, I, Tina

Credit: Dey Street Books

The singer remembers her abusive husband Ike: "[He] grabbed one of those shoe stretchers and started beating me with it… And that was the beginning, the beginning of Ike instilling fear in me. He kept control of me with fear. Why didn’t I leave him? It’s easy to say now I should’ve."

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23. Shirley Jones, A Memoir

Credit: Gallery Books

The Partridge Family mom was definitely not as square as you might think: “We were all in the pool when Jack said, ‘Hey, let’s all take off our clothes, go inside, and have a foursome!'"

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22. Tina Fey, Bossypants

Credit: Reagan Arthur Books

The comedian and actress remembers an incident on the SNL set where Amy Poehler was goofing around: "Jimmy Fallon, who was arguably the star of the show at the time, turned to her and in a faux-squeamish voice said: 'Stop that! It's not cute! I don't like it.' Amy dropped what she was doing, went black in the eyes for a second, and wheeled around on him. 'I don't fucking care if you like it.' Jimmy was visibly startled."

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21. Julia Phillips, You’ll Never Eat Lunch in this Town Again

Credit: Random House

The Hollywood producer called Goldie Hawn "borderline dirty, with stringy hair," David Geffen the "Donald Trump of show business," and agent Michael Ovitz "the Valley viper."

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Priscilla Presley, Elvis and Me

Credit: Berkley

Elvis’ wife describes their version of a sex tape: "It was the era of the Polaroid… He was the director and I was the star acting out fantasies."

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19. Leah Remini, Troublemaker

Credit: Ballantine Books

In her Scientology memoir, the actress has more than a few choice Tom Cruise anecdotes: When Tom Cruise’s longtime assistant resigned, “someone decided that she had done something wrong, and she had to undergo a sec-check* that she says cost her so much that she lost her house. Instead of viewing this…. as cruel injustice, she felt a huge sense of accomplishment when she finished her sec-check. She took pride in the fact that she left Tom in good standing with the church.”

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18. Lee Grant, I Said Yes to Everything