Some people will do anything for fame. For these celebs,
nothing is off the table — not even lying about having cancer.
Former "NBC Nightly News" anchor and father of "Girls" star Allison Williams, Brian Williams was
lauded for his brave journalistic efforts during the Iraq War. In his heyday, he watched the Berlin
Wall fall, survived a rocket-propelled grenade attack, and flew into Baghdad with Navy Seals.
Or so we thought. It turns out that Williams lied about all of the above — and had everyone fooled.
In 2015, sleuths started to notice holes in Williams' tales of heroism. He had long
recounted a story of witnessing a grenade attack on a helicopter when he was reporting
on the Iraq War in 2003.. Over the years, his story began to change. The most notable
modification occurred in 2007 when he suggested that he was actually flying in the helicopter
that came under attack, as opposed to merely witnessing the onslaught. Then,
in 2013, he appeared on "The Late Show with David Letterman" and stated,
"two of our four helicopters were hit by ground-fire,
including the one I was in, RPG and AK-47"
Contrary to his claims, Williams was in an entirely different helicopter, one that
followed the target. Having been caught in a lie, he was forced to retract the story and apologize.
He said he made a mistake in remembering the story, before admitting that he was
not in the helicopter that was targeted. He was suspended for six months as a result of his lies.
With his twinkly blue eyes and enigmatic smile, Hollywood veteran Paul Newman
charmed his way into audiences' hearts, but he long maintained that his heart
only belonged to his wife of half a century, Joanne Woodward. In an interview with Playboy,
he claimed that he was utterly faithful to Woodward, famously declaring,
But Newman devotees had their hearts broken when it was revealed that he
wasn't the wholesome family man he appeared to be.
According to the documentary "The Last Movie Stars," which explores Newman and Woodward's
marriage, the former was far from faithful. The film alleges that Woodward hated her husband's now
iconic quote, believing that it reduced her to "a piece of meat." What's more, Woodward grew tired
of Newman's womanizing. The actor reportedly cheated on his wife with alarming frequency.
One of the actor's reported lovers was journalist Nancy Bacon, with whom he had an 18-month affair.
All the while, Newman kept up the façade of being a monogamous,
one-woman man, even as his pals joked that,
The cheating was particularly hard on the actor's children. As his daughter Elinor recalled,
"I found a book that was written by somebody he had an affair with…"
At one time the most revered figure in professional cycling history, Lance Armstrong
was an American hero. He was also a cycling ambassador and charity fundraiser as the founder
of the Lance Armstrong Foundation, having survived late-stage testicular cancer in his youth.
Throughout his career, Armstrong always stated with the utmost conviction that
he abstained from performance-enhancing drugs,
and his mesmerizing athletic performance was attributable to his sporting prowess alone.
In 2005, he appeared at a deposition to testify that he had never doped. He asserted,
"I've never taken performance-enhancing drugs."
But in 2012, Armstrong was banned for life by the global governing body of cycling and his Tour
de France medals were all confiscated after an investigation concluded that he'd been cheating.
The following year, he gave an interview with Oprah Winfrey in which he admitted that he lied.
However, investigators said that Armstrong had also outright lied to Winfrey when he claimed that
he stopped doping in 2005. Investigations show that Armstrong was still doping from 2005 onwards.
By 2015, he came clean and admitted to doping,
telling the BBC that given the opportunity, he'd likely cheat again. He confessed,
Of all the things one can lie about, it doesn't get much lower than claiming to
have survived 9/11. Comedic actor Steve Rannazzisi did just that. In 2009,
the comedian told Marc Maron that he was working at Merill Lynch at the time. He stated,
While the public believed his tales of escaping certain death to be true,
Rannazzisi stunned fans when he confessed that he'd made the whole thing up. The New York Times
noticed inconsistencies in the actor's story and began an investigation. Soon,
he had no choice but to come clean. He tweeted,
At the time of his shocking confession, he was set to star in the Comedy Central special
"Breaking Dad," but the network expressed their disappointment in the promising young comic.
Rationalizing why he lied, Rannazzisi attributed his tall tales to immaturity. He tweeted,
For years, Hilaria Baldwin really had us thinking she had Spanish heritage. A
2012 Vanity Fair Spain profile describes her as a native of Mallorca who loves flamenco and paella,
and whose family couldn't pronounce the name of her new husband, Alec Baldwin. She asserted,
Alec gave an interview with David Letterman in
2013 in which he imitated his wife's accent, claiming she was from Spain.
"Really? Ok, I can't wait to see you that's going
to be great. Fantastic. What time? 12 o'clock? My wife is from Spain."
But by 2020, eagle-eyed, not to mention bat-eared, Twitter users started noticing
discrepancies in her diction and backstory. For instance, in early interviews she speaks
with an American accent. It turns out that Hilaria is in fact Hillary Hayward-Thomas,
who was born in Boston to Dr. Kathryn Haywards and David Thomas. Genealogist Dr. Adina Newman
told the Daily Mail that she concluded that Hilaria doesn't have a trace of Spanish ancestry.
Eventually, Hilaria had to come right out and say it to Vanity Fair:
Speaking to The New York Times about the trickery,
she said that the situation was far more nuanced than her simply faking her heritage,
insisting that she absorbed the Spanish culture in which she was raised.
It's one thing to tell a little white lie at one's own discretion, but it's quite another
matter entirely to lie about having a terminal illness — and to put other people's lives in
danger in the process. Well, that's exactly what Australian health influencer Belle Gibson did.
For years, the blogger claimed that she was diagnosed with late-stage terminal brain cancer,
but miraculously managed to cure the disease through healthy eating. She
developed a huge Instagram following with her pseudoscientific claims and even wrote a book,
"The Whole Pantry." One of Belle's former devotees told the BBC,
So, in 2013, Kylie decided to emulate her idol,
ditching chemo and embracing the concept of "wellness."
There was just one problem: Gibson was a fraud. In 2015, journalists Beau Donelly and Nick Toscano
began doing some digging into Gibson's background and discovered that she'd never had cancer at
all and even lied about donating proceeds from her book to charity. Eventually, she confessed
to Australian Women's Weekly that none of it was true. In 2017, she was fined $410,000 for her con.
When Rebel Wilson first waltzed onto the cinematic landscape,
she was a breath of fresh air: confident, funny, and unashamedly authentic.
"I'm an open book."
Or so we thought. It turns out that Wilson was not only lying about her age, but her background.
In 2015, Woman's Day published an exposé into Wilson's various supposed fabrications.
The outlet alleged that Wilson lied about being several years younger than she is — at the time,
she claimed to be 29 when she was actually 36. They also claimed that
Wilson falsified tales of an eccentric, impoverished background when she in
fact had a privileged childhood. An ex-classmate admitted about Wilson,
Subsequently, Wilson launched a lawsuit against the outlet in 2017,
claiming that they purposely sought to sabotage her career by publishing the story to coincide
with the release of "Pitch Perfect 2." She alleged that an obsessed former classmate
spilled the deets to publicly shame her. The court eventually awarded Wilson $3.6 million. Regarding
her decision to lie about her age, Wilson told Who Magazine that ageism was to blame:
One could be forgiven for believing Jack and Meg White were siblings: the jet-black hair,
the pallid complexions, and the twinning wardrobes. For years, fans thought Jack
and Meg were brother and sister, because that's the very image that the musical duo projected.
As The Cut notes, Jack would often refer to Meg as his sister during live performances. However,
fans began to notice that the pair had an unusual rapport and suspected onstage chemistry,
suggesting that something was surely awry with the red-topped twosome.
Soon enough, it was revealed that the pair were in fact ex-spouses. In 2001,
NME disclosed that Jack and Meg had been married for four years,
though the duo insisted that they were brother and sister when contacted for comment.
They eventually came clean, however. Rationalizing the sibling myth, Jack told Rolling Stone in 2005
that he felt the duo wouldn't be taken seriously if people knew the truth.
He also scoffed at the notion that he and Meg were deliberately trying to deceive people.
When Britney Spears first burst onto the music scene in the late '90s, she had long maintained
that she was a virgin. At the time, the songstress was in a highly publicized relationship with
fellow popster Justin Timberlake, and asserted that the pair had never had sex. Spears once said,
She reiterated this stance, albeit coyly,
during an appearance on the British talk show "The Frank Skinner Show" in 2002.
"I just told them and then boom, the world's talking about it."
"You really want for me to change the subject now?"
"Yes please."
Timberlake had a lot to say about Spears' virginity assertion. Speaking to radio show
"Star and Buc Wild," he declared that he and Britney did engage in premarital intimacy.
This led Spears to backtrack on her past purity claims. In an interview with W Magazine in 2003,
she confirmed that she and Timberlake had sex, saying,
Considering that Spears was a vulnerable young girl thrust into the spotlight to project an
image of wholesome Christianity, it's understandable why she lied.
Back in 2008, Tyga appeared on the game show "Bustas," which never aired,
and claimed that he'd lied about his tough Compton upbringing. He boasted about growing
up in the Valley, surrounded by wealth and fancy cars. He said,
Though many were quick to slam Tyga as a phony for lying about his troubled upbringing,
he later insisted that the show was pure fiction. The rapper said that he lied during his appearance
on the show and is in fact from Compton, contrary to his claims that he grew up in the Valley.
In an interview with Power 106's Big Boy's Neighborhood, he clarified the comments
he made on the series, attributing them to the utterances of an overzealous teen. He explained,
It was long believed that Akon had an extensive rap sheet. He claimed to have
been in jail for over three years and served as the leader of an infamous car theft operation.
"You know, like a liar."
However, an investigation by The Smoking Gun concluded that Akon had lied about his criminal
past. Despite claiming to possess a criminal record that would make Tony Montana blush,
he actually has just one conviction to his name — gun possession,
for which he was sentenced to three years probation.
As for leading a car theft ring? Total fiction. Contrary to his claims,
he was not in prison for three years — he wasn't even charged, let alone convicted,
of the supposed car theft master plan. FBI agent Peter McFarlane said,
Yep, turns out Akon's criminal history was just a con. Addressing his lies in an interview with the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Akon said that he wanted his fabrications to give
hope to the disaffected men he met during his extremely brief run-in with the law.
Character actor Brian Dennehy was best known for his roles in "First Blood" and "Cocoon," usually
playing tough, no-nonsense characters. With his grizzled onscreen persona, it certainly
wasn't hard to believe his recollections of active duty during the Vietnam War.
The actor had long asserted that he served in the war and was wounded on the battlefield. In an
interview with Playboy, he even went as far as to hint that he killed people in action. He claimed,
But he was soon dragged for being a fraud.
It was revealed that Dennehy made the whole thing up: Although he served in the Marines,
he never set foot in Vietnam. He admitted in 1988,
Despite his confession, Dennehy lied again about his supposed service when speaking to
The Wall Street Journal in 2007. Considering the impact of PTSD on soldiers — Vietnam in
particular has had a lasting psychological effect on vets — the actor's stolen valor
was especially offensive to veterans who suffered the devastating trauma of combat.
In the aftermath of #MeToo, Asia Argento was one of the most prominent proponents of the movement.
With her passionate speeches and harrowing recollections of the abuse inflicted upon her
by Harvey Weinstein, Argento was perceived as a beacon of moral certitude. That all changed,
however, when a young fan came forward with his own allegations of misconduct against the star.
Argento sexually assaulted actor Jimmy Bennett when he was 17 and secretly paid him $380,000.
She had first met him when he was just 7. She initially denied the allegations,
stating she did not have a sexual relationship with the child actor.
However, she was exposed for lying when TMZ published photos of her and Bennett nude
together in bed. She also appeared to admit to the inappropriate relationship in text screenshots.
In a statement, Rose McGowan said that she was highly disappointed in Argento and was
breaking off their friendship. McGowan revealed that her partner, Rain Dove,
told her that Argento had indeed lied about the nature of her relationship with Bennett:
Noting that Argento had been receiving nude photos of Bennett since he was just 12,
McGowan condemned her friend for not telling the authorities or his parents,
and for not blocking Jimmy's social media.
When "Empire" star Jussie Smollett recalled his terrifying ordeal at the hands of Trump supporters
in 2019, numerous celebs rallied in support. Smollett was supposedly attacked by two racists,
who tied a rope around his neck and started calling him racial and homophobic slurs.
In an interview with "Good Morning America," the actor appeared thoroughly convincing when
recalling the horrific alleged attack. He insisted throughout the interview that he was
telling the truth. However, cracks began to show in Smollett's story. The first major telltale sign
that something didn't add up was that the actor told police he was attacked by two white men.
The two men who supposedly attacked Smollett, brothers Abel and Ola Osundairo, are Black.
Accordingly, the city of Chicago filed a $130,000 lawsuit against the actor,
claiming the crime was a hoax, something Smollett vehemently denied. The lawsuit stated,
In 2022, Smollett was sentenced to 150 days in jail after being
found guilty of faking the hate crime.
If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault,
help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network
website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).