You can pick your favorite celebs, but you can't pick your parents.
Stars are stuck with theirs too, even when mom and dad have rap sheets.
Here are a few celebrities whose parents committed terrible crimes.
Leighton Meester
Although her Gossip Girl character was born into the Upper East Side elite, Leighton Meester's
real life reportedly started in a Texas halfway house in 1986, according to a 2008 story in
Us Weekly.
Her parents were serving time in a federal prison for smuggling 1,200 pounds of marijuana
into the United States from Jamaica.
Once Leighton was born, her mother returned to prison, but she would haunt Leighton with
frivolous lawsuits for the rest of her life.
Leighton's response to all this?
She told Cosmopolitan, "Look, I could've turned out a lot worse."
We're all glad you didn't.
Jackie Chan
Who doesn't love Jackie Chan?
It can't be helped, and yet the mere fact that he exists at all is astounding when you
learn his family’s history.
In his autobiography, I Am Jackie Chan: My Life in Action, he explains that his mother,
Lee-Lee, was attempting to smuggle opium in Shanghai, when his father, Charles, a port
inspector, found her stash.
Instead of arresting her, they fell in love and got married.
Five years later, Jackie was born.
Their love story was made into a feature film, A Tale of Three Cities.
Kellie Pickler
It's a good thing Kellie Pickler has a voice made for singing country songs, because her
early life didn't offer a whole lot of options.
Her father served almost four years for stabbing their neighbor in a trailer park in 2003,
and was arrested again in 2007 for trying to sell cars that were not his.
And in 2013, he was listed as a fugitive for not reporting to his probation officer.
Her mother also tangled with the law, allegedly forging prescriptions and writing bad checks.
Pickler talked about her parents' troubles with People in 2008, saying,
"I hadn't seen the way a relationship should be.
I'd never seen my mom and dad in the same room except in a courthouse."
Hayden Panettiere
In 2008, Hayden Panettiere's father was arrested and charged with misdemeanor battery after
assaulting her mother while drunk.
He has publicly stated the incident was just a "big misunderstanding," and Hayden believes
him.
In an August 2009 interview with Seventeen, Panettiere said,
"It put my dad in this light that is so not him.
For my dad to have that reputation now— which is so not who he is—kills me."
The couple finalized their divorce in 2016.
Sean Combs
When Sean “Diddy” Combs was just three years old, his father Melvin died, and for
much of his life, the rapper believed a car accident had killed him.
Diddy later learned that his dad died during a botched drug deal while working for Frank
Lucas, the notorious Harlem heroin trafficker dramatized in the 2007 film American Gangster.
Lucas has since confirmed the relationship in interviews.
"Me and Melvin Combs were good friends.
We were good friends, we were good friends.
We did a lot of business together.
Of course it wasn't a legal business, but we did a lot of business together."
It’s also rumored that Melvin Combs' death may have been the result of being a police
informant.
Combs opened up about his father in a 2013 video segment called "Confessions".
"My father was a hustler.
He was a drug dealer.
He was a hustler.
And I learned early in life that there was only two ways out of that, dead or in jail."
Woody Harrelson
For much of his life, Woody Harrelson was estranged from his father Charles, who left
the family while Woody was very young to pursue his career...as a contract killer.
After multiple murders, Charles Harrelson was convicted and earned two life sentences
for murdering federal judge John Wood...and also falsely claiming that he had killed John
F. Kennedy.
Woody reunited with his father while Charles was in prison, but Charles succumbed to a
heart attack in 2007.
Charlize Theron
When she was 15, Charlize Theron's father Charles had come home and drunkenly began
to make death threats towards her and her mother.
After firing a gun through a door at Charlize, Theron's mother Gerda shot and killed her
husband to protect herself and her daughter.
Charlize continues to commend her mother for her bravery, saying she wears the event "like
a tattoo," but that she’s at peace.
"Do you still have nightmares, flashbacks.
Does it haunt you?"
"No, it doesn't haunt me.
No, it doesn't haunt me at all.
I'm completely at peace."
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