Why was Matthew McConaughey on the outs with his mom after he became famous?
What celebrities have sued their parents, and vice versa?
Fame doesn't make family problems go away; in fact, they sometimes make them even worse.
Fans of Keeping Up With the Kardashians surely know that the family feels that
Caitlyn Jenner has thrown them under the bus, particularly her ex-wife Kris Jenner.
Notably, in 2015, Caitlyn talked with Vanity Fair about the reason for their split, explaining,
"20 percent was gender and 80 percent was the way I was treated."
Khloe Kardashian then called out Caitlyn on Keeping Up when she said,
"We're just not a family who goes and bashes the other one publicly."
Kim Kardashian also defended her mom, telling Caitlyn,
"You got the fame, but you're losing your family.
It's your time, but you don't have to bash us on your way up."
The family also wasn't pleased with how they were portrayed in Caitlyn's memoir.
As Kim put it on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in 2017,
"She's saying all these things [...] I just feel like it's unfair; things aren't truthful."
And it's not just her former stepdaughters that Caitlyn mistreated; it's her sons as
well. As Brandon Jenner dished in a book of essays written by children of famous parents,
"The infrequent exchanges felt more like staged photo opportunities than real bonding."
And as Brody Jenner admitted on an episode of The Hills: New Beginnings,
"What I've learned is to not expect too much from her."
Justin Bieber seemed super close with his mother Pattie Mallette while growing up,
but he eventually cut ties with her for a few years. In 2013, Mallette hinted to
People Magazine that it was getting harder to connect with her son. As she put it,
"I've had to let him go a little bit and let him be independent."
Eventually, the two talking stopped altogether, with Bieber telling Billboard in 2015 that their
relationship was, quote, "pretty nonexisting." He seemed to take the blame for that, as he admitted,
"I was distant because I was ashamed. I never wanted my mom to be disappointed
in me and I knew she was. We spent some time not talking, so it takes time to rebuild that trust."
But Bieber didn't seem to make rebuilding his relationship with his mom a priority,
and the following year, he told GQ,
"We don't talk often, but we're cordial."
He also revealed that he was closer to his dad than his mom,
despite his father reportedly being mostly absent during his childhood.
The singer also expressed that he apparently outgrew both parents, as he explained,
"You don't need them as much [...] you're doing your own thing,
and you don't need them, and you don't value their opinion the same, either."
Selena Gomez has also had a rocky relationship with her own mother,
Mandy Teefey. This resentment apparently began when Gomez was just a child, as she admitted
on an E! special that she solely blamed Teefey for her parents' divorce. As Gomez got older,
things became even more complicated. In 2014, she fired Teefey and her stepdad as her managers,
despite them having handled her career since her start on Barney. According to E!,
they reportedly didn't speak for a whole year afterwards, with an anonymous source claiming,
"It caused a huge rift in their relationship."
By 2017, mother and daughter were on the outs again.
This time they reportedly even unfollowed each other on Instagram.
This beef was rumored to be caused by Gomez hanging out with her reportedly toxic ex, Justin
Bieber, against her family's wishes. Although, as an insider clarified to People Magazine,
"It's more complicated than just fighting over a guy.
Mandy and Selena have had their ups and down[s] before."
As the source also noted,
"[Gomez] also wants to give her mom some space.
When they fight, they fight hard. But when they love, they also love hard."
Leighton Meester is yet another young TV star whose fame apparently ruined her relationship
with her mother. Meester didn't have the easiest upbringing, as both of her parents
did some prison time, though she's admitted that there were also some good times and that she felt
loved. Her mother, Constance, even moved with her to New York City, and then Hollywood, so that
she could pursue her goal of becoming an actor, despite them barely being able to make ends meet.
However, it seems things took a turn when Meester got famous, and by 2011 she'd not only fired
Constance as her manager, but was also suing her. As reported by TMZ, she claimed that Constance
was using the $7,500 a month that Leighton was sending her to care for her sick brother Lex
for her own cosmetic procedures instead. Constance countersued her daughter,
claiming that Meester had, quote, "repeatedly hit her with a bottle" during a 2010 fight,
though she later dropped the suit. By 2014, Constance claimed to InTouch that Leighton
had totally abandoned her family even though they couldn't even "afford food," while also revealing,
"I was looking at homeless shelters, and Lex showed me photos he'd found
of a million dollar house she bought in LA and said, 'Mom, how can she do this to us?'"
Matthew McConaughey may seem like a lovable family man, but he wasn't always so understanding when it
came to his mother, Kay. In fact, he didn't speak to her for several years after he became famous.
As the actor revealed on an episode of Red Table Talk,
he didn't like how his mom was behaving during their weekly calls. As he explained:
"Mother wasn't answering the phone. A fan of my fame was answering the phone."
Things only got worse, as McConaughey recalled,
"I would share things with her [...] Some of those
things I would share might show up in the six o'clock news three days later."
The final nail in the coffin seemed to be when Kay gave the TV show Hard Copy
a tour of her son's childhood home. When he called her out on it,
she apparently replied that she didn't think that he would find out. As McConaughey then explained:
“There was years there where I would not share things with her."]
Kay admitted to enjoying her son's fame more than he was,
while also claiming that it was because of how proud she was of him.
But McConaughey didn't see it that way. As he put it on an episode of The Howard Stern Show,
"She became a different person."
But they eventually worked it out, as he also revealed:
"We went through it, and we're on the other side of it. It's good."
Like some other child stars, Lindsay Lohan's success seemingly made her believe that she
didn't have to listen to anyone, and that she could even tell her parents
what to do. As a former boyfriend of hers told Vanity Fair in 2010,
"Lindsay was her mother's boss [...] If Lindsay threw a tantrum,
[her mother] Dina would do whatever she wanted her to."
One infamous mother-daughter conflict happened in 2012,
when they had a fight in a limo, and Lindsay was recorded by TMZ calling her
mother "the f---ing devil" and accusing her of doing cocaine. The feud reportedly stemmed from
Lindsay wanting Dina to return money that she'd lent her. She even told her mother,
"This is what you do. You ruin people."
Lindsay has also had serious conflicts with her father, Micheal. As she told Vanity Fair in 2010,
"He's put myself and my mother and my mom's parents through so much hell."
And in 2016, she revealed to The Daily Mail that she cut out her dad from her life completely.
As she explained,
"My father is known for talking to the press and selling stories.
He loves the attention. In the past he's said I've done drugs, he put my number on the internet.
Who does that? Some of the stuff he's done proves to me he doesn't care about me."
Fans of Eminem know that the rapper has had an infamously bad relationship
with his mother Deborah Nelson from day one. In fact, in his first hit single,
"My Name Is," he even accused her of being addicted to drugs. And he didn't stop there,
as he continued to paint her as an addict and all-around neglectful mother in several of his
songs throughout his career. He even claimed in his 2002 track "Cleanin' Out My Closet"
that she had Münchausen syndrome by proxy and that he'd suffered because of it.
"It's sad, because people are passing judgment by listening to Marshall's songs."
Nelson has fought back against some of those allegations. In 1999,
she sued her son for defamation, demanding $10 million but later settling for $25,000.
Eminem responded to the lawsuit through his lawyer, who regarded it as, quote,
"the result of a lifelong strained relationship between him and [his] mother." Nelson later
claimed that her son's songs about his difficult childhood were false. As she told Inside Edition,
"He was spoiled rotten. Anything he wanted,
I made sure that I'd take my last dime and get it for him."
She also released a memoir entitled My Son Marshall, My Son Eminem, in which she wrote,
"He never knew his father, and I did all I could to make up for it."
Nelson also noted that his insults had left her "heartbroken"
and that she thought that he had forgotten the good times that they'd had together.
Modern Family star Ariel Winter doesn't exactly have the best relationship with her mother Crystal
Workman, and that's a bit of an understatement. She's accused her of being the worst kind of a
stage mom possible. At age 14, Winter took her mom to court and was placed in the care of her
older sister, after claiming that Workman had physically and emotionally abused her.
She told The Hollywood Reporter that her mom would
also restrict her food and dress her in a sexualized manner. As she put it,
"People thought I was 24 when I was 12."
"It wasn't a supportive, loving home. I had a really tough time."
Workman, however, denied those accusations, telling E! News,
"I want to say the horrible, untrue accusations are false
and ridiculous. [...] I have my doctor's letter that my daughter's never been abused."
Winter's older brother, Addams Family actor Jimmy Workman, seemingly agreed, as he insisted,
"That stuff didn't happen."
He also blamed the whole situation on Winter dating 18-year-old actor
Cameron Palatas when she was 14. As he put it at the time,
"This is stemming [from] a boy that is over-age dating my little sister."
Two years after Winter became emancipated, Workman attempted to reach out to her daughter,
As she told Inside Edition,
"Every girl needs her mom and every mom needs her daughter."
But it seems that Winter had no interest in speaking with her mother,
even though she was struggling financially. As Workman also revealed,
"I lived in a storage space. There was no heat,
no air [...] What was difficult was that my daughters knew I was living there."
The Carter family has definitely had its fair share of feuds over the years,
and younger sibling Aaron may be the most volatile. Things got so bad in 2019 that
his twin sister Angel and their older brother Nick took out a restraining order against him.
The former Backstreet Boy tweeted that they did so because of Aaron's…
"increasingly alarming behavior and his recent confession that he harbors
thoughts and intentions of killing my pregnant wife and unborn child."
And it didn't end there. In 2021, Aaron took to Instagram Live,
where he called Nick a "coward" and declared,
"He makes his wife do all his dirty work for him [...] I don't have any respect for Nick,
and you're not going to tell me that I have to respect Nick."
Then in November 2021, Aaron accused his on-again-and-off-again fiancé
Melanie Martin of conspiring with his estranged family members behind his back. As he tweeted,
"I have the most conniving deceiving family and Melanie has been lying to
me the whole time communicating with my twin sister and the family members
who tried to put me in prison and who tried to get a conservatorship on me."
As reported by E!, Martin and the Carters have all denied Aaron's conservatorship claims.
If you or someone you know may be the victim of child abuse,
please contact the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline
at 1-800-4-A-Child (1-800-422-4453) or contact their live chat services.