If it was a summer of celebrity divorces that just passed, it is proving to be an autumn of salacious tell-all memoirs by the rich and famous. 

American pop star Britney Spears’s tome, The Woman In Me, is the freshest one off the printing press, having just landed in bookstores on Tuesday.

Its biggest bombshell is that the 41-year-old’s former boyfriend, fellow pop star Justin Timberlake, pressured her into an abortion after an unexpected pregnancy.

A week before that, American actress Jada Pinkett Smith set tongues wagging with the revelations in Worthy, her memoir that was released on Oct 17. The 52-year-old revealed she had been separated from husband and fellow actor Will Smith since 2016 – long before he stormed the 2022 Academy Awards stage to slap comedian Chris Rock for joking about her hair loss.

Renowned singer and actress Barbra Streisand might very well be next to add to the frenzy in early November, when she releases her autobiography, My Name Is Barbra. American magazine Vanity Fair has reported that the book will contain a saucy anecdote about screen legend Marlon Brando. A then-42-year-old Brando had reportedly “propositioned” Streisand at a party in 1966, when she was 24 and his then-wife Tarita Teri’ipaia was in the adjoining room.

Meanwhile, American tabloid Us Weekly claims that Australian actor Hugh Jackman will drop some “big bombshells” about his life in an upcoming autobiography that is still pending a title and publishing date.

Netizens have begun speculating that the 55-year-old star will come out as gay after years of rumours about his sexuality. Jackman in September separated from his wife of 27 years, Australian actress Deborra-Lee Furness.

The ongoing glut of celeb memoirs is a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic, which gave most people – even the entertainment elite – a great deal of free time between 2020 and 2022 to reflect on their lives and put pen to paper.

Crazy Rich Asians (2018) actress Constance Wu, 41, even referred to her memoir, Making A Scene, as her “second pandemic baby”. The book was released in 2022, while her daughter was born in 2020.

Readers seem to have a strong appetite for startling celebrity treatises.

Spears claimed on her Instagram account on Wednesday that her book became the “highest-selling celebrity memoir in history” in just one day. No sales figures are available yet, but The Woman In Me is No. 1 on online retailer Amazon Books’ current bestsellers.

Meanwhile, according to Amazon and industry trade Publishers’ Weekly, it is another celebrity memoir that has topped the overall book bestseller list for the whole of 2023 – Spare by Britain’s Prince Harry. 

Spare was released in January and made headlines for weeks with reveals such as the 39-year-old Duke of Sussex’s kill count from his military service in Afghanistan, and the fact that he once got frostbite on his genitals. 

The Straits Times rounds up nine celebrity memoirs that got tongues wagging in 2023.

Britney Spears – The Woman In Me

Pop star Britney Spears has had a tumultuous few years, culminating in 2021 with the termination of a 13-year conservatorship, where her father had control over all aspects of her life, including her finances, career and medication.

Much has been written about her life, but her memoir lays it all out in her own words. 

She paints a stark picture of her childhood, saying that she used to go out to “drink daiquiris” with her mother when she was about 13.

The Toxic (2003) singer also dedicates no small amount of page space to her romance with fellow pop star Justin Timberlake, which lasted from 1999 to 2002.

It has long been pop music lore that the duo met as child stars of the American variety television series The All-New Mickey Mouse Club.

In the book, Spears, 41, writes: “At a sleepover, we played Truth or Dare, and someone dared Justin to kiss me. A Janet Jackson song was playing in the background as he leaned in and kissed me.”

At some point in their relationship, Spears learnt that she was pregnant.

“I loved Justin so much. I always expected us to have a family together one day. This would just be much earlier than I’d anticipated. But Justin definitely wasn’t happy about the pregnancy. He said we weren’t ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young.”

She subsequently had an abortion, which she describes as being “one of the most agonising things I have experienced in my life”. 

Timberlake, who married actress Jessica Biel in 2012, has yet to comment on his former girlfriend’s bombshell.

But celebrity news show Entertainment Tonight quoted an unnamed source as saying that “Justin has been focusing on his own family and trying not to concern himself with Britney’s memoir”.

Meanwhile, Spears also cleared up misconceptions about how she lost her virginity.

Exactly 20 years ago, the pop princess told W Magazine: “I’ve slept with only one person my whole life. It was two years into my relationship with Justin, and I thought he was the one.”

But in her book, Spears admits that her first time was with her older brother’s best friend when she was 14. 

Even the more light-hearted reveals in the book are surprising. For instance, she almost landed the female lead in iconic romance film The Notebook (2004), opposite her former Mickey Mouse Club co-star Ryan Gosling.

“The Notebook casting came down to me and Rachel McAdams (who eventually got the role), and even though it would have been fun to reconnect with Ryan Gosling after our time on the Mickey Mouse Club, I’m glad I didn’t do it,” said Spears. 

Jada Pinkett Smith – Worthy

American actors Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith were a Hollywood It couple for many years. But they had always been dogged by rumours – alleging infidelity, an open marriage and forays into Scientology.  

Nevertheless, the duo stuck together, even when Hollywood blackballed Smith, 55, after the 2022 Academy Awards ceremony. 

Smith, who has long had a Nice Guy persona, stormed the stage to slap comedian Chris Rock during the live telecast. He swore, too, shouting twice: “Keep my wife’s name out of your f****** mouth.” 

The shocking gesture was a response to Rock making a joke about Pinkett Smith’s alopecia, a hair-loss condition.

As revealed in Worthy, Pinkett Smith’s memoir released on Oct 17, she was as shaken as the rest of the world by the incident – but for another reason.

“I am unclear on the reason why Will is so upset. We had been living separate lives and were there as family, not as husband and wife. But when I hear Will yell “wife” in the chaos of the moment, (I had) an internal shift of ‘Oh s***, (he still sees me as) his wife,’” wrote the 52-year-old, who has acted in films such as The Nutty Professor (1996) and Girls Trip (2017).  

Worthy reveals that they had been separated for six years – since 2016 – by that point.

Pinkett Smith wrote: “It was nobody’s fault. As much as I wanted him to love me, that would never happen if I didn’t love myself. And the same applied to him. Will and I had pictures in our mind of what a happily married couple was. And our pictures didn’t match.”

Another twist in the tale is that Rock, 58, once asked Pinkett Smith out on a date, after another round of rumours about the Smiths divorcing. 

As she told entertainment outlet People earlier in October: “He called me and he was like, ‘I’d love to take you out.’ And I was like, ‘What do you mean?’ He was like, ‘Well, aren’t you and Will getting a divorce?’ I was like, ‘No. Chris, those are just rumours.’ He was appalled. And he apologised profusely, and that was that.”

Smith, for his part, has responded that Pinkett Smith will always be an important person to him. “Jada is the best friend I have had on this planet, and I am going to show up for her and support her for the rest of my life,” he told a crowd at a promotional event for the book.

Kerry Washington – Thicker Than Water: A Memoir

The name of American actress Kerry Washington’s memoir is a hint to the deep well of family turmoil depicted within. 

The proverb, “blood is thicker than water”, refers to the indisputable strength of familial bonds above all others. 

Thicker Than Water: A Memoir hit the selves in late September. In it, the 46-year-old revealed that the man who raised her, Earl, was not her biological father.

Washington, best known for her leading role in the television drama Scandal (2012 to 2018), learnt this fact only in 2018.  

Her mother told her that “43 years ago, we were having a really hard time having a child. We used sperm. We used sperm from another man”. 

Washington wrote that the moment was a life-changing paradigm shift. “I realised that I was not who I had been told I was from the beginning of my existence. But somehow, the gift of finally knowing the truth outweighed the pain of what that truth was. At that moment, I was liberated by the revelation.”

The actress, who is married with three children, also divulged how problems in her parents’ marriage impacted her mental health at the age of seven.

“As a young child, I would lie in bed and listen for signs of how serious each battle was and when it might come to an end. I developed panic attacks at night. It wasn’t every single night, but even on peaceful nights, I trembled at the possibility of it,” she recalled.

John Stamos – If You Would Have Told Me: A Memoir

In the popular family sitcom Full House (1987 to 1995), American actor John Stamos played Uncle Jesse – an irresponsible young man who is nevertheless caring towards his widowed brother-in-law and nieces. 

But – as 60-year-old Stamos alleged in his memoir, If You Would Have Told Me: A Memoir, which hit book stores on Tuesday– at least one authority figure in his own childhood was far more malevolent.

He wrote: “When I was little, I had a babysitter who was around 18 or 19. A lot of the time, she was kind of fun. We played, watched sitcoms and lazed around on the couch. But sometimes she got weird, and it made me feel weird, too. Uncomfortable. She did strange stuff I didn’t understand.”

These strange gestures would include inappropriate touching while Stamos pretended to be asleep. “I learnt it’s a phenomenon called the freeze response. When a child is vulnerable or can’t escape, there can be a sort of playing possum effect. Don’t move, don’t speak and just wait until things get normal again,” he recounted.

Paris Hilton – Paris: The Memoir 

In the mid-2000s, American socialite and reality television star Paris Hilton was a contemporary of Britney Spears. The duo were often pictured hitting Hollywood clubs together. Spears even gives Hilton a shoutout in her memoir.

Interestingly, Hilton’s tell-all – Paris: The Memoir – shares similarities with Spears’ The Woman In Me.

It went on sale in March, and includes Hilton’s recounted experience with an unexpected pregnancy and a subsequent abortion.

However, the hotel heiress’ outlook on the situation was very different from that of Spears. 

Hilton wrote: “(My life) came crashing down when I realised I was pregnant at 22. It was like waking up on the ledge outside a 40th-floor window. I was terrified and heartsick.

“Everything I knew about myself was at war with everything I’d been raised to believe about abortion. No one can ever know how hard it is to face this impossible choice unless she’s faced it herself.”

The 42-year-old is now married to American entrepreneur Carter Reum, with whom she has a nine-month-old son.

Though Hilton has often been dismissed as vapid, her musings on the topic of abortion come across as thoughtful and measured. 

“Choosing to have an abortion can be an intensely private agony that’s impossible to explain. The only reason I’m talking about it now is that so many women are facing it, and they feel so alone, and judged and abandoned. I want them to know that they’re not alone, and they don’t owe anyone an explanation,” she added. 

Pamela Anderson – Love, Pamela: A Memoir Of Prose, Poetry, And Truth

Canadian-American actress and model Pamela Anderson covers much ground in her life story, Love, Pamela: A Memoir Of Prose, Poetry, And Truth, which was released at the end of January.

The 56-year-old is famous for playing a lifeguard on action-drama Baywatch (1989 to 2001) and for her modelling work in Playboy magazine.

Her marriage to rock star Tommy Lee, drummer of heavy metal band Motley Crue, also gained her much notoriety – especially in 1995, when a sex tape that the couple made was stolen and released to the public. 

While these are all defining events in her tome, Anderson – who has been married five times, but is now single – manages to pack in even more shocking moments.

In one instance, her father, a furnace repairman, drowns her kittens in the ocean. 

On another occasion, she walks into a bathroom at the house of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner – only to realise that actor Jack Nicholson is in there, in the midst of a tryst with two other women. 

Another uncomfortable encounter involved actor Tim Allen, with whom Anderson appeared on the sitcom Home Improvement (1991 to 1999). 

Anderson walks out of her dressing room on the first day of filming, only to find Allen standing in the hallway in a robe.

“He opened his robe and flashed me quickly – he was completely naked underneath. He said it was only fair, because he had seen me naked. Now we’re even. I laughed uncomfortably,” she recalled. 

Allen, 70, who is also known for voicing Buzz Lightyear in the Toy Story films (1995 to 2019), has denied the allegation. 

Minka Kelly – Tell Me Everything: A Memoir

American actress Minka Kelly is perhaps best known for playing the wealthy and privileged cheerleader Lyla Garrity on television sports drama Friday Night Lights (2006 to 2011).

But Kelly’s book, Tell Me Everything: A Memoir, released in May, showed that her real life was the complete opposite. 

In it, the 42-year-old describes a rough childhood with a drug addict mother who struggled to make ends meet – sometimes taking her seven-year-old daughter along to her job at a strip club.

“There have been times, I have to be honest, when I’ve been mad at her for having birthed me. I didn’t ask for all this. I didn’t ask for this trauma,” she wrote.

The turbulent time at home led to her moving in with a 21-year-old boyfriend when she was 16. 

The boyfriend – dubbed Rudy – coerced her into making a sex tape. “Seeing the video made me squirm. On the screen wasn’t a woman filled with desire. This was a small girl doing whatever was necessary to keep herself safe,” she added.

When she found fame as an actress, Rudy and the sex tape came back to haunt her. Kelly had to pay him off with a US$50,000 (S$68,615) cheque to stop him from distributing the tape. 

“The idea that it could be broadcast to the entire world made me feel like I was going to die,” said Kelly, who recently appeared on hit drama Euphoria (2019 to present).

Elliot Page – Pageboy: A Memoir

Canadian actor Elliot Page came out as a transgender man at the end of 2020. His book, Pageboy: A Memoir, released in June, is a coming-of-age recollection of his struggles with gender dysphoria and homophobia in Hollywood.

The 36-year-old describes an encounter at an industry party with an actor who told him: “You aren’t gay. That doesn’t exist. You are just afraid of men.” 

The actor then proceeded to say he would perform a profane act on Page and “make you realise you aren’t gay”.

The book also includes descriptions of Page’s various secret affairs with other famous people, such as actress Kate Mara.

Page is starring in Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy (2019 to present). His character, originally named Vanya Hargreeves, transitioned in the show’s third season and was renamed Viktor Hargreeves.

Patrick Stewart – Making It So: A Memoir

Legendary British actor Patrick Stewart released his memoir earlier in October, but it seems to have gone largely unnoticed in the face of more jaw-dropping narratives by his Hollywood peers.

Nevertheless, Making It So: A Memoir makes for a refreshing change of pace in the celeb memoir landscape, as its most shocking revelations are veritably low-stakes.

The 83-year-old might now be known as a distinguished and respected actor. But he describes one occasion in the late 1980s when he stormed off the set during the filming of the science-fiction television series, Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987 to 1994).

Stewart, who made his name as a stage actor in London’s West End, had been cast as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in the Star Trek franchise.

“On the set, I grew angry with the conduct of my peers, and that’s when I called a meeting, in which I lectured the cast for goofing off and responded to (a co-star’s comment of), ‘We’ve got to have some fun sometimes, Patrick,’ by saying, ‘We are not here, Denise, to have fun,’” Stewart wrote.

“In retrospect, everyone, me included, finds this story hilarious. But, at that moment, when the cast erupted in hysterics at my pompous declaration, I didn’t handle it well. I didn’t enjoy being laughed at. I stormed off the set and into my trailer, slamming the door.”

Fortunately, Stewart added, he learnt to loosen up and came around to seeing the rest of the cast as family.

He recently returned to playing Picard on the spin-off series Star Trek: Picard (2020 to 2023).