15 Horrible Things Stars Have Done

Being a celebrity does not automatically mean being a really nice person. In the past, Hollywood might have tried to cover up or urge people to forget some of the terrible things celebrities have done in their lifetime, but the following 15 actions are kind of hard to brush to a side for us! Everybody makes mistakes from time to time, so we are not saying the megastars who did these things are all monsters, but as fans, it is nice to be aware of who exactly we are worshipping! These 15 celebs, some of which have conquered the music industry, starred in the biggest films of their time and established themselves as icons, have quite a bit of dirty laundry (it does seem like everyone does, though). If you thought that shoplifting, careless driving, misogyny, adultery, domestic violence, more severe encounters with the law, and burning things down were just for regular joes, think again!

15 Winona Ryder

We know her from movies like Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands, her creepy AF appearance in Black Swan, and oh yeah, the fact that Johnny Depp tattooed her on his arm and then regretted it when they broke up. But none of that stuff means that Winona Ryder is squeaky clean. In 2001, she was arrested for shoplifting. The girl had gathered a whole bunch of designer clothes (approximately $5,500 worth) from Saks Fifth Avenue. After being caught, Ryder apparently stated that she was just doing research for a movie role, although we're currently unsure which role that was exactly! In the end, she had to pay two Civil Demands and had to repay the store for the clothes. For someone with so much money, it sounds fishy, right? Others have said that the incident took place because Ryder had been taking a few illegal substances. Makes sense, but we don't know for sure!

14 Mark Wahlberg

Mark Wahlberg is growing into a mega movie star with roles in Martian, Ted and The Lovely Bones under his belt. But he didn't get off to a great start in life and actually started traveling down a pretty scary path before he was set straight. When he does interviews today, he seems like a nice, down-to-earth guy who might live on your block, so it's hard to accept that he committed a few hate crimes before he was 20. By the time he was 13, he was addicted to drugs like the white stuff, which definitely didn't help things. When he was 15, he was harassing black children until a Civil Action was filed against him. When he was 16, he actually physically assaulted two Asian men, reportedly motivated by race. Uh, maybe he isn't the nice guy living on your block? People do change, but he certainly wasn't a nice guy back then!

13 Jay Z

Okay, so Jay Z is Beyoncé's husband, so by association, we just assume that he is the king of the world. Long before Bey came into the picture, Jay was having a hard time being accepted into the music industry and did things like sell his records out of his car and start his own record company. The point is he earned his success fairly, and naturally, wasn't going to be okay with anybody trying to steal it from him. However, a record executive known as Lance "Un" Riviera was allegedly trying to plagiarize some of Jay's stuff, so when the two came face to face at a listening party in New York in 1999, Jay casually stabbed Riviera in the stomach with a five-inch blade. As you do. Most people would have received up to 15 years in prison, but Jay got three years' probation and was forced to pay a settlement.

12 Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs is seen as something of a legend since it's very likely that he invented the device you're using to read this article! But being intelligent and innovative doesn't equate to being a decent guy. In the 1970s, before Jobs was a billionaire (but he was still richer than everybody we know), his partner Chrisann became pregnant, but when she gave birth, Jobs denied being the girl's father. He was so desperate to get out of paying those child support cheques that he swore he was infertile. For the first two years of little Lisa's life, he rejected her as a child until the law forced him into a paternity test which revealed that, surprise surprise, he was her father. He had to pay back money to the state since Lisa had been living on welfare. So while he was living in luxury his daughter was using welfare. What a decent dude…

11 Elvis Presley

The previous generation and their mothers would probably have our heads for uttering a negative word about the King, but the truth is that Elvis wasn't exactly as perfect as it seemed. It was widely known that he was seriously into teenage girls (when he was no longer a teenager!). He met his wife Priscilla when she was just 14, so that should have been a warning sign right there. After their divorce (interestingly enough, when she was no longer a teenager and was a mother to his daughter) it was reported that Elvis surrounded himself with teenage girls and was continually dating them. It gets creepier -- apparently, he even referred to them as “cherries." Is that not the grossest thing ever?! Elvis may have been one of the most handsome men on the planet, but if any other guy had displayed that behavior, women would be running for the hills.

10 Sean Penn

Sean Penn is an amazing actor, but for at least one period of his life, he also seemed to suffer from anger issues, a paranoid mindset, and a controlling nature. He married pop star Madonna in 1985, but only two years later, he went to jail for 33 days for attacking a photographer. Madonna admitted that the two often got into severe arguments during their marriage, and it was alleged that he struck her over the head with a baseball bat. She is said to have reported that he even broke into her house and tied her up for over nine hours while beating her. You know, that's probably not the kind of guy that you want to get involved with! Since then, Madonna has denied the claims and maintained that Sean never hit her. But other witnesses have come forward stating they saw Madonna all battered and bruised. Who to believe?

9 Chris Brown

Almost all millennials would be aware of what Chris Brown did that's pretty disgusting, but a lot of people seem to have forgotten since then! In 2008, after Clive Davis's Grammy pre-party, Chris Brown and his then partner, superstar Rihanna, got into a heated argument while driving in the Hollywood hills. The altercation ended up with Brown physically attacking Rihanna, going so far as to choke her and bite her. Photos of Rihanna all bruised and swollen surfaced not long after, so we could see for ourselves that whatever went down was pretty serious. A few loyal Brown supporters insinuated that Rihanna must have done something to deserve it-which is hilarious in itself-and Rihanna has since stated that she caught Brown in a lie and was trying to get more information when he attacked her. The two seem to have reconciled their differences, but we much prefer her with Drake!

8 Johnny Cash

Johnny Cash might be a country music icon, but aside from leaving his imprint on the music world, he did a few silly things in his day. Namely, his truck went up in flames after overheating one day when he was in the forest, and the fire escalated into an uncontrollable beast that scorched a square mile of woodland. Not only did Cash's fire burn up a huge amount of trees, which no doubt served as a habitat for endless forest creatures, but he also killed 50% of the California Condors bird species. Since the species was primarily located in that area, it's said that Cash just about wiped out the whole lot of them. It might not have been his intention to kill all those birds, but he reportedly froze and watched the burning instead of running for help. In the end, he was slapped with an $82,000 fine.

7 Mike Tyson

Boxing champion Mike Tyson doesn't exactly portray himself as the nice guy next door, but it's also hard to believe that he's done some pretty awful and illegal things. In the 1990s, Tyson went to prison for three years after he was convicted of physically assaulting an 18-year-old girl in Indianapolis. In response to the allegations, he said that he had a reputation of being a womanizer, and she should have known what she was in for when she came up to his hotel room. Ugh, no. Just don't force anyone to do anything they don't want to do! Not hard! It is also said that Mike groped many contestants at the beauty pageant where the incident took place. He's also been known to lose his temper with interviewers. Since then, Mike has mended his image and appeared in a few movies, but it's kind of hard to forget this.

6 Chuck Berry

He might be known as one of the pioneers of rock and roll and a guitarist with talent beyond even the comprehension of most people, but that doesn't mean Chuck Berry wasn't a jerk! At a young age, Chuck participated in the robbing of a car at gunpoint, which is pretty scary. A lot of us get lost when we're still teenagers, but Chuck's issues seemed to continue on into adulthood. Later, Chuck was found to have smuggled a minor over the state line for the sole purpose of sleeping with her. There are so many things wrong with that, we don't even know where to begin! That isn't even the worst of it, though! After he'd established himself as an icon, Chuck was discovered to be secretly filming women in the bathroom of his restaurant. He was sued by 59 women and got out of abuse charges by paying out $1.2 million.

5 Ashley Greene

Ashley Greene is perhaps best-known for playing the pixie-like Alice in Twilight, and it's definitely hard to imagine her doing anything careless, or having a blatant disregard for anybody else. But in 2013, her condo in West Hollywood caught fire due to an unattended candle in her home. So not her fault, but at the same time, kind of her fault. The fire resulted in the death of her dog Marlo, which is devastating. However, reports failed to include the effects the fire had on Greene's neighbors, who were allegedly suffering a plethora of problems thanks to Greene's carelessness. She was reportedly sued for causing health problems as a result of the smoke and for property damage as well. Everybody makes mistakes, so it's not the candle part that is so problematic here, but apparently, Greene wasn't interested in reaching out, owning up to her mistake or even apologizing. If that's true, then it's pretty disappointing!

4 Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein lived before our time, so it's hard to get a sense of what he was really like as a person. All we have to go on are old black and white photos in which he looks like an adorable and harmless science nerd. But there's also the list of demands he gave to his first wife. On the list, Einstein made it clear that he expected her to cook all his meals, tidy his desk and room but never use it, to never sit with him, to never be intimate with him, to not talk to him if he didn't want her to, to not reproach him, to not travel with him and to leave his room immediately if he asked her to. Of course, you shouldn't judge someone against today's standards if they were living in a completely different time, but come on! He needed a maid, not a wife, and we have to admit that we're kind of totally offended by this story.

3 Sean Connery

In this case, it's not so much what the star did, but what they said. You might think that Sean Connery is the epitome of all things handsome and gentlemanly, but if that's the case, you need to know about his opinion on physically harming women. In an interview from back in the 60s, Connery said the following: “I don't think there is anything particularly wrong about hitting a woman… If a woman is a b*tch, or hysterical, or bloody-minded continually, then I'd do it. I think a man has to be slightly advanced, ahead of the woman. I really do-by virtue of the way a man is built, if nothing else.” Yeah, we'll just leave that there to sink in. Connery was asked decades later by Barbara Walters if he had changed his mind, and of course, he had not. It's not that women are above men in any way, but you don't hit anybody! Basic common sense, Sean.

2 Caitlyn Jenner

Details are still being released about the fatal car accident that reality TV star Caitlyn Jenner was involved in back in 2015, but we know that it's just an awful situation for all involved. The crash occurred when Jenner was known as Bruce and rear-ended a woman named Kimberly Howe, who then spun into oncoming traffic and was tragically killed. The family in the oncoming SUV also reportedly suffered injuries from the incident, including a severe cervical fracture, nerve damage, and blunt force trauma. Reports surfaced at the time that Jenner was texting at the time of the accident, though this was later denied. Jenner hasn't been charged, though defense for Howe's stepchildren claim that she needs to take responsibility for what she's done. It's a tricky situation, and totally hard to pinpoint the blame on one person, but either way, it's a terrible thing for Jenner to have been involved in.

1 Matthew Broderick

The only thing worse than being involved in a fatal car accident is being involved in a fatal car accident because of your own reckless driving. We might know him as the voice of Simba and Sarah Jessica Parker's cute husband, but Matthew Broderick comes in at the top of our list for his involvement in a fatal car crash in the 1980s. Broderick was vacationing in Ireland and driving a BMW when he crossed into the next lane, smashed into an oncoming Volvo, and killed two women, Anna Gallagher and Margaret Doherty, instantly. Broderick suffered a few injuries himself, including a collapsed lung, a concussion, fractured ribs and a fractured leg. Later, he claimed he couldn't recall the incident or the day and was charged with causing death by dangerous driving. In the end, the charges were reduced and he was charged $175. That must be pretty difficult to live with!