When you went to school with a celebrity and they lie about their story

[threeisacharm18]

I was listening to a pop star who was being interviewed and heard them tell some blatant lies about their background.

They claimed to never have gone to drama school or had any industry connections and miraculously was scouted.

I know this to be a complete lie. I was so surprised as to why they would lie this way. It makes no sense. It's been 20 years. No one cares that much so why lie... ?

I guess they were trying to flog something so maybe it the 'struggle story' sells better

This happened to my friend at Primary school. Also had to apply to a priest in Ireland for a baptism certificate because there was no birth certificate and she was apparently 'baptised in Ireland' and she needed it for her first Holy Communion. Turned out her older sister was her mother, and the parents pretended they were her parents.

I am going to be horribly nosy too. Please ignore this post if you do not want to share anything else about yourself. Did you have a safe, happy and loving upbringing with your adoptive family? I really hope that you had a wonderful childhood post adoption and that your life has gone brilliantly ever since.

My 13yr old is a big fan of a singer who sings/talks a lot about his difficult upbringing and abusive family.
He's originally from a town about an hour from us and someone I know works with his cousin! She says his life was nothing like that, lovely family who spent thousands sending him to drama school! But that story doesn't sell like the poor me one does it?!
DD is adamant it's all true though and I can't convince her otherwise!

Anyone else Google Hilaria Baldwin after reading this post? Thank you @rabbitdig for providing my Tuesday night entertainment. Apparently they are making a reality TV show called The Baldwins on TLC. I hate reality shows normally but I might just tune in to this. This also explains the need to have so many children with a theme in their names, they want to be the new Kardashians. All respect for Alec Baldwin as an actor has now been lost.

This clip of Alec Baldwin trying to convince himself how much he loves having a gaggle of very young children always makes me laugh.

https://x.com/IamMikeCannon/status/1566216376892653568

That clip made me laugh! He keeps saying publicly he's done and Hilaria keeps publicly announcing she wants 11 more kids.

He's spoken many, many times about how having many kids scuppered his retirement plans. I think he once mentioned he had to accept any work (couldn't be less selective about any lowbrow/mediocre work) to fund his kids. It's pretty sad if that affected his career trajectory.

The Reddit people are also convinced his constant 7 kids sleep deprivation contributed to his fatal gun accident (that somewhat spelt death for his career) but that's just their theory.

It's crazy though that one of the most recognised faces on most continents, even outside of the English speaking and European world (from my childhood experience – genuine unlike Hilaria!), has roughly the same net worth as a middle-class London banker or lawyer, because it's divided into 10: SAHM wife with really high outgoings who didn't really have any permanent gigs before this reality show, 8 kids all attending posh private schools and with multiple nannies etc, and him).

Just hearsay but 70 mil / 10 would be less than 7 mil USD, or 5 mil pounds. Even 100 mil / 10 wouldn't be a lot for that sort of lifestyle. Not saying he's the epitome of artistry or anything but you'd think he'd be living it up way more at this age. He's in sugar daddy hell lol – so much for marrying someone almost 30 years younger.

I went to school with a well know actress. In her profile she says she went to a Grammar school and lived in a prestigious area of the city. She went to a secondary modern and lived in a two up two down in a built up area of the city, like me.

This happened to a girl I went to school with, it all came out when she was 15 and needed her BC for a passport for a school trip. I remember my friend being distraught one of her "Sisters" was her mum.

We’ve traced our family way back and there’s not a single marriage that wasn’t shot gun….but it does rain a lot in Ireland 🤣🤣

I think something very similar to your friend is going on with my dad.
First we realised something was off was, no birth reg but being the youngest of a huge family and Catholic lots of families didn’t agree with registering anyway and maybe they just didn’t have the money to get into town to do so.
But when my dad died the probate had

his name. then underneath it said
formerly…..with some other random name we’d never heard of !
There’s a secret to find out there and now no one is left to ‘upset’ we’re going to get to the bottom of it.

TBh I love my very popular Irish surname and I’ll be gutted if actually it’s not really my true name! 😳

A Scottish musician who had an autobiography out fairly recently told a different tale of his school days than his teachers told us younger pupils!

(He got expelled, but then when he got famous the school forgot that, forgave him, and bigger up him being an ex pupil).

@PyongyangKipperbang is it Kano? Every character he plays seems like Sully to me

This. Many of our close friends are actors or comedians, I have so much tea my cup spilleth over. They prob all have injunctions in place though.

Can you give us any vague stories without naming any names!?

Ok, well I guess one I can say that might not ruin either my or my partner's career is that well one particularly verbose man who has lately been accused of sex crimes felt me up once, in broad daylight with loads of other people present. Doubt they'd do that now...

Gotcha. I'm guessing one of the sleaze balls that has already been mentioned on this thread.

We had a teacher at our school who went on to become an author. I started reading her best known book and thought "this sounds familiar". It features sth that happened involving her just after i left. The book won awards. She has never admitted to it being autobiographical.

But why do you think she should?

Every novel, even the ones set on a spaceship in 3024, has elements of autobiography. The reading public isn’t owed that information, especially if it infringes on someone else’s privacy.

A good friend of mine lied through her teeth on Woman’s Hour and other interviews about the genesis of one of her novels, to protect the privacy of one of her children. He was fine with her using an event from his life because she changed his sex and age and altered circumstances, but didn’t want to be discussed in interviews. Obviously anyone who knows them knows the origin of that plot, but I see no reason at all why the general public needs to.

Conversely I used to work with someone who’d had something unusual, horrible and life-altering happen to him, and someone he used to know in a work capacity used it as the inciting incident for her bestseller, also writing a character very obviously based on him, and a very hostile portrait of his actual wife. They're both still reeling from the impact of ongoing real-life events, and now there’s an identifiable but highly fantasised and very prurient version of them out there to add to their problems.

It's a moral issue, I think. I don't really want to go into the details but it is a lot more than a bit of inspiration. And she clearly describes the school, some of the other characters. It is way too close to what actually happened to be presented as a novel imo. Anyway, I had the most enormous shock as I read it. It concerned a very upsetting incident and it brought it all back.

Oh I did, thank you! My adoptive parents were pretty emotionally cold but really valued education. So they invested a lot into my education. We also lived in many different countries while I was growing up, which looking back was incredible. I did go to boarding school abroad for high school, but that’s where I met my now husband’s mum who was a dinner lady. She really showed me what love is. And my husband (19 yrs married!) is incredible. I’m very different with my own children to how my parents were with me. But I have had the best life. I always wonder about the other children who were not adopted and were left in Romania. I know many live on the streets now, it’s heartbreaking. I just always think that could have been me, so that helps me keep an attitude of gratitude. Thank you for asking, it’s not nosey, I’m glad people are so more open these days as I think it was the world’s intention that these stories were never told.

Just edited to add: the orphanages in Romania were just giving children away / selling us. It chills me to think who was given a child and what they could have done with them. Even though my parents were materialistic and pretty shallow, I thank my lucky stars daily that they never once harmed me. My mind always goes to dark places about what could have been.

Whothefuckdoesthat, stop coming on here and titillating us!!!! x

That is a situation that's more common than we realise, I've found a few examples in my own family tree, they were often brought up as the grandparents' child, a sibling to their own mother. My late MIL's mother used to be held up by MIL as a paragon of virtue, from the 1911 Census we found that not to be the case, OH was furious that it was too late to tell her what we knew. We never knew if MIL realised that her mother's 'sister' was actually MIL's own sister.

Olivegardenishome I am so glad to hear that you have lots of love in your life.

Old school friend of my older sister has completely changed their past from normal semi d, caravan holidays, state school, Saturday job, mum working in local doctors office, dad driving trucks to a full on period house, holidays in Caribbean skiing in Austria, house in Greece, mum and dad running their own company, private school, tennis, horse riding lessons story, also dropped 10 years, changed their name and had a lot of cosmetic surgery so looks completely different …all of us who knew the original get a good laugh

I grew up with a girl who was expelled from Loretto, parents sent her to millfield left there under a cloud. Became a groupie for an international pop rock group we all know travelled worldwide. Had abortions.

Everything soured in the UK so emigrated to USA with a degree and masters from a Russell group university that she invented. She's swept the board in the USA burning through companies who caught on and ended up president of her own inc.

I'm in awe reading her bio..

Sending a handhold to you. I'm an adopted child of the 1970s 'Baby Scoop' era in the US. I volunteered in a Russian orphanage for a bit.