The Most Memorable Moments From 2024 Celebrity Memoirs

It's been a banner year for celebrity tell-alls. In 2024, we saw the release of many celebrity memoirs — from Whoopi Goldberg to the late Lisa Marie Presley. While these books provide insight into some of our favorite stars’ lives, they also leave behind some memorable moments for their readers.

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PEOPLE has rounded up some of the most eye-popping, heartstring-tugging and downright gasp-inducing moments from celebrity memoirs published in 2024, from cults to acid trips to romantic encounters gone wrong. Here are the moments our staff won't be able to forget until at least 2026.

Bethany Joy Lenz lost millions to a cult

In her bombshell memoir Dinner For Vampires: Life on a Cult TV Show (While Also in an Actual Cult!), One Tree Hill star Bethany Joy Lenz looks back on her time in a cult. Shortly after moving to Los Angeles in her early twenties, Lenz met a group of friends at a Bible study session, and quickly became attached to them. Soon, the group was infiltrated by a pastor named “Les,” who chose a select number of people to come live with him in Idaho in a place called the “Big House.”

Though Lenz was filming One Tree Hill, she visited as often as she could. But Lenz grew isolated from her friends and family. By the time she extricated herself, the cult had wiped nearly $2 million from Lenz’s bank account.

Related: How One Tree Hill Star Bethany Joy Lenz Got Lured into a Cult for a Decade— and How She Got Out of It (Exclusive)

"To leave a TV show after nine seasons, to leave all my friends [from the cult] that I had known for the last 10 years, to leave my marriage, to leave the state, all at the same time ... and then it was just me and my baby in Hollywood, like, 'Hire me, anyone?' Not knowing how I was going to make rent because all the money was gone ... it was legitimately incredibly difficult,” Lenz told PEOPLE.

Hugh Hefner was bad at sex, says Crystal Hefner

Crystal Hefner made a surprising claim in her memoir, Only Say Good Things: Surviving Playboy and Finding Myself: that her late husband, Playboy mogul Hugh Hefner was “odd and robotic” during sex throughout their nine-year marriage.

“Hef was just going through the motions of something that had once been fun and sexy,” Crystal wrote of Hugh, who died in 2017 at age 91. “Or maybe it was never fun and sexy.”

Related: Crystal Hefner Reveals She Was Never 'In Love' with Hugh — and Details Playboy Mansion Life in Book (Exclusive)

Crystal also said that with “so many ‘yes people’ around,” Hugh likely didn’t get much feedback in the bedroom department. "He seemed less sex-savvy than some of the teenage boys I’d been with years ago,” she wrote. ”It was clear to me Hef had never taken a moment in his entire life to figure out how to please someone else.”

Shirley MacLaine once hit on Morgan Freeman — and he turned her down

Hollywood legend Shirley MacLaine revealed in her book, The Wall of Life, that she once tried her charm on Morgan Freeman. She wrote that, “I propositioned him and he turned me down."

"Oh, I really liked him right away,” MacLaine told PEOPLE, of the encounter. “I thought his acting was brilliant. I barely said anything, and he just shook his head. Isn't that interesting?"

MacLaine, who has shared the screen with everyone from Jack Lemmon to Frank Sinatra, also noted that Jack Nicholson, her co-star in Terms of Endearment, was “one of my favorite people.”

"I don't think he would've been my type to have an affair with anyway,” MacLaine said, of whether the two ever got together. “I would laugh too much."

Al Pacino had an embarrassing moment while meeting Jackie Kennedy

In his memoir Sonny Boy, actor Al Pacino recalled his acclaimed stage and screen career, including in the Broadway production of Shakespeare’s Richard III.

Pacino wrote that Jackie Kennedy and daughter Caroline attended a performance and afterward Pacino, who was “slumped” in his dressing room backstage, held out his hand for the first lady to kiss.

Related: The Biggest Bombshells from Al Pacino's Sonny Boy: His Bond with Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor and Turning Down Star Wars

"God only knows what I was thinking. Why would I ever do that? Please tell me, what’s wrong with me?" Pacino wrote. "I must have believed I was dreaming that Jackie Onassis was there. Perhaps I was hallucinating that she was doing the play with me, so she was my queen —​­ and as the queen, after all, she must now kiss the hand of the king."

Billy Dee Williams was fired from a play after whispering dirty jokes to co-star Leslie Uggams

Star Wars actor Billy Dee Williams shared a number of stories in his memoir What Have We Here?, including his stint as a nude model for college students. He also wrote about his experience acting in the musical Hallelujah Baby! in 1967, alongside Leslie Uggams.

"Her mother adored me,” Williams wrote of Uggams, who he knew in childhood. “On and off stage, we teased and flirted with each other.”

“She whispered a risqué joke to me while we were onstage,” he added. “I responded immediately with an even naughtier suggestion, which I thought was funny but apparently crossed a line that she didn’t approve of, because Leslie told her husband, and I was fired after that night’s performance. The play closed shortly thereafter."

Related: In His New Memoir, Billy Dee Williams Recalls Posing Nude, a Failed Proposal and a Dirty Joke with Big Backlash

Lisa Marie Presley kept son Benjamin’s body on dry ice for 2 months after his death

In her posthumous memoir From Here to the Great Unknown, which her daughter Riley Keough finished after her mom's death, Lisa Marie Presley looked back on her life and upbringing as the daughter of Elvis and Priscilla Presley. Lisa Marie also revealed that following her son Benjamin's death by suicide in 2020 at age 27, she kept his body on dry ice for two months.

"There is no law in the state of California that you have to bury someone immediately," Lisa Marie wrote. She also noted that she wanted to “spend time with [Benjamin] and talk to him,” as the family did the same for Elvis when he died in 1977.

Related: ​​Riley Keough Reveals Bittersweet Process to Finish Mom Lisa Marie Presley's Memoir: 'I Burst into Tears' (Exclusive)

The grieving mother wrote that she hired a funeral home owner to help with the process, and kept Benjamin’s body in a 55-degree room while she decided whether to bury him in Graceland or Hawaii.

"I felt so fortunate that there was a way that I could still parent him, delay it a bit longer so that I could become okay with laying him to rest," she wrote.

Michael J. Fox sent Moon Unit Zappa and Woody Harrelson on a date in the ‘80s

Moon Unit Zappa’s memoir, Earth to Moon, recalls her relationship with her famous father, musician Frank Zappa, along with a number of other celebrities. Moon remembered when her friend, Justine Bateman, called her to say that her Family Ties costar, Michael J. Fox, wanted to set her up with one of his own friends. That friend just so happened to be Woody Harrelson.

Moon and Harrelson wound up going on four dates, before — as Moon wrote in the memoir — their fling ended in the shower.

"That story is so funny, because in some ways, it's about Woody, but in some ways, it's really more about me and the fact that I'm raised in such a way that those red flags, I just keep ignoring, and ignoring and ignoring until I look like the weirdo," Moon told PEOPLE.

"Maybe to other people, it'll be a story of a celebrity dating situation, but for me, it's to show how much latitude I gave to people as a result of my upbringing,” she added.

Related: Moon Unit Zappa Explores Trauma in New Memoir: 'What Happens When Your Mother Is Your First Bully?' (Exclusive)

Rebel Wilson didn’t lose her virginity until she was in her 30s

In her memoir Rebel Rising, movie star Rebel Wilson revealed that she didn’t have sex until she was 35.

“I was either so innocent, in my teens, or so busy making myself look grotesquely unattractive for comedic purposes, that no romantic opportunity ever presented itself,” Wilson wrote in her memoir. She did the deed with actor Mickey Gooch Jr., who she met while filming the movie How to Be Single — and congratulated herself on the accomplishment shortly thereafter.

Related: The Biggest Bombshells from Rebel Wilson’s New Memoir: Sex, A Difficult Childhood and Fertility Struggles

"Mickey flew in that weekend," Wilson wrote. "And then it just happens. I finally have sex. It feels amazing. I go to the bathroom and high-five myself. I like my new wild sexual self."

Carrie Fisher “lived for every lurid detail” of Griffin Dunne’s sex life

In his memoir The Friday Afternoon Club, actor and director Griffin Dunne recounted his deep bond with Carrie Fisher. The two were best friends, and roommates for a period — and Dunne says that Fisher was fascinated by his own sex life.

“Carrie was a virgin when we met, and she lived for every lurid detail of my own sexual encounters: from my first kiss to postcoital anxieties I shared with no one but her,” Dunne wrote, adding that he was her “Farmers’ Almanac to forecast just the right conditions for when she’d be ready to plow ahead into the great outdoors of sexual confusion.”

Related: Sean Connery, Martin Scorsese, Carrie Fisher, and More: The Most Shocking Celebrity Encounters in Griffin Dunne’s New Memoir 

Dunne also reveals in the book that Fisher lost her virginity to him. Though they never officially dated, the two remained close friends until Fisher’s death in 2016.

Maggie Smith comforted Whoopi Goldberg when she learned that her mother was dying

In her memoir Bits and Pieces, Whoopi Goldberg shared a touching moment between her and the late actress Maggie Smith. Goldberg was backstage at the Palladium in London, performing in the stage adaptation of Sister Act, when she learned that her mother had suffered an aneurysm. Goldberg’s brother, Clyde, wanted Goldberg to fly home and help take her off life support.

Smith, who had come backstage to visit the cast, didn’t hesitate to support Goldberg while she made travel arrangements.

“She decided she would stay with me until I was on my way to the airport. A flight was arranged for me to leave early the next morning,” Goldberg wrote. “For the next five hours, Maggie sat with me and let me talk her ear off, telling stories about my mom, my growing-up years and my brother. We laughed a lot.”

Related: The Biggest Revelations from Whoopi Goldberg’s Memoir Bits and Pieces: Her Mother’s Breakdown and Advice from Elizabeth Taylor

“I didn’t feel anything except a big wave of kindness from Maggie,” Goldberg added. “I’ve got to say, she is one of those people for whom I would do anything.”

Jon M. Chu told Justin Bieber that he was the “perfect candidate to become a train wreck”

In his memoir Viewfinder, the Wicked director, who also directed Justin Bieber's concert films Justin Bieber: Never Say Never (2011) and Justin Bieber: Believe (2013), writes of his partnership with the singer — and how he’d changed during the filming of the second movie.

"He wasn't a kid doing homework on the bus anymore," Chu noted of Bieber. "He'd had his first run-in with the law, an argument with a photographer that nearly turned into a fistfight and enough embarrassing headlines to suggest that bigger problems might lie ahead."

Chu later confronted Bieber and said that he was "the perfect candidate to become a train wreck.”

Related: Dancing Off with Miley Cyrus, Confronting Justin Bieber: The Biggest Bombshells from Jon M. Chu's New Memoir

"I'd grown to care for Justin by this point, so I wanted to believe him,” Chu wrote. “I wanted him to have a happy, healthy life and to make his music. I still want that for him."

Cher kissed “drop-dead gorgeous” Warren Beatty when she was 15

Cher recalled in her memoir, Cher: The Memoir, Part One, that she unexpectedly encountered Warren Beatty while out for a drive as a teen. When she was 15, the singer borrowed her father’s car, before a Lincoln convertible cut her off on Sunset Boulevard.

The driver turned out to be a 25-year-old Beatty, fresh off the 1961 film Splendor in the Grass.

“Ten years older than me, Warren was so drop-dead gorgeous I had to steady myself as he asked my name,” Cher wrote. The pair then went to Beatty’s Beverly Hills home, where Beatty "then leaned in and kissed me.” Cher wrote that she "kissed him back."

Related: Cher's Life in Photos

Josh Brolin went on a 12-hour acid trip as a kid

Josh Brolin shared many memories in his memoir From Under the Truck, including the time his mother almost hooked up with a producer during filming of The Goonies. He also recounted an incident that happened in 1981, when he took acid for the first time with some of his friends.

The trip lasted 12 hours, with Brolin seeing “epileptic faces, desperate children, rabid animals coming at me.”

Related: Josh Brolin's 12-Hour Acid Trip, Missing Son and An Expletive-Filled Awards Speech: It's All in From Under the Truck

Despite the bad trip, the actor wrote that, “I knew that life was good and was to be lived and experienced and tasted with a fully protruding, exposed tongue."

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