30 Rumors About Celebrities That People Were Aware Of Before The News Came Out
Who doesn’t like gossip, huh? As bad as it may sound, probably most of us enjoy hearing some new rumors, doesn’t matter if they’re true or not, but, well - everybody likes some drama, especially when it’s about someone that we like or don’t like.
However, you know what’s probably even more interesting than hearing some random gossip that probably is not true? Finding out rumors about celebrities right before the whole world from some, let’s say, reliable source.
One Reddit user recently started a thread online asking people online to share some celebrity rumors that they heard long before the news broke. And let’s just say - many netizens came onboard. So scroll through and check them out!
More info: Reddit
This post may include affiliate links.
Someone in Vegas on reddit once mentioned they worked at Planet Hollywood and said Britney Spears would order a lot of flowers to design bouquets to pass time because she wasn't allowed to go out much and it seemed she was very lonely and isolated.
I worked at The Biltmore Hotel in LA in the mid 80s, and was a butler for Robert Englund of “Nighmare on Elm Street”.
I knew before just about everyone else that he was actually a really nice person.
A friend of mine told me this story when he used to work at a film studio and one of the guys he worked with was closely related to Mel Gibson. One time Gibson ended up hanging out with them - drinking, smoking, shooting the s**t. Gibson told them that he hated Harvey Weinstein, then said was a scumbag and had a weird f****d up mushroom penis. He also said he was a "really weird gross creep with women" and said something else to imply what we all know to be true now, but stopped short of outright calling him a serial [predator]. He also said everyone in Hollywood knew about it.
That was 2013-2014 or so.
Saw Bruce Willis condition in 2015 working on a movie with him. They knew then already. He had giant cue cards for every scene and still blew it often. Very Sad.
Went to high school in Latin America from 98-02; there were rumors of Ricky Martin being gay long before he came out in 2010.
For the record, I'm happy that he's able to live his truth openly now.
I had a friend who was a limo driver that really enjoyed pushing people's buttons; let's call him Mike. Now Mike drove a lot of big stars around. Back in the 90's, he was driving Ricky Martin, who said that he wanted to go to Subway (a sandwich stop). So Mike, being Mike, took him to the Subway in Dupont Circle, then the gayest neighborhood in Washington, DC. Ricky went into Subway to order his own sandwich. Of course, a couple of girls in line got all excited, jumping up and down in glee, saying they always knew he was gay. Ricky handled the joke well and accused Mike of doing it on purpose which, of course, was completely true. The anecdote made me suspect that Ricky is a class act. Calling back to the Shia LeBeouf post, Mike was the paparazzi that Shia chased down and threw his coffee on, also in Dupont Circle.
My friend and I got into an argument because I tried to tell her how horrible Ellen DeGeneres is but she wouldn’t believe me. I felt so vindicated when everything came out about her being a bully!
I started disliking Ellen when he had her producer or whatever staff he was in different ploys. Don't remember his name, maybe Andy? Like he was easily scared, so she made him tour a ghost house and ride the roller coaster, he screamed in genuine fear and she laughed and laughed. Those sections was so mean-spirited.
I know someone who worked in Hollywood decades ago. He *detested* Bill Cosby. Like the Jell-o dude was like the worst person on earth or something.
This one crushed me. He was such a fixture in my mind growing up. Terrible human being.
A nice one: Neil Gaiman writing for Doctor Who. Was told in person by someone who is a friend of both Neil and Steven Moffat, so I knew it was true, but it wasn't confirmed for weeks.
I posted this a month ago in response to a similar question:
When I was in High School in the 70s, in English class, we were having a discussion on what Hollywood stars were hot (not sure how that conversation started). Anyway, one of the students asked our teacher Miss W. if she thought Rock Hudson was hot. She said, "Yes, but he's gay". Everyone was shocked and asked how she knew. "I have a lot of gay friends and they always talk about who in Hollywood is gay and they tell me he's gay".
What's amazing is this was pre-internet. We were in the Midwest in a small town. The only gay people we knew at the time were the Village People and perhaps Paul Lynne. (The fact that our teacher had gay friends was a shocker) At the time, my best friend was gay and in the closet (even to me). How this tidbit travelled is pretty remarkable.
This was waaayyy before ‘the internet’ social media, and Twitter.
When I was in college a friend of mine that knew someone that knew someone that knew someone floored us with tales that Bobby Brown was dating Whitney Houston.
At the time Whitney was America’s Princess and Bobby Brown was the rough Bad Boy.
“Not a chance that Whitney would allow herself to be in the same ROOM with that Bobby Brown…”
Not a single soul believed him and laughed him off campus.
And then…
As soon as Whitney married Bobby, my mother said, "She's going to die."
Okay, here’s how I missed a good — and true — celebrity rumor in progress.
I was in New Orleans, volunteering at a college trivia competition. The whole tournament staff went out to dinner, drank hurricanes, and had a good time. After dinner a few of us headed into a bar, but at that point I was tired and really didn’t want to drink any more, so I immediately excused myself and went back to the hotel.
Next morning a couple of my fellow staffers told me I’d just missed, by a few minutes, Jude Law walking into the bar. I’m about as far from being a movie person as is humanly possible, but I did know who Jude Law was, so I just remarked that it must have been cool to see an actual film star in the bar, and thought no more of it ….
… until reading later that Jude Law had been photographed in a New Orleans bar with a woman not his fiancee. He was hooking up with his kids’ nanny, and of course for the next month it was on the front page of every tabloid rag in every supermarket on the planet.
So, yeah, I missed a good paparazzi moment. But I got a good night’s sleep, which IMO was a lot more enjoyable.
Around 2010 my friend, a massage therapist, had a guest staying in his hotel who creeped him out so much that he refused to service him again after the second day, even though the guy was leaving a 300€ tip each session. When he told his manager he didn't want to work for this guest anymore, the manager was baffled and told him it was a celebrity staying for our hometown Film Festival.
It was Kevin Spacey.
This one really bums me out. I was a big fan before all that c**p came out.
I went to college with a kid from Long Island who grew up around Lindsay lohan... He said her family was completely insane and that she'd probably go insane too. Kind of happened although she corrected course before it got real bad. He also said the dad used to f**k every woman in town and use his daughters clout to carouse with the women.
I have a friend who is in a moderately successful punk band and tours small venues around the country. A few years ago, he was in Austin and posted on Facebook something like "I think I just saw a drunk Shia Labeouf in a bar yelling "DO IT" at people". A few hours later, I started seeing headlines that read "Shia Labeouf arrested at a bar in Austin".
I worked in Hollywood in VFX from 2009-2016. EVERYONE knew that both Will and Jada were horndogs in an open marriage. Everyone I worked with thought it was hilarious when the "Jada had an affair" thing happened, with Will's crocodile tears broadcast to the world.
I have my ways of knowing, but I knew they were on at least one swinger site 15 years ago. This couple is full of bs (and terrible parents).
Rumors that Rob Halford (Judas Priest's lead singer) was gay were so commonplace for so many years that by the time he actually did come out in the late 90s, the reaction was pretty much "Well, *duh*. Tell us something we don't know." 😆
I remember jokes about R. Kelly peeing on kids way back in the ‘90s, but for some reason everyone was shocked and disgusted when the blockbuster docuseries (or whatever) came out in 2016 or so.
This was a while ago but I knew that Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony’s marriage was in trouble years before they filed for divorce. A friend of my mother’s works at Teterboro, which is the small airport near NYC that handles small/private planes, so lots of celebrities fly in and out of there. (He’s seen plenty of stuff but this is the only story I know.) Right when he opened the door to the plane onto the tarmac, he saw JLo recoiling from a slap across the face and and Marc yelling, “THERE WILL BE NO DIVORCE!” 😐
Bruce Springsteen married model/actress Julianne Phillips in 1985. At his Tunnel of Love tour in 1987 he sang “Tougher Than the Rest“ with his backup singer Patti Scialfa in a duet that was super hot. The chemistry was unmistakable and I knew instinctively that his marriage was over. No surprise at all when the two of them were photographed on a hotel balcony in Italy months later with Bruce in his underwear.
Why was he even married to Julianne Phillips? They were really ill-suited. It looked like an arranged set up.
Growing and being a recruit for football the Jerry Sandusky stuff at Penn State was pretty known . My host for the weekend I went there made it clear “ you don’t hang out with Jerry!”
8 years ago, I was scouted as a pastry cook for Esca - one of Mario Batali's restaurants - and a friend warned me that he was a sexual harasser and liked to grope female employees if alone with them. The scandal broke a year later.
A guy I knew was on tour as a roadie for Whitney Houston, and he reported that she was on [substances] YEARS before it was common knowledge. No one could believe it; she had such a squeaky clean reputation!
It's always bothered me that Bobby Brown has always been blamed for getting her into drugs. She was doing drugs long before he came along.
I was at a White Stripes show on their last tour. After they played Seven Nation Army Jack said something to the effect of “that’s the last time we’re playing that”. A week later they announced they were done.
Jimmy Fallon’s alcoholism and just overall sh*ttiness. But it’s less that I had this private information and more just anyone who’s worked in 30 rock in the past 20 years knows this as an open secret
Never liked him, from his fake laughing just just... well his overall fakeness.
I was aware Carrie Fisher had likely passed before the plane she passed on had taxied in to the gate at LAX. Aviation is a small world.
Her death is the only celebrity death I've ever grieved. SW was such a big part of my adolescence, and her death forced me to confront my own mental illness in a big way.
It wasn’t a rumor. But I was an extra on an episode of Criminal Minds about ten years ago. AJ Cook (who played JJ) would always wear this big, puffy jacket backwards between takes. It was April and pretty warm out. I remember thinking, “she’s got to be pregnant.” Why else would you be wearing a big jacket that covered your front.
About a month later, she would announce she is pregnant.
Fun fact. Both of her pregnancies were written in to her character's storylines, and both of her on screen kids are her kids in real life.
JLo and Ben Affleck’s wedding in Vegas. A friend got married at the same place a few hours after they did, and someone who worked there showed them the marriage certificate. He told me about it before the news broke the next day.
That’s just his resting b***h face, his is resting sad face
Load More Replies...
Why is HE wearing white, then? He has also been intimate with many women.
Load More Replies... 
When john dunsworth (Mr lahey) died... he was a close family friend so we knew when he went to the hospital and then we were called when he died. So sad.
I worked with somebody who had been an assistant to Bryan Singer. They said he was basically a predator who constantly hired and abused attractive young men.
Not really a rumor but when Michael Jackson died I knew about 10 mins before it went out on the news because my sister was a news reporter at BBC and text the family before she went live..
I think we all knew something was up, that tour he was supposed to do was full of issues and he was pulling out of a lot of appearances
I was a studio musician in NYC in the late 00's and early 10's. Everyone knew about Dr. Luke. When the news broke about Ke$ha it all made sense. He was known to be someone you should never leave alone with a young woman. Fact is, his records make his employers an obscene amount of money so he will always have a job in recording. He was always a creep, and the entire recording industry in NYC knows it, especially the people who pay him.
A local music promoter made it very well known that Jacob Hoggard from Hedley was a sexual predator years before he was charged with [being a predator]. He probably saved a lot of local women from a lifetime of trauma by taking that stance because he refused to bring them to our city. When the news broke, no one was surprised.
When I was a kid, I went to summer camp. One of the girls at camp lived near one of the golf courses where Tiger Woods would frequently play in tournaments. Everyone in the community knew he was sleeping with a number of different women.
I knew about Josh Duggar years before the news of his revolting abuse was made public. Lots of people did.
Jimmy Saville. Rumours and jokes were circulating in the early 90’s
I heard in the 80s and probably some heard before that. He came to my uni as the Robotics department made that chair he had on his TV program. And he had been a gross old weirdo the whole time, literally offering teenage students money for sex.
Whitney Houston’s death. I was working in emergency management for the Seminole Tribe of Florida and it included the Hollywood Hard Rock. The Beverly Hilton called the Hard Rock and asked my bosses how they handled Anna Nicole Smith dying in our hotel and what to do for PR, the press, guests etc. It was crazy to me that someone at Hilton came up with that idea almost immediately to call Hard Rock for advice. They only disclosed that it was a VIP guest, less than an hour later it was on TMZ.
Met Andrew Keegan once. Talked to him for a couple hours. He didn't describe it in so many words, but he was obviously in the process of creating what would eventually become his "new religion." I used to search "Andrew Keegan cult" every few months until stories started showing up about Full Circle & their illegal kombucha operation 🤣
Jared from Subway didn’t lose weight by exercising and eating subs. Because when he came to visit the beach in Florida he frequented my acquaintance’s sold him [substances]. And also said he was a huge douche.
Well everyone knew Kevin Spacey was gay before the allegations were made public. When he was artistic director of the Old Vic it was an open secret that he was a frequent customer at several of London's gay saunas. I knew that and I don't even live in the UK!
Rosie O’Donnell was gay. Not really a secret to anyone that knew her, just a secret to most Americans during her prime talk show days
It wasn’t long before the news broke but I went to a Jonas Brothers concert and saw Joe wasn’t wearing his wedding ring and then a week later he filed for divorce.
How was he to know, that she would take his love and go 😂 seasons change…. Bay-beh
For many years there were articles and even podcast episodes claiming Will Smith and Jada didn't have your traditional heterosexual monogamous relationship. When the slap happened at the Oscars I remember thinking: "yeah, that tracks with everything that I've heard".
I'm not sure how this makes sense. Not being in a "traditional heterosexual monogamous" relationship makes the slap heard 'round the world make sense? How are the two facts logically tied together? Whether the relationship was traditional heterosexual monogamous or not is irrelevant to the slap. 🤷♀️
Let's be real: EVERYONE in Hollywood knew exactly who Harvey Weinstein was and what he was doing. No, the "casting counch" isn't about "consenting adults" when it forces women into prostitution to get a job. Yeah, I've even been piled on by BoredPandas talking about "consenting adults" when I've noted Congressional staffers being forced to sleep with members of Congress to keep their jobs.
When the power dynamic is that unequal there is no consent, it's coercion.
Load More Replies... Prince Charles's affair with Camilla was an open secret in the early 80s.
well there was that audio of him wanting to be her nickers lol
Load More Replies... 
James Corden - just overall trash. I was at bar getting some lunch and his assistant was behind me telling a story about how he was flying with his wife and kid, when they were a baby, and he 'had to focus' so only he would be flying buisness and they would be in economy plus so he didn't have to hear the baby. WOW. Also, my ex was at a party and asked him for a lighter, he screamed in my ex's face 'I'm not gay', my ex calmly replied 'I just wanted a lighter and I didn't think you were gay.... i do now' Told this story to a find of mine (male) , who just shrugged and went 'yeah I've slept with him, before he was famous famous'
"I do now" though. Man that must have HAUNTED Corden.
Load More Replies...
I worked for the Trump Organization in the mid 80's. We knew about Marla Maples way before it hit the news. He put Ivana (an Olympic skier and model) in charge of the casinos in Atlantic City to get her out of town so he could be with Marla. Then when the casinos were failing, he blamed her (I personally heard him call her a 'stupid foreign b***h'). He was always a sexist, racist creep, and most of his businesses failed. He was worth more then than he is now. His is that a brilliant businessman?
One of the fascinating effects of the internet is that many people know something is wrong before their governments or news agencies. I read about the Indonesian tsunami from boaters who recognized a compression wave passing them at the deep sea. They didn't know that the city of Aceh would be completely inundated and so many people killed, but they did know something very bad could be about to happen. I read about the destruction of the space shuttle when people saw bits of light shedding from it; they didn't know for certain it was about to explode, but they were certainly scared it was going to (or had). There's always confusion in these stories; One day I heard an enormous explosion, felt the ground shake and then a sound like fighter jets overhead. It took me years to accept the official story that they never scrambled jets in DC on 9-11, and what I actually heard and felt was the explosion itself.
You know, less of a “celebrity”, but i had to tell my gf that Rick May died :( it was so sad I still cry over it sometimes
Kenny Chesney....many years ago, before his marriage to Rene Zellweger, I was told he was gay. A friend of mine was a vet an being taken in the back before a concert to get his autograph. The busses were parked together and there was a picnic table. Kenny was sitting on the top of it and a blonde dude was standing in front of him. My friend said that they were making out hot and heavy. The guard saw it and then just turned my friend around. He had to wait until later for the autograph. He told everybody. I guess his fan base cares too much for him to live his true life.
Let's be real: EVERYONE in Hollywood knew exactly who Harvey Weinstein was and what he was doing. No, the "casting counch" isn't about "consenting adults" when it forces women into prostitution to get a job. Yeah, I've even been piled on by BoredPandas talking about "consenting adults" when I've noted Congressional staffers being forced to sleep with members of Congress to keep their jobs.
When the power dynamic is that unequal there is no consent, it's coercion.
Load More Replies... Prince Charles's affair with Camilla was an open secret in the early 80s.
well there was that audio of him wanting to be her nickers lol
Load More Replies... James Corden - just overall trash. I was at bar getting some lunch and his assistant was behind me telling a story about how he was flying with his wife and kid, when they were a baby, and he 'had to focus' so only he would be flying buisness and they would be in economy plus so he didn't have to hear the baby. WOW. Also, my ex was at a party and asked him for a lighter, he screamed in my ex's face 'I'm not gay', my ex calmly replied 'I just wanted a lighter and I didn't think you were gay.... i do now' Told this story to a find of mine (male) , who just shrugged and went 'yeah I've slept with him, before he was famous famous'
"I do now" though. Man that must have HAUNTED Corden.
Load More Replies... I worked for the Trump Organization in the mid 80's. We knew about Marla Maples way before it hit the news. He put Ivana (an Olympic skier and model) in charge of the casinos in Atlantic City to get her out of town so he could be with Marla. Then when the casinos were failing, he blamed her (I personally heard him call her a 'stupid foreign b***h'). He was always a sexist, racist creep, and most of his businesses failed. He was worth more then than he is now. His is that a brilliant businessman?
One of the fascinating effects of the internet is that many people know something is wrong before their governments or news agencies. I read about the Indonesian tsunami from boaters who recognized a compression wave passing them at the deep sea. They didn't know that the city of Aceh would be completely inundated and so many people killed, but they did know something very bad could be about to happen. I read about the destruction of the space shuttle when people saw bits of light shedding from it; they didn't know for certain it was about to explode, but they were certainly scared it was going to (or had). There's always confusion in these stories; One day I heard an enormous explosion, felt the ground shake and then a sound like fighter jets overhead. It took me years to accept the official story that they never scrambled jets in DC on 9-11, and what I actually heard and felt was the explosion itself.
You know, less of a “celebrity”, but i had to tell my gf that Rick May died :( it was so sad I still cry over it sometimes
Kenny Chesney....many years ago, before his marriage to Rene Zellweger, I was told he was gay. A friend of mine was a vet an being taken in the back before a concert to get his autograph. The busses were parked together and there was a picnic table. Kenny was sitting on the top of it and a blonde dude was standing in front of him. My friend said that they were making out hot and heavy. The guard saw it and then just turned my friend around. He had to wait until later for the autograph. He told everybody. I guess his fan base cares too much for him to live his true life.
