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Today, Danny Trejo is a beloved actor, but back when he was younger, he spent many of his years in juvenile detention centers and prisons. While incarcerated in his twenties, Trejo actually met Charles Manson before the Sharon Tate murder. He described Manson as “a greasy, dirty, scrawny white boy” and said Manson offered to hypnotize him and make them believe they were high. “If that white boy wasn’t a career criminal, he could have been a professional hypnotist,” Trejo said of Manson.
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Speaking of Trejo, he decided to do the Mexican prison gang film Blood In, Blood Out instead of American Me, which he was also up for, due to factual errors and because “Any movie about the Mexican Mafia would have to be okayed by the OGs in prison.” He actually got a call from Joe Morgan, then head of the Mexican Mafia, asking him which movie he would do. After informing Morgan he was doing Blood In, Blood Out (about a fictional Mexican prison gang), Morgan laughed and said, “Good, that’s the cute one,” then warned Trejo, “There’s going to be a lot of problems with that other movie.” Trejo said he later heard ten people involved with American Me had died.
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Speaking of celebs who have been to prison, you probably know Tim Allen was in prison for cocaine possession. The only reason he got out quickly and made a name for himself in Hollywood, rather than facing life in prison, is because he ratted out other dealers — almost two dozen of them. Oh, and apparently, the judge told him he thought he’d be a successful comedian.
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Bill Murray was also arrested on drug charges in his youth — all because he made a joke about bombs at the airport. It was his 20th birthday, and he was flying back to college when he joked he had two bombs in his suitcase. He was overheard, and US marshalls searched his bag, finding $20,000 worth of weed (much more today). He ended up on probation and dropped out of college. Still, he joined Second City not too much later, which led to his comedy career, so maybe it all worked out for the best.
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Heath Ledger memorably and sadly died in 2008 after being found unresponsive by his masseuse — and, it was initially reported, his housekeeper. However, bizarre details about the moment he was found were later revealed. The masseuse, Diana Lee Wolozin, actually made three calls before calling the police, and all were to Mary-Kate Olsen.
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Olsen’s number was on speed dial in Ledger’s phone, and Wolozin apparently called her for help and advice, as she knew the two were friends — Olsen had her private security sent over. There were later reports Olsen and Ledger had been dating, though they were unconfirmed. Police believe Ledger was already dead when Wolozin found him.
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In another sad yet wild fact, Hollywood Golden Age star Jayne Mansfield was Law & Order: SVU star Mariska Hargitay’s mother. In fact, when Mansfield tragically died in a car accident at just 34 years old, Mariska was in the backseat with two of her siblings, all of whom survived with minor injuries.
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Kirstie Alley’s mother also died in a car crash, and her father was seriously injured. They were on their way to a Halloween party, and Alley has since revealed their costumes: “Mom was a Black girl, and Dad was a Ku Klux Klan member,” she remembers her sister telling her, recalling how they all started laughing, and that was “the greatest tribute we could give my mother.”
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Anthony Perkins found out he had HIV from a tabloid magazine. He had no idea he’d even been tested for it. Perkins had received blood tests for a palsy on his face. His wife, Berry Berenson, said after his death that she thought someone must’ve tested his blood for HIV without telling him and then leaked the story to the press. His diagnosis couldn’t even be confirmed — he had to go back and test again.
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Jane Fonda also discovered the true way her mother had died — by suicide, and not a heart attack, as her father claimed — through a magazine.
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Ashton Kutcher once narrowly escaped a serial killer. In 2001, when Kutcher was 23, he planned a date with 22-year-old fashion student Ashley Ellerin. He was supposed to meet her at 8 p.m. for dinner and drinks but ended up getting there around 10:30 or 10:45, having gotten distracted watching the Grammy Awards at Kristy Swanson’s house. When he arrived at Ellerin’s house, she did not come to the door, which was locked — he assumed she’d gotten angry with him for being late and left. Since the lights were on, Kutcher looked through the window and saw “what [he] thought was a red wine spilled on the carpet.”
But he said, “That wasn’t alarming because I went to her house party [days before], and it was like a college party. I didn’t think much about it.” He left, and Ellerin was found stabbed to death the next day. The “Hollywood Ripper,” Michael Gargiulo, was found guilty of her murder. When Kutcher heard the news of the murder, he called the police because he was worried his fingerprints were on the doorknob. He did not become a suspect, but he did testify in Gargiulo’s trial.
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This one has got a lot of *if*s in it, but it’s still wild to me. *If* O. J. Simpson did murder his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman (he was notably acquitted after a highly publicized trial but found liable for the deaths in a civil suit), it’s possible he learned how while shooting the pilot for Frogmen, a failed TV series he was meant to star in shortly before the murders.
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Footage from the pilot was actually submitted as evidence in his trial (though it didn’t end up being used), as it could have proved O. J.’s proficiency with a knife. Simpson had reportedly received military training for the role. Also, Simpson’s costar Todd Allen had once gone with O. J. to Ross Cutlery — the suspected source of the murder weapon, which was never found — between shooting.
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Let’s move on to something lighter…Stephen Baldwin has a Hannah Montana tattoo because Miley Cyrus dared him to when she was 15. The two had met at the White House, of all places, and Cyrus had promised he could be on the show if he got the tattoo. Baldwin did, and when Miley’s family surprised Baldwin at his book signing, he showed it off and asked if he could come onto the show. Miley apparently said yes, but it never happened, which means Baldwin has the tattoo for no reason. Luckily, it’s just the initials “HM.”
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A body double was used for Willem Dafoe’s nude scenes in Antichrist because, according to Dafoe, if they had used his genitals, “that’s all that people would talk about.” Indeed, it did become all people talked about — especially after director Lars von Trier claimed that Dafoe “has an enormous dick” and that “we had to [have a stand-in dick] because Will’s was too big” and “everybody got very confused when they saw it.”
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Tupac reportedly auditioned for Mace Windu in Star Wars shortly before his death. Death Row Records engineer Rick Clifford revealed, “He was telling me that he was supposed to read for George Lucas and them. They wanted him to be a Jedi. I’m serious. Samuel L. [Jackson] got Tupac’s part. [Tupac] said [to me], ‘Old man, keep your fingers crossed.’ He said, ‘I’ve got three movies coming up. One of them, I’ve got to read for George Lucas.'”
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Children’s poet and author Shel Silverstein worked for Playboy Magazine and often hung out at Hugh Hefner’s mansion. If The Giving Tree was written at the Playboy Mansion, I’m sorry, I’m never going to look at it the same way again.
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In a more horrifying fact that involves Playboy and Hugh Hefner, Hefner is buried in the crypt next to Marilyn Monroe. He bought it when he was still alive, as he said, “Spending eternity next to Marilyn is too sweet to pass up.” Hefner and Monroe had a history: she had posed nude for the magazine for $50 as a struggling actor under a fake name, and Hefner had bought the rights for $500 and used the photos in his magazine.
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Martin Luther King Jr. once met Star Trek star Nichelle Nichols at an NAACP event and convinced her not to quit the show. “He told me that he was my biggest fan,” she recalled. “And he asked me to please stay on the show — that I was a role model to Black children and women all across America … He told me that I couldn’t leave: that I was part of history.” Nichols, who was the first Black woman to have a continuing co-starring role on American TV, would end up being one-half of the first kiss between a Black person and a white person on an American TV show.
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Speaking of the kiss, here’s another wholesome fact for you — it almost didn’t air in the Southern part of the US, but William Shatner made sure it did. According to Nichols, NBC wanted to shoot two versions of the scene, including one where they did not actually kiss, so that this version could be shown in the South. Shatner was not on board and intentionally messed up all the takes where they didn’t kiss — for example, by crossing his eyes and making Nichols laugh. The kiss ended up airing, marking a landmark TV moment.
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Speaking of Star Trek…it’s low-key responsible for Obama becoming President. Jack Ryan seemed a shoo-in for the Senate during his 2004 campaign against Barack Obama, who was then largely unknown. Previously married to Star Trek actor Jeri Ryan, he made headlines when documents from their divorce case were made public, revealing Jeri’s claims that Jack had pressured her to perform sex acts in clubs while others watched. In the ensuing controversy, Ryan withdrew his candidacy; Obama ended up winning the election and would later become President of the United States. Without winning a spot in the Senate in 2004, it’s highly unlikely he would’ve become president in 2008.
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In another wild celebrity/political domino effect, Pete Wentz’s parents met while working for former President Joe Biden in the 1970s. This means that without Biden’s political career, Pete Wentz — and, by extension, Fall Out Boy — wouldn’t exist.
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One more domino effect: Gerard Way started My Chemical Romance as a direct result of seeing the Twin Towers fall on 9/11. “I was surrounded by hundreds of people on a dock on the Hudson River, and we watched the buildings go down, and there was this wave of human anguish that I’ve never felt before,” he said. “Music became my therapy from the PTSD that everyone had experienced from 9/11, and processing that.”
People famously drew the conclusion, then, that 9/11 had caused Ellen Degeneres’ downfall. How does that work? MCR inspired Stephanie Meyer to write Twilight. Twilight inspired 50 Shades of Grey, which made a global star of Dakota Johnson. Johnson memorably hit Ellen with “Actually Ellen, that’s not the truth,” which many took as the start of Ellen’s downfall. You might not agree with all the causality here, but it’s still pretty wild that all these things are connected.
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Speaking of MCR, am I the only one who didn’t know that Gerard Way created The Umbrella Academy comics and then co-executive produced the series?
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I also didn’t know that Whitney Houston helped produce The Princess Diaries.
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And it took me an embarassingly long time to discover that Dolly Parton helped produce Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (She’s executive producing the upcoming reboot, too.)
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Lucille Ball funded Star Trek when her studio bought the series, though she apparently “thought the title referred to a group of traveling USO performers during WWII,” according to Star Trek’s official page. (Side note: why is Star Trek in this post this much? I honestly don’t know).
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And finally, in case you didn’t know…M. Night Shyamalan co-wrote Stuart Little. Which personally, I cannot imagine.
What shocking celeb fact do you know? Let us know in the comments!