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1. Today, Liv Tyler is, of course, known as Steven Tyler's daughter (beyond being a successful actress in her own right). But when she was growing up, she had no clue about her true parentage. She thought Todd Rundgren was her father until she was 11 or 12, when she was taken to an Aerosmith concert. There, her mother, model Bebe Buell, told her the band's frontman — none other than Steven Tyler — was her father. "We sat on a bench at this outdoor amphitheater and she told me the whole story in the most sincere, beautiful way," Liv said. "I just was there with it and then we went backstage after the show." Tyler said she was shocked at first, but came to the conclusion that, "Whoa, I have two dads and all this love."
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Liv's mother revealed that she'd kept the truth from Liv because Tyler had been addicted to drugs at the time of her birth. While Liv acclimated to her new life, the family continued to keep the secret. The truth didn't come out to the public until a few years later, in 1991, when Liv changed her last name to Tyler, leaving her original last name of Rundgren as her middle name.
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2. Sean Astin grew up believing actor John Astin was his father, despite tabloid speculation that he was actually the result of one of his mother Patty Duke's other relationships at the time. When Sean was 14, John told him that his biological father was actually actor and singer Desi Arnaz Jr., the child of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz; Duke had dated him when he was just 17. Stunned by the revelation, Astin then got to know Arnaz Jr. as his father — only to learn at 25 that his father might actually be Michael Tell, whom Duke had spontaneously wed in what turned out to be only a 13-day marriage (which was later annulled). A DNA test later confirmed that Tell was his biological father. Today, Astin has a relationship with all three men...essentially making him Sophie from Mamma Mia!
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3. Jack Nicholson was raised believing that his grandmother was his mother. Turns out, his much older "sister" was actually his biological mother. She was only 18 when she had him, as a result of a relationship with a married man. To avoid scandal, Nicholson's grandmother claimed him as her own. He didn't find out the truth until a decade after his mother died at age 44 of cancer. Time magazine did a profile on the rising star in 1974 and discovered the truth in their research.
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His "sister" (really his mother), June, ended up trying to make it in Hollywood, and when Nicholson moved there to do the same, she was the only family member close by.
4. Singer Bobby Darin was preparing for a political career when his sister and father decided to reveal the same secret, lest it come out on the political trail: His sister Nina was actually his mother, and his parents, Polly and Charlie, were his grandparents. Nina had only been a teenager when she'd given birth. Bobby's son, Dodd Darin, later said, "He was never the same. He said that his whole life was a lie; he was, like, a fraud. It's just devastating. There's no sugarcoating it." Bobby was in his early 30s when he found out the truth, and it contributed to his pivot away from his previous music and style; the polished All-American star began writing protest music against the Vietnam War while living in a trailer in Big Sur.
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"I'm not gonna say it's directly attributed to that incident; I'm sure that's part of it. But he got into the Bob Darin stage, you know?" Dodd said. "He took off his toupee. No more tuxedo. Started doing folk music, protest music, writing music, and dropped out of show business for a while." Bobby died in the '70s at just 37, and it doesn't look like he ever reconciled with his mother.
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5. In one more example, Eric Clapton was also raised by his grandparents, believing they were his parents, and that his mother was actually his sister Patricia. Pat, as she was nicknamed, was only 15 when she became involved with a married Canadian airman during WWII. To protect her, her parents — Clapton's grandparents — helped her give birth secretly, then raised Clapton as their own. Pat then left town when Clapton was only 2. At age 7, Clapton overheard an aunt ask his grandmother (whom he believed to be his mother), "Have you heard from his mum?" leading to him discovering the truth.
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Pat returned when Clapton was 9. Since he knew the truth, he asked if it was okay to call Pat "Mummy" now. Pat replied, "I think it's best, after all they’ve done for you, that you go on calling your grandparents Mum and Dad." Clapton wrote in his autobiography, "In that moment I felt total rejection. Though I tried to accept and understand what she was saying to me, it was beyond my grasp. I had expected that she would sweep me up in her arms and take me away to wherever she had come from. My disappointment was unbearable, and almost immediately turned into hatred and anger." Patricia continued to be referred to as his "sister" in public, and resentment grew.
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The two developed more of a relationship later in life. "My mother and I didn't really hit it off that well. The best period of our life was as adults, when we were drinking together. I loved her but she was a difficult woman," he said. "Our relationship developed as friends. Whenever I needed a mother figure, she wouldn't be the person I'd go to."
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6. Moving away from family secrets, Anthony Perkins found out he had HIV from a tabloid magazine. He had no idea he'd even been tested for it; the results came after he had received blood tests for a palsy on his face. His wife, Berry Berenson, said after his death that she thought someone must have 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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7. Jane Fonda discovered the true way her mother had died — by suicide, and not a heart attack, as her father claimed — through a magazine. Fonda later said she'd never really known her mother, who died when Fonda was 12. She'd had bipolar disorder and spent time in institutions. Later, Fonda requested her mother's medical records and got to know her a little better. "When you go through that kind of research…if you can come to answers, which I was able to do, you end up being able to say, 'It had nothing to do with me,'" she said. "It wasn't that I wasn't lovable. They had issues," she adds. "And the minute you know that, you can feel tremendous empathy for them. And you can forgive."
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8. Law & Order: SVU star Mariska Hargitay had Hollywood royalty for parents. Actor and Playboy model Jayne Mansfield was her mother, and actor and bodybuilder Mickey Hargitay was her father. However, just last year, Hargitay revealed something shocking: Mickey was not actually her biological father. Instead, singer, actor, and Las Vegas performer Nelson Sardelli is. Hargitay discovered the truth when she was 25, and asked Mickey about it; he denied it was true, and Mariska dropped the matter. However, a few years later, she decided to visit Sardelli at one of his performances. He was already aware of the truth, telling her, "I've been waiting 30 years for this moment."
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She told him, "I don't need anything from you...I have a dad," out of loyalty to Mickey. However, she eventually got to know Sardelli and his daughters — her half-sisters — and grew closer to them. She decided to reveal the truth decades later to "unburden" them all, and so that she could stop keeping her sisters a secret. Still: "I grew up where I was supposed to, and I do know that everyone made the best choice for me," she said. "I'm Mickey Hargitay’s daughter — that is not a lie."
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9. Woody Harrelson didn't have the best relationship with his father, Charles Harrelson, growing up, particularly given that he was in and out of prison. "I don't feel he was much of a father," Harrelson once said. "He took no valid part in my upbringing." Still, he'd discover an ugly truth about his father's illegal dealings at around age 7, when Charles was arrested for his first murder, acting as a hitman for a carpet salesman. Harrelson learned of his father's career as a hitman on the radio: "How many Charles V. Harrelsons can there be?" he thought at the time. "That has to be my father." He was linked to multiple other murders-for-hire before being convicted of murdering federal judge John H. Wood Jr. in a well-known case.
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10. But wait — it gets even wilder. Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey recently learned that they might be half-brothers, as McConaughey's father might also be Charles Harrelson. The actors have always been close, and while their families were on vacation together, McConaughey's mother mentioned that she'd known Charles when she was younger. "In Greece a few years ago, we're sitting around talking about how close we are and our families. And my mom is there, and she says, 'Woody, I knew your dad,'" McConaughey recounted. "Everyone was aware of the ellipses that my mom left after 'knew.' It was a loaded K-N-E-W."
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"We went on to unpack what this 'knew' meant and did some math and found out that [Harrelson's] dad was on furlough at the same time that my mom and dad were in their second divorce. Then there's possible receipts and places out in west Texas where there might have been a gathering, or a meeting, or a 'knew' moment," McConaughey continued. While the two haven't taken a DNA test due to resistance on McConaughey's part to discover the truth (considering this would challenge his de facto father's parentage), the possibility has been discussed. This is especially ironic given that Harrelson and McConaughey are close friends, and their children already call the other "Uncle."
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11. PBS show Finding Your Roots often features celebrities discovering family secrets, but these are often linked to ancestors or distant cousins. Kerry Washington, however, uncovered a bigger secret. After agreeing to appear on an episode, she was shown DNA tests that revealed her father, Earl Washington, was not related to her. After confronting her parents, they revealed that she had been conceived via a sperm donor. Washington called this a "life-changing revelation" that she didn't want to keep secret, as it felt like she was "complicit in this false narrative," given her public relationship with her parents. Thus, she wrote about the revelation in her memoir, Thicker Than Water.
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She came to see the truth as a positive, calling it "so badass" that her parents had done the "highly experimental procedure" at the time, when "it was cloaked in secrecy and shame." She said, "They were really ahead of their time and I get to be the product of that courage."
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12. British actor John Simm also made a shocking discovery during an ancestry-based TV show, DNA Journey: His late dad, Ronald Simm, was not his biological father. "It's spun my world...everything I thought I knew wasn't real," Simm said. However, he remarked, "It explained a lot. I always felt guilty for feeling a bit different to my family and for leaving at 16. So when I found out, I felt vindicated. I hadn't been going mad," Simm said of the news. Still: "My dad is still my dad."
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It turned out he'd actually met his biological father, a club manager named Terence, who was also dead by the time Simm discovered the truth. "He used to run a couple of the clubs where me and my dad played. I’d have shaken his hand, he would have watched us and paid us, and he'd have probably seen me on TV. And yet none of us knew anything."
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13. Patti Smith also discovered the man she thought to be her father was not. She was 70 years old when she found out the truth, due to a DNA test she'd received as a birthday gift, that showed she and her sister were half-sisters, not full sisters. Smith's daughter helped Smith do some research to discover the identity of her biological father: a man named Sidney who had died in the '60s. "I never saw it coming," she said, despite her great-grandmother having suspected a different parentage, and some of the last words of her mother having been that she had to tell Smith something "about genetics."
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Smith said she was sad to not have been her dad's biological child, and to discover her sister was not her full sister, but said, "In the end, it doesn't matter. Our love for each other, my love for my father, eclipses blood, and my love for my sister eclipses blood."
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14. Oprah discovered that she had a half-sister in 2010, calling it a "bombshell family secret." Fearing that tabloids would report the story and "exploit" it, she decided to reveal it on her show, welcoming the woman — named Patricia — on The Oprah Winfrey Show in early 2011. It turned out that Oprah's mother, Vernita Lee, had given Patricia up for adoption soon after she was born in 1963, doubting her ability to take care of her. Oprah was 9 at the time and living with her father, and had never even known her mother was pregnant. Patricia later saw an interview where Lee spoke about her children, and her son did some online research that led the family to believe they were related to Oprah.
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They attempted to get in contact with her, but given that this was THE Oprah, after all, they were unsuccessful. Patricia said she didn't want to go to the press because she feared it would upset or hurt Oprah. Once Oprah heard about Patricia's existence, the two finally met in person. Patricia was also reunited with Lee, who revealed she had tried to find Patricia after giving her up, but was told, "She had left." Patricia said, "I always had a feeling that she didn't need to give me up, and her saying that she came back to get me, it means a lot."
15. Lindsay Lohan also has a half-sister, named Ashley Horn. She's the result of a relationship her father, Michael Lohan, had while he was separated from Dina Lohan in 1995. Horn's mother, Kristi Kaufmann, told Lohan that Ashley was his in 2005, but he denied parentage until a televised DNA test on The Trisha Goddard Show proved she was his daughter in 2012. Despite her mother's efforts to connect Ashley with Lindsay, Michael later said that Lindsay did not want to meet her, particularly after Ashley underwent plastic surgery to appear more like her half-sister.
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16. Billy Idol didn't find out until his 60s that he had a third child, fathered during his Rebel Yell tour in the '80s. He discovered the news through his daughter Bonnie, who received a 23andMe test as a Christmas present. "A few weeks later, I get the results back on the app and open it and I'm like, who is this?" she recalled of seeing the name "Brant" come up. "And it says his info's like, New York, 1985, looking for my bio dad. I was like, 'What?'" Brant had been looking for his father as a result of his own DNA test, which had shown the man he thought was his father was not.
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He recalled asking his mother if the man he thought to be his father growing up was not actually his biological father. She replied, "Well, it's pretty crazy, but back in the day, we broke up and I actually spent a weekend with Billy Idol." Sure enough, Brant was Idol's son. Idol took to Brant right away and is close with him and his children. "He's definitely showed me a lot of love, so I’m blessed," said Brant.
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17. Minnie Driver thought she had a fairly normal family growing up, only to discover at age 12 that her parents weren't actually married and that her mother was actually her father's affair partner. In fact, her father had a whole different family, including a wife and children. "My parents met in 1962 and they were together for 13 years. They broke up when I was 6 and during that entire time he was married to someone else and had another family," Driver revealed on the show Who Do You Think You Are? "I didn't know until I was about 12. My dad lived a very split life. We just did not talk about where he came from."
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That wasn't the only secret her father kept. He'd been married an additional time before Driver was born, and had a son, Leslie Stancliffe, who had also been in show business.
This contributed to Driver's troubles in the romance department. "If I look at my history, what it did was make me want to be married so much and then choose men who were so not the right men to be married to," she said. "So I would carry on longing to be married and to have that conservative version [of a relationship], find men who had no interest in that, and then if one did, run a mile."
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18. Speaking of romantic relationships...CoverGirl supermodel Christie Brinkley discovered her husband, Peter Cook, was having an affair while giving a high school graduation speech in 2006 in the Hamptons. She said a stranger approached her and told her, "I need to tell you that arrogant husband of yours has been having an affair with my teenage daughter." She wrote in her memoir that she was so shocked she froze, looking into the crowd of people and locating her husband with her son. "As soon as I saw him, Peter’s eyes were already trained on my face, as he began shaking his head, 'No.' When your whole world falls apart and you realize in a heartbeat you've suddenly become the cliche middle-aged woman whose husband is having an affair with a much (much) younger woman, what do you do?"
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After looking on their family computer, she discovered a "panoply of incriminating photos and porn accounts" that confirmed the affair. The two divorced and began an ugly years-long custody battle, which eventually ended with Brinkley getting full custody.
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Through his lawyer, Cook apologized for the year-long relationship, which had been with a 19-year-old former employee. "I love my wife. I have loved her since the day I met her," Cook said. "For a lifetime, I've tried to prove how much I love her. This is an aberration. I'm sorry. I'm contrite. I'm stupid. Foolish. No excuse."
19. While initial reports suggested Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale’s split after 13 years of marriage was amicable, reports later claimed their relationship really ended because Rossdale had been having an affair with the family's nanny for three years. Another nanny for the children reportedly discovered messages planning illicit escapades along with explicit photos of the nanny on a family iPad (linked to Rossdale's account) and told Gwen. Gavin reportedly initially denied that actual cheating had occurred, though he later admitted to it. Neither Stefani nor Rossdale has confirmed or denied these rumors, but if they're true, that's a pretty darn shocking discovery.
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20. Speaking of Rossdale...model Daisy Lowe discovered that Rossdale, whom she'd believed to be her godfather, was her biological father as a teenager. After discovering discrepancies with her and her parents' blood types, she requested a DNA test. Her mother, Pearl Lowe, a fashion designer and singer, told her that she suspected it might be Rossdale, and reached out to him about Daisy taking a test. "Gavin told me if Daisy, then 14, had a DNA test, he'd never speak to me again and he's kept his word," Pearl later said. According to Pearl, he did reply to Daisy, though he was initially "more concerned with venting his anger about my behavior than engaging with his daughter." In time, though, the two developed a stronger relationship.
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21. Eva Longoria discovered her then-husband, Tony Parker, was cheating on her when she found hundreds of texts between him and a different woman (reportedly the wife of one of the men Parker used to play basketball with, though both parties denied this). Not only that, but she discovered a previous affair with a woman he was still speaking to on Facebook. She filed for divorce, and though she didn't publicly blame the cheating, she later acknowledged it in interviews.
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"I mean, I had moments of, 'Am I not sexy enough? Am I not pretty enough? Am I not smart enough?'" she later recalled. "I immediately stopped and said, 'No, don't start doing that.' Because you can get stuck in that cycle." Longoria remarried to media mogul José Bastón in 2016 and has been with him since.
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22. Sienna Miller learned that her fiancé, Jude Law, was having an affair at the same time the rest of the world did: when his affair partner spilled everything to the tabloid the Sunday Mirror, including pages of her diary throughout the affair. The woman had actually been the nanny for Law's children with his ex-wife: One of the kids had even caught the two in bed together.
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"That was one of the most challenging moments I hope I’ll ever have to experience. Because with that level of public heartbreak, to have to get out of a bed, let alone stand in front of 800 people every night, it's just the last thing you want to do," Miller, who was appearing in a West End production of As You Like It at the time, later said. "It was really hard. And the other thing was, it was at the height of all that paparazzi madness, and in London where there was an epidemic of bad behavior. They knew where I would be every night."
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She continued, "There's a whole six weeks of that experience that I don't remember. I have no recollection of it. People who came to see me said we had dinner, and I don't remember. I was in so much shock over it all. And I’d really just begun. I was only 23. But if you get through that, you feel like you can get through anything."
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23. And finally, back in the mid-'90s, Elizabeth Hurley learned that her longtime partner, Hugh Grant, had cheated on her with a sex worker from her agent, who broke the news before Grant could reach her. "I felt like I'd been shot," she said of hearing what Grant had done. The A-lister had been arrested after being discovered in his car in West Hollywood engaged in "lewd contact" with a sex worker named Divine Brown.
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Grant had allegedly paid her $60 for oral sex; after being arrested, he had to pay a $1,000 fine as well as receive AIDS education. Grant publicly apologized, saying he was "more sorry than" he could "ever possibly say." He and Hurley actually stayed together a few more years before splitting in 2000.
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