12 Eye-Popping Ways Celebrities Uncovered Their Families’ Darkest Secrets
What’s worse: finding out your parents have been lying to you for your entire life, or finding out that your real dad is Gavin Rossdale?
Tim McGraw
While he was snooping around for Christmas presents at the age of 11, he found his birth certificate, which indicated that his dad was none other than MLB pitcher Tug McGraw.
Oprah Winfrey
Her father put her up for adoption in 1967 when she was nine, and it wouldn’t be until 2011 that she found out about a half-sister. More incredible still, the woman found out via DNA test that she was related to Oprah in 2007, and waited four years to reach out, never once taking this juicy story to the press.
Liv Tyler
When she was eight years old, her mom made her meet some big-lipped, long-haired musician who bought her a Shirley Temple. Then she met the guy’s daughter, and noticed she looked a lot like Liv herself. She began putting two and two together, and ultimately found out that dude — Steven Tyler — was her dad, fresh out of rehab, trying to make amends.
Jennette McCurdy
After her mother passed away, the man who helped raise her let her in on a big secret: A different man was her biological father, and he’d been prevented from contacting her all that time due to a secret custody battle. She reached out to him at one point, but wound up losing touch with both men.
Sarah Silverman
She knew she had an older brother who died in infancy, and knew that it happened under the care of her dad’s father. It wasn’t until she was older that her dad helped her piece the real story together: His father had beaten him as a child, and he believed he’d shaken his grandson to death.
Kerry Washington
Her parents had to come clean after she agreed to go on a show about ancestry called Finding Your Roots — they never planned on telling her, but infertility issues required them to conceive her via sperm donor.
Edward Norton
He got some uncomfortable news on that same show: His third-great grandfather was a slave owner. He said that sucks big time, but it’s important: “These things are uncomfortable, and you should be uncomfortable with them. Everybody should be uncomfortable with it. It’s not a judgment on you and your own life but it’s a judgment on the history of this country.”
Keyshia Cole
She knew that she’d been adopted by her mother’s close friends as an infant, but didn’t find out until age 34 who her biological father was: legendary boxing coach Virgil Hunter.
Bono
His father’s deathbed confession was a real doozy: Bono’s cousin was actually his half brother, meaning that Bono’s dad had had an affair with Bono’s mom’s sister.
Jack Nicholson
A Time investigation revealed the truth about his bio parents when he was 37 — the woman he thought was his mother was actually his grandmother, and the woman he thought was his sister was actually his mother. Both had passed away by the time he found out. He later told Rolling Stone “I was very impressed by their ability to keep the secret, if nothing else.”
Dylan McDermott
He grew up believing that his mother had committed suicide when he was five, but as he began to process the tragedy as an adult, he went to the police for answers. This was all it took for cops to reopen the case and immediately find that the death was actually a homicide at the hands of her boyfriend. It’s truly incredible that it took that long to get to the bottom of it, since she died of a gunshot wound just outside her apartment door.
Daisy Lowe
The British fashion model knew something was up when she started learning about blood types. She’s type OO, which is recessive, meaning she had to inherit one O from each parent. When she found out their blood types, she knew they couldn’t be her bio parents. She found out her bio father was none other than Gavin Rossdale.
