Every Celebritys a Writer Now

How to navigate this year’s glut of memoirs.

It’s never been a better time to ship a voice-memo series of playful or traumatic anecdotes to a ghostwriter and let ’er rip. The year kicked off with the release of Prince Harry’s explosive Spare, then everyone whom you could conceivably call a legend for one reason or another, from Paris Hilton to Werner Herzog, Barbra Streisand to Julia Fox, got their last autobiographical word in — for now. Here, a brief guide to 2023’s overflowing library of celebrity memoirs (and memoirishes).

The Index

The celebrity writers, listed alphabetically: Pamela Anderson | Maria Bamford | Kristin Chenoweth | Sarah Cooper | Laura Dern | Julia Fox | Megan Fox | Heather Gay | Prince Harry | Werner Herzog | Paris Hilton | Leslie Jones | Minka Kelly | Diane Ladd | Debra Lee | Geddy Lee | Thurston Moore | Michael Oher | Elliot Page | Dolly Parton | Chita Rivera | Arnold Schwarzenegger | Jada Pinkett Smith | Britney Spears | John Stamos | Patrick Stewart | Sly Stone | Barbra Streisand | Bernie Taupin | Kerry Washington | Reggie Watts | Henry Winkler | Ziwe

Headliners

The ones that had TMZ and “Page Six” salivating.

This becoming-a-civilian bombshell detailed everything from Harry’s cold upbringing after his mother’s death to the drama that surrounded his marriage to Meghan Markle, including a story of a physical fight with his brother, William, and skepticism of his father’s relationship with now–Queen Consort Camilla. Add in its cackle-worthy audiobook (“My penis was oscillating between extremely sensitive and borderline traumatized,” the prince himself reads aloud) and Spare all but guaranteed Harry’s flights back to England will cost double.

So she and Will Smith aren’t married but are also not divorced. So she did ayahuasca. To quote Rick Ross in Rolling Stone: “What’s next?! And to be honest, we’re not interested!”

Since Hulu’s Pam & Tommy, Anderson has sought to reclaim her narrative, not only through this memoir but also the Netflix documentary Pamela, A Love Story, released earlier this year. Her stories of repeated mistreatment in Hollywood — including an incident of alleged sexual misconduct by Tim Allen, which he denies — are difficult to digest in their totality, but of all the “wronged woman” texts published this year, hers is the most clear-eyed and thoughtful.

The actor’s memoir reckoned with his self-identity and freedom since coming out as trans in 2020. It’s also filled to the brim with blind items — like the A-list actor who once told Page at a party, “I’m going to fuck you to make you realize you aren’t gay” and drama on the set of the Flatliners remake — plus the revelation that he had a brief affair with Kate Mara in 2013 when she was dating Max Minghella.

In this triple-ghostwritten memoir, the audiobook of which is read with gravitas by Oscar nominee Michelle Williams, what we learned beyond what we already knew about Spears is brutally sad — most notably that Justin Timberlake encouraged her to have an abortion in 2000. (You also can’t unhear Williams, as Timberlake, saying “fo’ shiz” in another chapter.) People are allegedly already lining up to adapt the book; the Britney Spears trauma-industrial complex marches on.

It’s impossible not to come away from Babs’s 1,000-word tome thinking about, well, Babs, but most specifically Babs and Elliott Gould in that little bed: “Elliott is six foot three, and I can’t believe the two of us slept together in my narrow twin bed,” she writes. “As he told me years later when we were reminiscing, ‘Now that’s intimacy. I’ve never slept better in my life.’”

Relevancy Ploys

A bookstore endcap isn’t the comeback they hoped for.

The Paris Hilton reevaluation campaign has gone on far too long, with each new “revelation” — her iconic “that’s hot” catchphrase is a Nicky Hilton original — only furthering her lore without having much to say about it. Her book oscillates wildly between stories of abuse endured at her Utah boarding school and claims that she’s the “original influencer” — of course it has already been optioned by A24 as a TV series.

The Full House nostalgia train is an industry unto itself, but no one was waiting by the door for Stamos’s memoir, which, while often candid about his struggles with his physical appearance and addiction, is mostly Hollywood fluff about either being too famous or not famous enough. Stamos also called ex-wife Rebecca Romijn “the devil” while promoting it, which got her current husband, Jerry O’Connell, talking — maybe the least Zeitgeist-y sentence that could be written in 2023.

Moore’s ex-wife Kim Gordon’s memoir, Girl in a Band, is a beloved text among alt-rock fans. His, however, is nearly 500 pages, eight years too late, and close-lipped on not only the affair and his subsequent split from Gordon but much of their relationship altogether.

As one Amazon review puts it, Gay’s book is a recap of Mormon rules, information already plain and clear to those who keep up with The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, and offers little-to-no tell-all.

Most still know Cooper as a Donald Trump lip-syncer, but she has also been writing parody self-help books like How to Be Successful Without Hurting Men’s Feelings since 2018. Here, her crack at the self-serious comedian memoir suffers from tonal whiplash.

AARP Monthly Picks

Your aunt is having a blast with these in her book club.

The actor examines a self-made life with a working-class upbringing. The most damning — and gossip worthy — event in the book involves Stewart scolding his Star Trek castmates for having too much fun. “We are not here to have fun,” he reprimanded them, though his memoir proves otherwise.

Winkler’s easygoing humor and sentimentality have made him a star for decades. Between his acclaimed late-career run on Barry and this gentle, funny memoir — he is still waiting for a call from Paul McCartney, who once passed along his number and said, “Let’s hang out,” before ignoring Winkler’s calls — it’s clear Winkler’s second act is only beginning.

The 90-year-old theater legend’s memoir is full of sharp, insightful humor. While Rivera has everything from celebrity gossip (John Lennon was rude!) to musings on how the industry pigeonholed her as a “sassy” Puerto Rican, it’s mostly a positive reflection on a career well spent.

Less a conventional memoir (she’s already done one), this is an annotated visual tour through all things aesthetically Dolly: pink, sparkles, glitter, wigs, eyelashes, you name it. Sure, it’s majority coffee-table-book fluff — one revelation is she goes to bed with a full face of makeup so her husband doesn’t have to see her any other way — but by her own design.

Taupin’s partnership with Elton John has defined much of his professional life, and though his memoir is written in part to establish himself on his own, he’s always coming back to his work with Elton. Taupin details a pass the singer made early on: “We were inseparable, joined at the hip, and completely the inhabitants of our own world. So it was only natural that he would add to the confusion that must have been raging in his psyche by placing his hand on my thigh.”

Advice Columns

That didn’t need to be a book.

A measured series of conversations that covers everything from Dern’s burgeoning career as a child actor to Ladd’s industry resentments. While sometimes prone to indulgent name-dropping, the book is most telling and evocative when showing how two people who have shared a life can open up, argue, and forgive.

The BET network’s former CEO has seemingly done the impossible: written a Fortune 500 memoir that may actually be useful to more than the one percent. Lee navigates a career in law and then television all while staying true to her values, putting Black stories and audiences first. It’s less about surviving corporate America and more about making it a better, more equitable place for women of color to thrive.

While it was undoubtedly shocking for the actress to learn that her father is not her biological father, her coming to terms with the fact that she loves him the same amount doesn’t feel like quite enough to hinge a whole memoir on. She seems to know that too, relying heavily on Olitz fan service during the press tour. The fact that it took about 10,000 photos (ten THOUSAND?) to get the cover right is weirder — and more interesting — than what’s on the page.

One of his tools for life is working incrementally toward your goals. If you have that one down already, we’re pretty sure you can skip this one.

The filmmaker’s prose — “Occasionally, I watch trash TV because I think the poet shouldn’t avert his eyes,” he writes — will make you feel smart, regardless of the absurdity of what he’s actually saying. Is this the celeb memoir title of the year? It just might be …

One of those where the title says it all.

Heavy Stuff

The pop page-turner is dead; long live the trauma dump.

Not a typical Hollywood confessional, Minka’s memoir focuses instead on her strained relationship with her working-class single mother — not unlike Jennette McCurdy’s I’m Glad My Mom Died. This one’s a brutal read for anyone thinking they’ll just get some Friday Night Lights gossip.

Fox’s words are getting mocked by poetry M.F.A.’s near and far — one poem, for instance, is called “a beautiful boy is a deadly drug” — which ignores that much of the collection details the actress’s personal experiences with domestic abuse and a miscarriage.

For years, Hollywood and the Tuohy family profited off Oher’s story: His “adoption” (which was actually a conservatorship) and success in the NFL, as depicted in 2009’s The Blind Side, made everyone money but him. His memoir finally allows him to speak for himself, his successes reclaimed as his own.

The comic is best known for her tenure on Saturday Night Live, where her brash and thrilling sense of humor made even the sharpest cast members break, but her memoir is an exhaustive recounting of hardship, abuse, and loss. Though she comes out of it smiling in the end, readers may struggle to do the same.

Her unending journey to find mental-health support, group support, any kind of support is a frustrating and moving call to action. Though Bamford has reached a point of relative equilibrium, her memoir is often rough, especially when she eulogizes her beloved pug, Blossom.

Damn Good Reads

Add these to your holiday wish list stat.

Watts’s sharp voice and loving portrait of his upbringing in Montana make for engaging, wonderful anecdotes. On his best friend: “We’d played — and quit — the football team together. We still hung out constantly. Still listened to the Smiths, still played Dungeons & Dragons.” Get you a man who can do all three. He avoids the pitfalls of typical comedian memoirs — pithy lists, easy jokes — instead using his hometown to explore a life lived creatively.

The making of Sly and the Family Stone’s band feels like one of the great “get the gang together” montages in a heist film. When in need of a drummer, he writes, “I had rhyme, I had reason, I needed rhythm.”

Much mishegoss was made over Fox’s oft-memed “I actually did it myself” red carpet quote, but she didn’t lie. Her memoir is undeniably Julia Fox: no ghostwriter, no hemming, no hawing, just an honest depiction
of her years of drug use and her time as an actress and model. Fox’s offbeat sense of humor and dogged persistence set her apart from other “It” girls.

The Rush bassist goes long and hard on himself, his time with the band, and the ups and downs of rock-and-roll life. This is both the year’s best musician memoir and the most classic-rock: cocaine, women, and deep dives into Rush’s recording process, including the advice to never trust an audio producer who says they’ll fix it in the mix.

“I do not exist just to move plot,” Ziwe writes. Move plot she does not — rather, the television star and comedian wends her way through a journey of self-establishment and self-assertion. The book is funny, sure, but also insightful and engaging as Ziwe cements herself as the Dick Cavett of the Instagram age.

Thank you for subscribing and supporting our journalism. If you prefer to read in print, you can also find this article in the December 4, 2023, issue of New York Magazine.

Want more stories like this one? Subscribe now to support our journalism and get unlimited access to our coverage. If you prefer to read in print, you can also find this article in the December 4, 2023, issue of New York Magazine.

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