Celebrity Lies Everyone Believed

We're all prone to lying every so often. Whether it's bluffing along as a pal talks about the most bingeworthy series of the year, or blaming traffic for arriving late to that important work meeting, none of us are immune to being just a tad too economical with the truth — and that includes celebrities. The nature of celebrity is, after all, largely based around artifice, so the odd white lie is to be expected from even the most beloved stars. But it's one thing for a celeb to lie about, say, their augmented pout (as Kylie Jenner knows all too well), but it's quite another to create falsehoods that will have serious ramifications. 

In the screenshot-happy age, there's no escaping the truth for mendacious megastars. As these fibbers found out the hard way, the public weren't too keen to pass the hydrant when they were caught with their pants on fire. 

It was Mark Twain who said, "If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything." Indeed, the further a person digs themselves into a web of lies, the harder it is to wriggle out. When it comes to being fast and loose with the truth, these stars are bound to be pulled over. Get ready for the lowdown on the celebrity lies everyone believed.

With his twinkly blue eyes and enigmatic smile, Hollywood veteran Paul Newman charmed his way into audiences' hearts, but he long maintained that his heart only belonged to his wife of half a century, Joanne Woodward. In an interview with Playboy (via Men's Journal), he claimed that he was utterly faithful to Woodward, famously declaring, "I have steak at home. Why go out for hamburger?" But Newman devotees had their hearts broken when it was revealed that he wasn't the wholesome family man he appeared to be.

According to the documentary "The Last Movie Stars," which explores Newman and Woodward's marriage, the former was far from faithful. Per the Daily Mail, the doc alleges that Woodward hated her husband's now iconic quote, believing that it reduced her to "a piece of meat." What's more, Woodward grew tired of Newman's womanizing. The actor reportedly cheated on his wife with alarming frequency. One of the actor's reported lovers was journalist Nancy Bacon, with whom he had an 18-month affair. 

All the while, Newman kept up the façade of being a monogamous, one-woman man, even as his pals joked that "Paul may not go out for hamburger, but he sure goes out for Bacon." The cheating was particularly hard on the actor's children. As his daughter Elinor recalled, "I found a book written by somebody he had an affair with ... in a drawer in the bathroom. There's a terrible moment there where you realize your dad is fallible."

At one time the most revered figure in professional cycling history, Lance Armstrong was an American hero. In addition to his athleticism, Armstrong was a cycling ambassador and charity fundraiser as founder of the Lance Armstrong Foundation, having survived late-stage testicular cancer in his youth, per Reuters.

Throughout his career, Armstrong always stated with the utmost conviction that he abstained from performance-enhancing drugs and his mesmerizing athletic performance was attributable to his sporting prowess alone. In 2005, he appeared at a deposition to testify that he had never doped. "I've never taken performance-enhancing drugs," he asserted. But in 2012, Armstrong was banned for life by the global governing body of cycling and his Tour de France medals were all confiscated after an investigation concluded that he'd been cheating. The following year, he gave an interview with Oprah Winfrey in which he admitted that his "mythic, perfect story" was "one big lie" (via USA Today).

However, investigators said that Armstrong had also outright lied to Winfrey when he claimed that he stopped doping in 2005, per ABC News. Investigations show that Armstrong was still doping from 2005 onwards. "Lance doesn't say, 'I'm sorry,'" Betsy Andre, wife of Frankie Andre, told the outlet. "Lance isn't used to telling the truth." By 2015, he came clean and admitted to doping, telling the BBC that given the opportunity, he'd likely cheat again. "If you take me back to 1995, when doping was completely pervasive, I would probably do it again," he confessed.

Of all the things one can lie about, it doesn't get much lower than claiming to have survived 9/11. Comedic actor Steve Rannazzisi did just that. "I was there and then the first tower got hit and we were like jostled all over the place," he told Marc Maron in 2009 (via PBS), stating he was working at Merrill Lynch at the time.

While the public believed his tales of escaping certain death to be true, Rannazzisi stunned fans when he confessed that he'd made the whole thing up. The New York Times noticed inconsistencies in the actor's story and began an investigation. Soon, he had no choice but to come clean. "It wasn't true," he tweeted. "I was in Manhattan but working in a building in midtown and I was not at the Trade Center on that day."

At the time of his shocking confession, he was set to star in the Comedy Central special "Breaking Dad," but the network expressed their disappointment in the promising young comic's "misrepresentations" (via Variety). Rationalizing why he lied, Rannazzisi attributed his tall tales to immaturity. "More than anything, I have wished that, with silence, I could somehow erase a story told by an immature young man," he said, per The New York Times. "It only made me more ashamed."

It's one thing to tell a little white lie at one's own discretion, but it's quite another matter entirely to lie about having a terminal illness — and to put other people's lives in danger in the process. Well, that's exactly what Australian health influencer Belle Gibson did.

For years, the blogger purported that she was diagnosed with late-stage terminal brain cancer, but miraculously managed to cure the disease through healthy eating, per the BBC. She developed a huge Instagram following with her pseudoscientific claims and even wrote a book, "The Whole Pantry." Cancer patient and Belle devotee Kylie said, "Chemo wasn't working for me. [I said] I should come off and try clean eating." She added, "[Belle] was saying what she was doing was curing her cancer, it was making it better." So, in 2013, Kylie decided to emulate her idol, ditching chemo and embracing the concept of "wellness."

There was just one problem: Gibson was a fraud. In 2015, journalists Beau Donelly and Nick Toscano began doing some digging into Gibson's background and discovered that she'd never had cancer at all and even lied about donating proceeds from her book to charity, per news.com.au. Eventually, she confessed to Australian Women's Weekly (via Sydney Morning Herald), "No ... None of it's true." In 2017, she was fined $410,000 for her pernicious con, per The Guardian.

One could be forgiven for believing Jack and Meg White were siblings: the jet-black hair, the pallid complexions, and the twinning wardrobes. For years, fans thought Jack and Meg were brother and sister, because that's the very image that the musical duo projected. As The Cut notes, Jack would often refer to Meg as his sister during live performances. However, fans began to notice that the pair had an unusual rapport and suspect onstage chemistry, suggesting that something was surely awry with the red-topped twosome.

Soon enough, it was revealed that the pair were in fact ex-spouses. In 2001, NME disclosed that Jack and Meg had been married for four years, though the duo insisted that they were brother and sister when contacted for comment.

They eventually came clean, however. Rationalizing the sibling myth, Jack told Rolling Stone in 2005 that he felt the duo wouldn't be taken seriously if people knew the truth. "When you see a band that is two pieces, husband and wife, boyfriend and girlfriend, you think. 'Oh, I see ...' When they're brother and sister, you go, 'Oh, that's interesting,'" he mused. "You care more about the music, not the relationship — whether they're trying to save their relationship by being in a band. You don't think about that with a brother and sister." He also scoffed at the notion that he and Meg were deliberately trying to "come up with these intricate lies to trick people."

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, Tyga's backstory is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside a reality show. Back in 2008, Tyga appeared on the game show "Bustas," which never aired, and claimed that he'd lied about his tough Compton upbringing, per the Los Angeles Times. He boasted about growing up in the Valley, surrounded by wealth and fancy cars. "Grew up not too tough, parents got a Range Rover," Tyga purported. "Doin' it big, not too much hard, but I'm still street ... They say I'm not hood cause I stay in the Valley, they say I never been in the alley."

Though many were quick to slam Tyga as a phony for lying about his troubled upbringing, he later insisted that the show was pure fiction. Per TMZ, the rapper said that he lied during his appearance on the show and is in fact from Compton, contrary to his claims that he grew up in the Valley.

In an interview with Power 106's Big Boy's Neighborhood (via MTV), he clarified the comments he made on the series, attributing them to the utterances of an overzealous teen. "I'm young, I'm ambitious. I don't care. I'm getting a check for this, I'm about to be on T.V.," he said. "At this point in my career, I'm at a point where I worked so hard and for people to try and throw negative stuff."

Character actor Brian Dennehy was best known for his roles in "First Blood" and "Cocoon," usually playing tough, no-nonsense characters. With his grizzled onscreen persona, it certainly wasn't hard to believe his recollections of active duty during the Vietnam War. 

The actor had long asserted that he served in the war and was wounded on the battlefield, per CBS News. In an interview with Playboy (via Dallas Observer), he even went as far as to hint that he killed people in action. "As for killing someone, anyone in combat would agree that it's pretty much accidental ... You spend a considerable amount of time just trying not to be in a combat situation," he claimed. "You're trying to avoid coming face-to-face with anything." But he was soon dragged for being a fraud.

It was revealed that Dennehy made the whole thing up: Although he served in the Marines, he never set foot in Vietnam. "I lied about serving in Vietnam and I'm sorry," he admitted in 1998, per The Denver Post. Despite his confession, the Post noted that Dennehy lied again about his supposed service when speaking to The Wall Street Journal in 2007. Considering the impact of PTSD on soldiers (Vietnam in particular has had a lasting psychological effect on vets), the actor's stolen valor was especially offensive to veterans who suffered the devastating trauma of combat.