In the year 2025, the celebrity sex scandal might look a little different – involving sneaky DM slides and Instagram apologies rather than TV interviews – but they’re still just as spicy. From rockers Dave Grohl and Adam Levine trying to, well, get their rocks off in the last few years to the shenanigans of Hugh Grant in the nineties, this kind of behaviour transcends time. Below, you can read about eight of the juiciest celebrity sex scandals …
Hugh Grant
The year was 1995, and Hugh Grant was still milking his on-screen persona as the floppy-haired and posh (but ultimately clean cut) English man. But then he was arrested in Los Angeles for receiving oral sex in public from sex worker Divine Brown, who he’d picked up on the notorious Sunset Strip. His entire career – and his relationship with Elizabeth Hurley – was threatened. Instead of cowering, Hugh, who pleaded no contest, owned up to his actions in an interview with Jay Leno, and staged a career comeback a couple of years later. Things worked out alright with Liz, too: Hugh is now godfather to her son Damian.
George Michael
Back in 1998, the late George Michael was arrested by an undercover police officer after cruising for sex in a park in Los Angeles. The ‘Faith’ singer, best known for his work as one half of the band Wham!, was caught in a ‘lewd act’ in a public toilet and spent three hours in jail before posting bail. However, his reputation was largely untarnished; he was picked up for cruising at London’s Hampstead Heath again in 2006. But George refused to back down, saying, ‘Sorry if people don’t like the fact I cruise on Hampstead Heath but the police absolutely accept that it goes on at night. It’s the only place in London where that is so, so it’s generally a safe place.’
Dave Grohl
Celebrity sex scandals might have been a tabloid fixture in the nineties and noughties, but don’t worry – they’re still happening today. Just last year, the seemingly wholesome Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl found himself at the centre of a scandal after admitting to having welcomed a new child. The problem? The mother wasn’t his wife of 21 years, Jordyn Blum. ‘I’ve recently become the father of a new baby daughter, born outside of my marriage. I love my wife and my children, and I am doing everything I can to regain their trust and earn their forgiveness,’ he wrote on social media, but never named the mother of his newborn daughter.
Mel B and Eddie Murphy
Did you hear the one about the top comedian and the Spice Girl? When Eddie Murphy and Mel B met at a dinner party in 2006 and began dating, they were one unlikely couple. According to Mel, the pair waited six weeks to have sex, and Mel would later compare their bonking to poetry. But while Eddie was at one point so enamoured with Mel that he got her name tattooed on his thigh, things quickly took a turn when she got pregnant. Mel returned to the UK to raise the baby girl, and while a DNA test proved that little Angel was Eddie’s, their relationship never recovered.
Tiger Woods
Talk about a fall from grace! Tiger Woods was one of the world’s most upstanding – not to mention high-earning – sports stars, with an idyllic seeming family life with his wife Elin Nordegren and two children. But in 2009, tabloids began to circle when Tiger crashed his car outside his home, and reports of numerous affairs began to emerge. One of the women, Jaimee Grubbs, shared explicit texts Tiger had sent her with the press, encouraging more women to come forward with allegations that they had slept with the golf champion. At a press conference months later, he said, ‘I was unfaithful, I had affairs and I cheated. What I did was unacceptable.’
Kim Kardashian
Before she was the reality TV billionaire we all know (whether we want to or not), Kim Kardashian was simply a friend, stylist and hanger-onner of Paris Hilton. However, she received widespread attention in 2007 when a sextape she had filmed with then-boyfriend Ray J in 2003 was released publicly. While Kim originally filed a lawsuit against the distributor, she dropped it three months later and settled for $5 million, giving the company permission to sell copies in the process. Whether it was a real breach of Kim’s privacy or a promotional stunt for their upcoming reality show – or maybe both – the Kardashians wouldn’t be the Kardashians without Kim’s tape.
Adam Levine
What is it with these rockers? In 2022, Adam Levine was the subject of his own sex scandal over on TikTok, after Instagram model Summer Stroh alleged that she had an affair with the Maroon5 singer. Summer shared a number of alleged screenshots from Adam, including one where he asked if he could name his third child with model wife Behati Prinsloo after her. Of course, the internet can never take things seriously, and screenshots where Adam allegedly wrote, ‘Holy fucking fuck, that body of yours is absurd’ quickly became memeified. As for the ‘Moves Like Jagger’ singer? He denied that he had an affair but admitted that he ‘crossed a line during a regrettable period in my life’.
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe is one of the most recognisable stars of all time, but the Some Like It Hot star also was accused of having an affair with then-US president John F Kennedy before her tragic death in 1962. Mere months before she died, the legendary actress performed a sultry rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ for the president, sparking rumours that something was going on between the pair. JFK was married to Jacqueline Onassis at the time, but was assassinated one year after Marilyn in 1963. Historians have also theorised that Marilyn, who had been married three times at this point, also had an affair with his brother, Robert F Kennedy.