Celebrity Parents Revealed!

Being a parent is the toughest but most rewarding job in the world. There are some rotten apples in that parenting barrel, some of whom have given birth to some of our favorite stars. Some people on the list are even celebrities themselves, and even with that public spotlight, they weren’t the best moral compasses for their children … looking at you, Dina Lohan and Michael Lohan!

MORE: A slew of single celebrity parents doing it all on their own!

Then there is a story of a child actor who had unparalleled success and had to divorce her parents. After the dust settled, it became obvious that this young superstar’s movie-making money had gone missing resulting in the parent embezzlement experience. 

MORE: 23 Models with celebrity parents!

Let’s not forget the superhero whose father introduced him to drugs at the age of eight! Although which is worse, that or marrying your stepdaughter? Read on to find out the who and the what from these 10 nightmare celebrity parents!

There’s bad parenting and then there’s Robert Downey Jr.'s dad, who allowed him to do drugs at a young age. It began when the future Iron Man was just six, according to Men’s Journal. Robert Downey Sr. felt it would serve as a bonding tool with him and his boy. When you think about the drug-riddled landscape that ruled young Downey’s world, it’s easy to see how he came millimeters from losing his life. The Avengers: Endgame scene-stealer was quoted in The Washington Post saying, “There was always a lot of pot and coke around … When my dad and I would do drugs together, it was like him trying to express his love for me in the only way he knew how.” On a positive note, Downey Jr. got himself sober, rebounded his career and has a terrific relationship with his father. Asked about his life, the Oscar nominee was quoted in Us Weekly as saying that his life was “such a cautionary tale and I still could be."

Drew Barrymore made a movie when she was nine called Irreconcilable Differences. In a case of life being stranger than fiction, the movie mirrored what the young star was going through in real life with her parents. In fact, the actress would emancipate herself from John Barrymore and Jaid Barrymore when she was 14. She had just gotten out of rehab, as chronicled in Us Weekly, the year before and sought to get rid of toxic influences. Her father was an alcoholic, and by the time Barrymore was nine, her folks had split up. Her mother, Jaid, took her to nightclubs five nights a week, where she admitted she started taking drugs, as reported by RadarOnline.com Online. She started smoking cigarettes at 9, drinking by 11 and doing drugs of all forms by 13. The Charlie’s Angels star spoke of spending time with older men and said that the lifestyle landed her in a mental institution at 13, where she stayed for 18 months. She “divorced” her parents when she got out, and the courts let her. “I've never just been angry with her. I've always felt guilt and empathy and utter sensitivity,” the Big Miracle star was also quoted in Us Weekly. “But we can’t really be in each other's lives at this point."

Sure, Kris Jenner is the “momager” who managed to take a family name that was kind of known and turn it into a money-printing machine. But let’s be real, Kris has been long rumored (as reported by Us Weekly in 2016) to be the one who pushed the release of the sex tape that featured a relatively then unknown daughter, Kim Kardashian. The Kardashian matriarch did negotiate the payday that Kim received from Vivid after Kardashian sued the porn distributor over profits earned from the release of the tape. She got her share. Can you imagine that conversation? Not a move that will put a mother in the maternal hall of fame.

Ariel Winter is a star of Modern Family — a hit show she’s been on since she was 11. If you think she had the best childhood, think again. When she was about 14, Winter took her mother, Crystal Workman, to court and accused her of physical and emotional abuse. As reported by RadarOnline.com Online, a doctor testified in court that he saw absolutely no evidence of any kind of abuse. However, in another RadarOnline.com article, court documents alleged that Ariel’s mom had tried to sell nude photos of Winter and her sister. There were also reports that say she used to make repeated personal insults. For instance, she would focus on Winter’s weight, and these insults led to depriving her daughter of food. Winter was emancipated from her mother, and she’s living the kind of life she worked hard for. When it comes to Workman, she asserted her innocence and didn’t seem to take the whole thing well at all. “She continues to attack me,” Winter’s mom said in Us Weekly. “It’s heartbreaking.”

As one of the most recognizable child actors in history, Macaulay Culkin did not have the best childhood. Home Alone made him a star and a whole lot of money. But his parents took most of it and squandered it before he could intervene, according to Business Insider. The Good Son star was an in-demand actor, and Culkin has said that he missed out on a childhood due to his Hollywood demands. He described life with his manager/father, Kit, as feeling like he was in prison. "I’m going around the country locked in a room with a man who didn’t like me," Culkin said to Marc Maron on his WTF Podcast. "He was a bad man. He was abusive. Physically and mentally. He was just a bad dude. A bad abusive man.” When his parents split, things actually got better for the Richie Rich star. “My father and mother called it quits, which is one of the best things to ever happen to me. I was able to walk away from the business. I was able to say, 'I hope you made all your money, because there’s no more coming from me,'" Culkin recalled on the podcast. He then became emancipated from his folks and learned that his father didn’t exactly do the best job of saving any of his money, but at least could earn his own money on his own terms.

The rocky marriage of Dina Lohan and Michael Lohan cost star any chance at a normal upbringing away from family drama. Dina has said that Michael repeatedly beat her in front of their daughter, as reported by RadarOnline.com Online. After the couple split up, Dina Lohan started club-hopping with her daughter. That went on for years. Momma Lohan has admitted that she was more a friend to her girl than a parent. “I think we are responsible for the path that Lindsay took,” Michael admitted to Us Weekly. “Our divorce … affected Lindsay to the point where she drowned her sorrows and numbed her pain.”

After witnessing her dad, John Aniston, find success with Days of Our Lives, it’s hardly crazy to think that Jennifer Aniston would follow in her papa’s footsteps. The Greek actor and American actress Nancy Dow gave birth to the future Friends star in Sherman Oaks, California. Jennifer has been quite vocal about her family’s problems during her younger years and how her father rose to fame while becoming a soap star and then left his family. Making matters worse, the Marley and Me star’s dad left for another woman. Jennifer also revealed she had a bad relationship with her mother. Dow published a book called Mother and Daughter to Friends: A Memoir where she detailed her estranged relationship with her daughter. Luckily for all parties, the Horrible Bosses star and her mom reconciled before her death, as reported by Us Weekly.

Hulk Hogan and his daughter have seemed like they are really close over the years, especially when cameras were on the father-daughter duo for their reality show Hogan Knows Best. Then, a few things happened in 2008 that had many questioning what kind of paternal figure Hogan was for his baby girl, Brooke Hogan. First, there were those photographs of him rubbing sunblock on her thong-bikini exposed bottom (and that tweeted photo of his daughter in a mini-dress with the caption: "Brooke’s legs," from Us Weekly). Then, he cheated on Brooke’s mother, his wife at the time, Linda Hogan, and not just with some random woman. He cheated on her with Brooke Hogan’s BFF, Christiane Plante — detailed on the Today Show. The affair exploded the Hogan clan. Oh, and then there’s that whole 2015 comment (he used the “N” word!) made by the former wrestler, as reported by RadarOnline.com Online. He was describing his feelings about his daughter dating an African-American man.

Parents — even stepparents — are supposed to protect their children. It’s obvious why it was such an enormous scandal when filmmaker extraordinaire Woody Allen and his then partner, Mia Farrow, divorced due to the fact that Allen was having an affair with his stepdaughter, Soon-Yi Previn. The young woman, quoted in RadarOnline.com Online, said that their love affair was “a huge betrayal on both our parts.” The couple first hooked up when she was 21, while he was still firmly with Farrow. The only reason they were found out was because Farrow found nude Polaroid pictures of Previn in their house. Previn and Allen married in 1997 and have two girls.

Everyone was afraid of Joe Jackson from record company executives to his children. The Jackson 5 patriarch and father to the late Michael Jackson has been under a cloud of suspicion for years that he beat his children and ran their band like a dictator who figuratively (and allegedly literally) cracked the whip (or occasional belt) to get his boys in line. Joe Jackson admitted later that he had regrets about how he raised his kids. A source told RadarOnline.com Online that the man who saw immense talent in his youngest son felt badly about how he treated him. “I know I should have been there for Michael. I failed him and it turned out it cost him his life,” Joe reportedly said. Before his 2018 death, Joe (as told by another source) seemed to have a hard time coming to grips with his alleged abuse over the years. The source said that he was “crying a lot, because he realized his impact on the family and his own regrets about his affairs and what he did to his kids … and being so hard on them.”