Secret kids with maids and a famous musician's daughter who nobody knew about for six years — these celebrities shocked the world when they revealed their secret children.
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00:00Secret kids with maids and a famous musician's daughter who nobody knew about for six years.
00:05These celebrities shocked the world when they revealed their secret children.
00:09The history between British model Daisy Lowe and her father, Bush singer Gavin Rossdale,
00:14is a bit on the complicated side.
00:15Daisy was born in 1989, several years before Rossdale found fame, to model Pearl Lowe.
00:21However, Daisy was told that a boyfriend of her mother's was her father, and Rossdale
00:25was actually named her godfather.
00:27In 2004, at the age of 14, Daisy demanded a DNA test after learning that neither her
00:32mother nor her supposed dad shared her rare blood type.
00:36As Pearl told Hello!
00:37Magazine, Rossdale informed her that if she allowed the test to proceed, he would never
00:41speak to her again.
00:42Of course, the test did proceed, revealing Rossdale was the father.
00:46The singer did not acknowledge Daisy for nearly six years afterward, but he eventually warmed
00:50to having a relationship with her.
00:52These days, Daisy seeks out parenting advice from her rocker dad, whom she says was excited
00:56to welcome his grandchild.
00:58Speaking with The Standard, Daisy said,
00:59"...he asked me how I am, and I said I am so lucky and I am so grateful.
01:04But it is so hard."
01:05As for Pearl, she told Hello!
01:06Magazine that Rossdale's threat to cut her out over the paternity test was not empty.
01:11In the two decades since, he has not spoken to her.
01:13Pearl explained,
01:14"...he's kept his word.
01:15I lost him as a friend, but Daisy has a relationship with him, which is great."
01:19"...I give her all the support in the world."
01:21Former Child star Macaulay Culkin and his longtime fiancée, Brenda Song, might be an
01:27adorable couple, but they're also pretty private.
01:29Perhaps this is because, in 2018, Culkin publicly shot off to podcaster Joe Rogan about his
01:34desire for children.
01:35"...I'm gonna make some babies, you know, all that kind of stuff."
01:37Sure enough, their son Dakota was born in 2021.
01:40However, for the second time around, the couple chose to have a touch more discretion.
01:44In March 2023, the couple announced to Us Weekly that baby number two had arrived shortly
01:49before Christmas the previous year.
01:51While they still had zilch in the way of additional details to add, their friend shared that Culkin
01:55and Song had simply been laser-focused on parenting.
01:58Considering they have a toddler and a newborn, that's pretty understandable.
02:03Guitar god Eric Clapton suffered an unthinkable tragedy in 1991 when his four-year-old son
02:08Connor fell out of the window of a high-rise to his death.
02:11Clapton's love for the little boy was immortalized in what is now perhaps his signature tune,
02:16Tears in Heaven.
02:17At Connor's funeral, the press in attendance were mystified by the presence of a small
02:20girl who took Clapton's hand.
02:22It turned out to be 6-year-old Ruth Clapton, a daughter whom the public had been completely
02:27unaware of up to that point.
02:28In a 2007 conversation with the Daily Mail, the then-22-year-old Ruth revealed that she
02:33had been, quote, "...hiding in plain sight."
02:35Clapton had never denied paternity or even really attempted to keep her hidden.
02:39He simply didn't announce her birth to the world.
02:41The reason for this may have been because she was the result of a fling between the
02:45guitarist and the manager of producer George Martin's legendary air studios, Yvonne Kelly.
02:50Kelly, who was also married at the time, had co-parented Ruth with Clapton from the beginning,
02:54with an apparently superhuman level of understanding and cooperation from their respective spouses.
02:59As Ruth told the Mail,
03:01"...Everyone was incredibly grown up about the situation.
03:03I always knew Eric was my dad.
03:06Everyone made the best of it because they didn't want it to be awkward for me."
03:09Eddie Murphy's life and career have been rife with ups and downs.
03:12He was the hottest comedic performer of the 80s, he had a top 10 pop hit, and he notched
03:17an Oscar nomination for his dramatic role in 2006's Dreamgirls.
03:21He's also snubbed the Academy after being picked to host the Oscars, been forced to
03:25publicly address his tendency to be less than discriminating with his projects, and given
03:29us his legendarily awful labor of love, The Adventures of Pluto Nash.
03:33In 2007, he was still riding high off that Oscar nod when his personal life took a huge
03:38hit in the form of a paternity suit, one which came at a particularly awkward time.
03:43Murphy was engaged to his girlfriend, Tracy Edmonds, when the suit was brought by Melanie
03:47Brown, better known as Mel B or Scary Spice of the Spice Girls.
03:51Murphy publicly admitted to being the father of a three-month-old girl, Angel Iris Murphy
03:55Brown, in a statement issued by his publicist.
03:58It read in part,
03:59"...Mr. Murphy views this as a private matter and as such will not be making any further
04:03comments about it."
04:04The following year, Edmonds and Murphy got hitched, a marriage which for some reason
04:13lasted all of 14 days.
04:16Actress Liv Tyler is famously the daughter of Aerosmith lead singer Steven Tyler.
04:20Surprisingly, Liv herself did not know this for sure until she was 11 years old.
04:24In fact, her mother, former Playboy Playmate Bebe Buell, told The Little Girl that Tyler's
04:29fellow rocker Todd Rundgren, with whom she was in a relationship, was actually her dad.
04:34Even so, Liv suspected the truth before then.
04:36In a 1997 conversation with Interview magazine, Liv disclosed that when she met her father,
04:41she, quote, "...fell in love with him and even put up his posters on her wall."
04:45Buell had kept the truth from her daughter due to Tyler's wild and hedonistic lifestyle
04:49in the 70s and early 80s.
04:51However, in a conversation with The Guardian in 2017, Liv explained that she's grateful
04:55for the relationship they've nurtured and that she has nothing but love for both of
04:59the men who helped raise her.
05:00She said,
05:01"...both my fathers are unconventional.
05:03They are like unicorns or wizards.
05:05They are musicians through and through.
05:06The way they think is just different.
05:08Their eccentricities have made me more practical and more normal in a way."
05:13Former Nirvana drummer and current Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl has long enjoyed a reputation
05:18as one of the nicest guys in rock.
05:20It should be pointed out, though, that he himself has never claimed to be a saint.
05:23Instead, his uplifting music combined with his friendship with Nirvana frontman Kurt
05:27Cobain may have bolstered his reputation in pop culture disproportionately.
05:31As it turns out, Grohl is just as prone to irresponsible behavior as the next rock star
05:36and proved it by fathering a child with someone other than his wife of two-plus decades, Jordyn
05:41Bloom.
05:42Grohl made the shocking announcement on Instagram in September 2024, writing in part,
05:46I've recently become the father of a new baby daughter, born outside my marriage.
05:50I plan to be a loving and supportive parent to her.
05:52I love my wife and children, and I am doing everything I can to regain their trust and
05:56earn their forgiveness.
05:57The identity of the baby's mother has not been disclosed as of September 2024, and thus
06:02far, Bloom has not commented publicly on the situation.
06:06However, Grohl's elder daughters, 18-year-old Violet and 15-year-old Harper, commented in
06:10perhaps the most pointed way that the teenage offspring of a celebrity can.
06:14They deleted their social media accounts.
06:17Not many political careers have ascended so quickly and plummeted so hard as that of John
06:22Edwards, a Democratic senator from North Carolina who was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1998
06:27and mounted a presidential campaign against incumbent George W. Bush in 2004.
06:32While the campaign was not successful, he was picked to be the running mate of eventual
06:36Democratic nominee John Kerry.
06:38The campaign experience should have served him well when he made a bid for the 2008 nomination,
06:42but apparently he learned the wrong lessons.
06:45During election season, Edwards partook in an affair with campaign worker Rielle Hunter,
06:49ultimately fathering a child with her whom he did not acknowledge as his until 2010.
06:54This sordid circumstance alone likely would have been enough to put a giant damper on
06:58Edwards' future political aspirations.
07:00However, the sliminess was severely compounded by the fact that Edwards carried on his extramarital
07:05activities during his wife Elizabeth's very public treatment for breast cancer.
07:09Shortly after the couple separated in the wake of Edwards' admission of paternity, Elizabeth
07:14died from the disease.
07:15Edwards was indicted by a grand jury in 2011 over allegations that he had accepted illegal
07:20campaign contributions, a case which actually went to trial but resulted in a mistrial.
07:25In 2016, Hunter told ABC News that Edwards was still a friend and co-parent to their
07:30daughter, Quinn.
07:31We're very, very good friends and great co-parents."
07:35In his memoir Total Recall, My Unbelievably True Life Story, Arnold Schwarzenegger recalled
07:40one of the most consequential couples therapy sessions of his life, which he attended with
07:44his then-wife Maria Shriver.
07:46It was the day after he had left office as governor of California, and he was under the
07:50impression that the session was to discuss their transition back to private life.
07:54He was wrong.
07:55He wrote,
07:56"...the minute we sat down, the therapist turned to me and said, Maria wanted to come
07:59here today and to ask about a child, whether you fathered a child with your housekeeper
08:04Mildred Boehner."
08:05In fact, in 1997, he'd done just that, so Schwarzenegger immediately came clean.
08:11He had kept the secret for some time, and while he tried to tell himself that the boy
08:15named Joseph wasn't his, their physical resemblance became impossible to ignore.
08:19In a piece for Men's Health, Joseph Boehner shared that he had been told of his parentage
08:23when he was a teenager, and that he and his dad had bonded in the intervening years over
08:27a mutual love of weightlifting, among other things.
08:30Boehner is also an aspiring actor, with several film and TV credits to his name, and says
08:35that he's not worried about trying to escape his father's hulking shadow.
08:38He explained,
08:39"...a lot of guys struggle with trying to make their dad proud or trying to get out
08:42of their dad's shadow.
08:44Of course, maybe those guys don't have such nice dads."
08:46"...just really happy with, um, and honored to be a part of this family."
08:53Shad Moss, better known as Bow Wow, burst onto the rap scene in 2000 at the age of
08:5713 under the name Lil Bow Wow.
08:59A protégé of producer Jermaine Dupri, who had shepherded similarly underage act Criss
09:04Cross into the mainstream, Moss had chart success throughout the aughts as a youngster.
09:08However, as soon as he graduated to adulthood, he found himself with a child of his own.
09:13In July 2011, the then-24-year-old rapper revealed that several months prior, TV personality
09:19Joy Chavez had given birth to his child, a daughter named Shy.
09:22"...you my daughter's mom, that's never a rebound."
09:25Moss made the announcement on his own website, writing,
09:28"...I waited so long to tell y'all the truth because I was nervous on how y'all would look
09:32at me."
09:33He also shared that at the time, Shy was living with her mother, a five-hour plane ride away.
09:37However, in recent years, the father and daughter appear to have gotten much closer.
09:41In 2024, Moss took to Instagram to share a picture of himself with then-13-year-old
09:46Shy, and it was not lost on him that she was the same age that he was when he made his
09:51first foray into the music industry.
09:53He captioned the photo,
09:54"...started as a teen, now I have one."
09:57It's always a bummer when your musical aspirations don't work out.
10:00But in the case of Charlie Heaton, his DASH dreams turned out to have a pretty killer
10:04silver lining.
10:05This is because he managed to parlay a few minor acting gigs into a main role in the
10:09sci-fi horror series Stranger Things.
10:11Heaton has been dating his on-screen love interest, Natalia Dyer, since 2016.
10:16But before his days of Netflix fame, he was a young rocker in a band called Komenechi.
10:21While playing in the group, he had a fling with his bandmate, Akiko Matsuura, and the
10:24two had a child.
10:26Ironically, their son Archie might have ended up being the impetus for Heaton's eventual
10:30fame.
10:31As music wasn't paying the bills, Heaton had turned to acting in minor roles to bring in
10:34extra cash, a move which soon landed him in a brighter spotlight than he may have bargained
10:39for.
10:40Before being cast in Stranger Things, Heaton and Matsuura had broken up, and it wasn't
10:44until well into the series' run that the existence of Archie, by that time a toddler, was exposed
10:49to the world by those helpful denizens of social media.
10:52Leighton Meester is best known for the drama series Gossip Girl, and she was able to live
10:56out her Hollywood dreams despite having the definition of a rough start to life.
11:00She was actually born in jail, as her mother was in the middle of a 16-month sentence for
11:05drug smuggling.
11:06This may have something to do with her reticence to make her own family life public.
11:10She and her husband, Adam Brody, were married in secret in 2014, and in September 2015,
11:15it was reported that the couple had welcomed a baby girl named Arlo seven weeks prior.
11:20The tot might have remained a secret for even longer had TMZ not dug up and reported on
11:24her birth certificate.
11:26The pair have since had another child, and when they sat down with Interview magazine
11:29in 2023, Meester shared feelings that are familiar to a lot of moms.
11:33She said,
11:34"'I wouldn't change anything, and I'm proud of the mom I am.
11:37But I also feel like I'm open to a lot of self-doubt and worry, and to more extreme
11:41hypervigilance and neurosis, so all I can do is take it a day at a time.'"