Celebrities Who Had Secret Kids

It may shock you to learn this, but celebrities are not manufactured in the "Celebrity Factory" before being shipped straight to the entertainment industry for consumption by their adoring fans. No, they are all too human, and as such, they often care about such nebulous concepts as "their freaking privacy" and can be prone to doing what we normies would call "really shady things." Sometimes, those two things intersect to produce a unique pop cultural phenomenon: the so-called "love child," which usually means a kid born to someone other than a celebrity's significant other, and who can often remain hidden from the public for months or even years.

Now, to be clear, the scenario described above isn't the only reason celebrities sometimes keep their new arrivals from their fans; often, they're just protective of their private lives, or want to shield their children from the roller coaster ride of being famous for as long as they can. For a multitude of reasons, there have been plenty of celebs over the years who have welcomed a wee baby into the world only to squirrel said baby away.

The life and career of Eddie Murphy has been rife with ups and downs. He was the hottest comedic performer of the '80s, he was one of the rare actors who had a top-ten pop hit, and he notched an Oscar nomination for his dramatic role in 2006's "Dreamgirls." He's also snubbed the Academy after being picked to host the Oscars, been forced to publicly address his tendency to be less than discriminating with his projects, and given us his legendarily awful labor of love, "The Adventures of Pluto Nash," one of the worst movies ever made. In 2007, he was still riding high off that Oscar nod when his personal life took a huge hit in the form of a paternity suit — one which came at a particularly awkward time.

Murphy was engaged to his girlfriend, Tracey Edmonds, when the suit was brought by Melanie Brown, aka Mel B, aka "Scary Spice" of the Spice Girls. Murphy publicly admitted to being the father of a 3-month-old girl, Angel Iris Murphy Brown, in a statement issued by his publicist, which ended: "Mr. Murphy views this as a private matter, and as such, will not be making any further comments about it." The following year, Edmonds and Murphy got hitched — a marriage which, for some reason, lasted all of 14 days. 

In a late 2020 sitdown for GQ, Michaela Coel and Donald Glover touched on a variety of topics: Glover's creative process on his hit TV series "Atlanta," Coel's difficulty with getting her hit series "I May Destroy You" to the screen, and the double-edged sword of being a famous person on social media. Into that conversation, Glover dropped a little item which had not previously been known to the public — his wife had been given birth to a son, also named Donald, several months earlier during the very early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Adding to the drama of the birth was the fact that the murder of George Floyd was at the forefront of the public consciousness, and that Glover's father — also named Donald — had died in late 2018. "It was nuts," Glover told Coel. "My son had just been born, like, an hour before and I was watching the George Floyd video ... It was such an intense, weird moment ... plus my dad had passed away recently, so [my son] was named after my father." Young Donald III joined Glover's other two sons, Legend and Drake, and in a 2024 conversation with People, Glover revealed that his boys had taught him important lessons about patience. "[It's] like, 'You're driving me up a wall, but you're the most important thing right now,'" he said. "And the world is brand new to them which also gives you such a big joy."

Guitar god Eric Clapton suffered an unthinkable tragedy in 1991 when his 4-year-old son, Conor, fell out of the window of a high rise to his death; Clapton's love for the little boy was immortalized in what is now perhaps his signature tune, "Tears in Heaven," in a case of a horrifying incident inspiring a truly great song. At Conor's funeral, the press in attendance were mystified by the presence of a small girl who took Clapton's hand — 6-year-old Ruth Clapton, a daughter whom the public had up to that point been completely unaware of.

In a 2007 conversation with the Daily Mail, Ruth — then 22 — revealed that she had been "hiding in plain sight." Clapton had never denied paternity or even really attempted to keep her hidden, he simply didn't announce her birth to the world — perhaps because she was the result of a fling between the guitarist and Yvonne Kelly, the manager of producer George Martin's legendary AIR Studios in Monserrat. Kelly — who was also married at the time — and Clapton had co-parented Ruth from the beginning, with an apparently superhuman level of understanding and cooperation from their respective spouses. "[Everyone was] incredibly grown-up about the situation. I always knew Eric was my dad," Clapton told the Mail. "Everyone made the best of it because they didn't want it to be awkward for me." 

The history between British model Daisy Lowe and her father, Bush singer Gavin Rossdale, is a bit on the complicated side. Daisy was born in 1989 – several years before Rossdale found fame – to model Pearl Lowe; she was told that a boyfriend of her mother's, Bronner Handwerger, was her father, and Rossdale was actually named her godfather. In 2004, at the age of 14, Daisy demanded a DNA test after learning that neither her mother nor her supposed dad shared her rare blood type. At that point, Rossdale informed Pearl Lowe that if she allowed the test to proceed, he would never speak to her again.

The test, of course, did proceed, revealing Rossdale's parentage. The singer did not acknowledge Daisy for nearly six years afterward, but he eventually warmed to having a relationship with her. These days, Daisy — now a mother herself — seeks out parenting advice from her rocker dad, whom she says was excited to welcome his grandchild. "He asked me how I am," Lowe said, speaking with The Standard. "And I said I am so lucky and I am so grateful, but it is so hard." As for Pearl Lowe, she told Hello! Magazine that when Rossdale threatened to cut her out over the paternity test, he was not just whistling Dixie — in the two decades since, he has not spoken to her. "He's kept his word," she said. "I lost him as a friend, but Daisy has a relationship with him, which is great."

Former Nirvana drummer and current Foo Fighters singer and guitarist Dave Grohl has long enjoyed a reputation as one of the nicest guys in rock. It should be pointed out, though, that he himself has never claimed to be a saint — he just seems so darned likable, his music is pretty cool and usually rather uplifting, and he was buddies with one of the most storied and tragic figures in all of rock, Nirvana front man Kurt Cobain. As it turns out, though, Grohl is just as prone to irresponsible behavior as the next rock star — up to and including producing a child with someone other than his wife of two-plus decades, Jordyn Blum, with whom he has three daughters.

Grohl made the shocking announcement on Instagram in September 2024, writing in part, "I've recently become the father of a new baby daughter, born outside my marriage. I plan to be a loving and supportive parent to her. I love my wife and children, and I am doing everything I can to regain their trust and earn their forgiveness." The identity of the baby's mother has, as of this writing, not been disclosed, and thus far, Blum has not commented publicly on the situation. However, Grohl's two elder daughters, 18-year-old Violet and 15-year-old Harper, commented in perhaps the most pointed way that the teenage offspring of a celebrity can — by deleting their social media accounts.

Not many political careers have ascended so quickly and plummeted so hard as that of John Edwards, a Democratic Senator from North Carolina who was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1998 and mounted a presidential campaign against Republican incumbent George W. Bush in 2004. While the campaign was not successful, he was picked to be the running mate of eventual Democratic nominee John Kerry. The campaign experience should have served him well when he made a bid for the 2008 nomination, but apparently, he learned the wrong lessons. During election season, Edwards partook in an affair with campaign worker Rielle Hunter — fathering a child with her whom he did not acknowledge as his until 2010.

This sordid circumstance alone likely would have been enough to put a giant damper on Edwards' future political aspirations. But the sliminess was severely compounded by the fact that Edwards carried on his extramarital activities during his wife Elizabeth's very public treatment for breast cancer: Shortly after the couple separated in the wake of Edwards' admission of paternity, Elizabeth died from the disease. In addition, Edwards was indicted by a grand jury in 2011 over allegations that he had accepted illegal campaign contributions, a case which actually went to trial but resulted in a mistrial. In 2016, Hunter told ABC News that Edwards was still a friend and co-parent to their daughter, Quinn.

Actress Liv Tyler is famously the daughter of Aerosmith lead singer Steven Tyler. Surprisingly, though, Liv herself did not know this for sure until she was eleven years old — her mother, former Playboy Playmate Bebe Nuell, told the little girl that Tyler's fellow rocker Todd Rundgren, with whom she was in a relationship, was her dad. Not so surprisingly, though, Liv suspected the truth before then. 

In a joint interview with her "Empire Records" co-star Joaquin Phoenix in 1997, Tyler disclosed that when she met her father — whom she thought was just one of Mom's cool friends — she "fell in love" with him, and even put up posters of him on her wall (via Interview Magazine). Buell had kept the truth from her daughter due to Tyler's wild and hedonistic lifestyle in the '70s and early '80s, but in a sitdown with The Guardian in 2017, Liv explained that she's grateful for the relationship they've nurtured, and that she has nothing but love for both of the men who helped raise her. "Both my fathers are unconventional. They are like unicorns or wizards," she said. "They are musicians through and through. The way they think is just different. Their eccentricities have made me more practical and more normal, in a way."

In his memoir "Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story" (via Business Insider), Arnold Schwarzenegger recalled one of the most consequential couples' therapy sessions of his life, which he attended with then-wife Maria Shriver. It was the day after he had left office as Governor of California, and he was under the impression that the session was to discuss their transition back to private life, but he was very wrong. "The minute we sat down," he wrote, "the therapist turned to me and said 'Maria wanted to come here today and to ask about a child — whether you fathered a child with your housekeeper Mildred [Baena],'" In fact, he had — in 1997 — and Schwarzenegger immediately came clean.

He had kept the secret for some time, and while he tried to tell himself that the boy, named Joseph, wasn't his, the physical resemblance to him became impossible to ignore. In a piece for Men's Health, Joseph Baena shared that he had been told of his parentage when he was a teenager, and that he and his dad had bonded in the intervening years over a mutual love of weightlifting, among other things. Baena is also an aspiring actor, with several film and TV credits to his name — and he says that he's not worried about trying to escape his father's hulking shadow. "A lot of guys struggle with [that]," he said. "Of course, maybe those guys don't have such nice dads."

Former child star Macaulay Culkin (who has endured his share of family tragedy) and his longtime fiancé, Brenda Song, might be an absolutely adorable couple, but they're also pretty private. Perhaps this is because in 2018, Culkin publicly shot off to scandal-happy podcaster Joe Rogan about his desire for children, saying, "I'm gonna make some babies. [Song is] a good one, so I'm probably going to put some babies in her in a little bit. I mean, we've definitely been practicing" (via Elle). Sure enough, their son Dakota was born in 2021 — and for the second time around, the couple chose to have a touch more discretion.

In March 2023, the couple announced to Us Weekly that baby number two had arrived shortly before Christmas the previous year. While they still had zilch in the way of additional details to add, their friends shared that Culkin and Song had simply been laser-focused on parenting — which, with a 2-year-old and a newborn, is frankly pretty understandable. 

It's always a bummer when your musical aspirations don't work out, but in the case of Charlie Heaton — formerly of rock band Comanechi — his dashed dreams turned out to have a pretty killer silver lining. This is because he managed to parlay a few minor acting gigs into a main role in sci-fi-horror series "Stranger Things," one of the darkest shows you'll find on Netflix and a bona fide cultural phenomenon. Heaton has been dating his onscreen love interest, Natalia Dyer, since 2016, but in his wild young rocker days before Netflix fame, he had a fling that produced a child. And that fling was with Akiko Matsuura, the drummer for his band, who happened to be 14 years his senior.

Ironically, the tot — named Archie — might have ended up being the impetus for Heaton's eventual fame. As music wasn't paying the bills, Heaton had turned to acting in minor roles to bring in extra cash, a move which soon landed him in a brighter spotlight than he perhaps had bargained for. By the time he was cast in "Stranger Things," Heaton and Matsuura had broken up — and it wasn't until well into the series' run that the existence of Archie, by that time a toddler, was exposed to the world by those helpful denizens of social media.

Leighton Meester is best known for the drama series "Gossip Girl" (and not, unfortunately, for her skills as a singer-songwriter and her excellent 2014 album "Heartstrings"). Meester was able to live out her Hollywood dreams despite having the definition of a rough start to life; she was actually born in jail, as her mother Constance Meester was in the middle of a 16-month sentence for drug smuggling. This may have something to do with her reticence to make her own family life public. She and her husband Adam Brody were married in secret in 2014, and in September 2015, it was reported that the couple had welcomed a baby girl, Arlo, seven weeks prior. The tot might have remained a secret for even longer, had TMZ not dug up and reported on her birth certificate (via New Zealand Herald). 

The pair have since had another child, and in 2023, when they sat down with Interview Magazine to gab with each other, Meester shared feelings that are familiar to a lot of moms. "I wouldn't change anything, and I'm proud of the mom I am," she said. "But I also feel like I'm open to a lot of self-doubt and worry, and to more extreme hypervigilance and neurosis. So all I can do is take it a day at a time" (via ETOnline).

Shad Moss, aka Bow Wow, burst onto the rap scene in 2000 at the age of 13 (then known as Lil Bow Wow, for obvious reasons). A protégé of producer Jermaine Dupri, who had shepherded similarly underage acts Kris Kross into the mainstream, Moss had chart success throughout the '00s as a youngster. However, as soon as he graduated to adulthood, he found himself with a child of his own. 

In July 2011, the then-24-year-old rapper revealed that several months prior, TV personality Joie Chavis had given birth to his child, a daughter named Shai. Moss made the announcement on his own website, writing, "I waited so long to tell yall the truth because I was nervous on how y'all would look at me" (via Today). He also shared that at the time, Shai was living with her mother, a five-hour plane ride away — but in recent years, father and daughter appear to have gotten much closer. In 2024, Moss took to Instagram to share a picture of himself with then-13-year-old Shai, and it was not lost on him that she was the same age that he was when he made his first foray into the music industry. "Started as a teen," he captioned the photo, "now I have one."