Prostitutes, Public Intoxication, And Peeing In Public: 9 Ridiculous Celebrity Arrests

Fame and fortune may help celebrities occasionally avoid facing the consequences when they break the law, but there’s not enough money in the world to erase a truly embarrassing moment from the public’s collective memory. After all, getting a DUI is one thing, but getting a DUI and then admitting to a police officer that you were in a hurry to pick up a prostitute, and then using explicit terminology to tell the officer what you were hoping to do with her? That’s probably the worst idea possible (sorry, Charles Barkley).

The celebrities on this list know all about bad ideas, having earned a few quirky footnotes on their own Wikipedia pages thanks to their misadventures with the law. From the embarrassing and awkward to the downright disturbing and bizarre, here are nine A-lister arrests you aren’t likely to forget any time soon — no matter how much they probably wish that you would.

50 Cent is known for never holding his tongue on social media, having started a number of high-profile social media feuds that have gotten more than a little ugly. The rapper’s tongue landed him in trouble in real life, however, during a performance in the Caribbean two years ago. He was promptly arrested after a show in St. Kitt’s in June 2016. His crime? Rapping the word “motherf--ker” during one of his songs.

The word is illegal there, and 50’s handlers reportedly warned him against using the illegal swear word prior to the start of his show, according to TMZ. Part of the blame may belong to the DJ who backed up 50 during his set, however; he apparently didn’t have any clean versions of 50’s songs on hand, and so 50 simply rapped along with the original version of his music, curse words and all.

Following his performance on a Saturday, the “Candy Shop” rapper was forced to stick around for the rest of the weekend in order to to attend court on Monday, at which point he paid a fine and hightailed it out of the country.

It doesn’t get much weirder than waking up in your neighbor’s house after a drug-fueled blackout. In the summer of 1996, actor Robert Downey Jr. was charged with trespassing after his neighbors in Malibu, California, came home to find the troubled actor passed out in their home, according to the Los Angeles Times. Making matters even more awkward is the fact that Downey was in his underwear when they found him, and the bed he fell asleep in belonged to the homeowner’s son, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Paramedics reportedly transported him to a hospital for treatment before police hauled him to jail.

Just days before his trespassing arrest, the “Avengers” actor had gotten slammed with a litany of charges, including felony heroin and cocaine possession charges. The incident seemed to serve as a wake-up call for Downey, who was in the midst of a downward spiral at the time. He entered a treatment program shortly afterward, according to E! News.

Matthew McConaughey is one eccentric guy. The 49-year-old actor (then 29) was arrested in October 1999 when police responded to a noise complaint at his home in West Austin, Texas and found him playing the bongo drums at 3 a.m. in the nude while another man, also naked, danced and clapped along, The Washington Post reports. McConaughey was taken in on suspicion of possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia and resisting transportation, but was ultimately only charged with resisting transportation, according to the outlet.

He addressed his infamous nude arrest two years ago during an interview with Playboy, telling the magazine that he “was not raised to be jail.”

“What’s wrong with beating on your drums in your birthday suit?” he said. “I have no regrets about the way I got there.”

It’s clear from Foxy Brown’s 2007 arrest that she doesn’t take kindly to being rushed while getting ready. The iconic female MC made headlines in February of that year when she was arrested at a beauty supply store in Florida following a pretty dramatic showdown between the rapper and store employees.

Brown was in the bathroom doing her hair and makeup when an employee came in and told her that the store was closing and she’d need to leave, according to an arrest report acquired by Billboard. Brown reportedly refused to leave and threw hair glue at the employee and even spit on them, prompting a 911 call. When police arrived, Brown began resisting the officer who attempted to escort her off the premises, forcing the officer to “use a takedown maneuver to gain control,” the arrest report states.

She was released from jail after posting $1,5000 bond, but the incident got her saddled with charges for battery and resisting an officer with violence, according to Billboard.

Actor Edward Furlong was arrested for being intoxicated in public in 2004 after a truly strange incident at a Kentucky grocery store. The actor, known for roles in “Terminator 2” and “Pet Sematary 2,” stopped by a Meijer grocery store with a group of friends at around 11 p.m., and that’s when things proceeded to get weird. Furlong must have had it in his heart that night to help the lobsters in the seafood section find their way to freedom, because he and his friends began taking the creatures out of their tank without warning, E! News reports. They then began arguing with store management who asked them to stop whatever it was they were trying to do, prompting employees to call the police.

After police arrived on the scene, they noted that Furlong’s breath smelled of alcohol, and he later began spinning around in circles after authorities asked him to turn around in order for them to properly frisk him, a police report obtained by E! News states. Furlong was taken into custody on a misdemeanor charge of public intoxication, and spent three hours in jail before the director of the film he was currently starring in bailed him out. (The fate of the lobsters he illegally freed was never reported.)

Long live rock and roll? On an average February day in 1982, music icon Ozzy Osbourne urinated on the Alamo Cenotaph monument, located right across the street from the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas, Loudwire reports. The act got him arrested for public intoxication, and he spent the rest of the day in jail before being released after posting $40 bond, according to the outlet.

Osbourne’s decision to pee not only in public, but on the grounds of a historical landmark, deeply offended an entire state, and he was banned from performing in the city for a full decade, according to Texas Monthly. It is worth noting, however, that the hard-partying musician was not aware that he was, in a way, peeing on the Alamo, and has frequently expressed regret over the incident. Osbourne issued a formal apology for the public urination in 2015 — not for the first time, either — and donated $10,000 to the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, the organization charged with maintaining the Alamo.

Still, peeing on a statue has got to be small beans for someone who once bit a bat’s head off on stage.

Retired NBA legend Charles Barkley was arrested in 2008 for driving while under the influence, but it’s his statement to the arresting officer that made his arrest the subject of headline news nearly 10 years ago. After getting pulled over for speeding through a stop sign in the middle of the night, Barkley was surprisingly honest with police, telling the officer, “You want the truth? I was gonna drive around the corner and get a blow job,” according to an arrest report obtained by The Smoking Gun.

Barkley admitted to being in a hurry to pick up a prostitute who he’d been intimate with the week before, and his wild remarks didn’t end there. He later reportedly addressed a police employee, promising, “I’ll tattoo your name on my ass,” if they would help him avoid a DUI charge.

Barkley’s drunken behavior (and outrageous blood-alcohol level of .149) landed him five days in jail, and he was ordered to pay a $2,000 fine and enroll in an alcohol awareness program, according to ESPN.

Shopping while intoxicated proved to be a hugely bad idea for actor Shia LaBeouf in November 2007. The “Transformers” star may have intended to simply stop by a Walgreens in downtown Chicago for skin cream and cigarettes in the middle of the night, but the decision ultimately landed him in jail.

LaBeouf was taken into custody after a security guard, noticing that he was drunk, asked him to leave and he refused, People reports. It wasn’t quite that simple, however. The actor spilled the beans on what really happened prior to his arrest during a “Late Show” visit months later, according to Fox News. Apparently, LaBeouf made multiple trips to the same store because, in the drunken state he was in after having had too much “special magic sauce,” he kept forgetting to actually buy what he intended to get in the first place — cigarettes. He changed his outfit before going each time, presumably in the hopes that the security guard wouldn’t recognize him. The guard eventually felt like he’d had enough of LaBeouf’s antics and asked him to cut it out, at which point he had to call the police to get the actor to leave.

As LaBeouf admitted himself, the situation was “utter insanity.”

The uncomfortableness of Randy Travis’ DWI arrest may give Charles Barkley’s 2018 arrest a run for its money. The country music star was arrested in Texas on suspicion of driving while intoxicated in 2012, but a series of truly strange events preceded his arrest. Police found Travis lying nude in the street near his car, which he’d crashed and abandoned nearby, Fox News reports. He refused to take a breathalyzer test or get into the cop car, and threatened to shoot and kill the officers trying to arrest him, which landed him a felony retaliation and obstruction charge, according to the outlet.

Before the police found him, Travis had walked naked into a nearby convenience store and tried to buy a pack of cigarettes with no money, The Guardian reports. He later pleaded guilty to a DWI charge, and a judge sentenced him to probation and community service, in addition to making him pay a $2,000 fine and undergo treatment for his alcohol addiction.

Travis’ representation later pointed to mental health issues and “substances in his body” as the cause of his drunken mishap. Unfortunately for the musician (and the thousands of people who signed a petition supporting him), a judge denied his request to block the video footage from being released last year.

[Photo: Getty Images]