6 CELEBRITIES YOU NEVER GUESSED WERE ALSO AUTHORS (continued)

PARIS HILTON

Paris Whitney Hilton (born February 17, 1981) is an American heiress, socialite, television personality, businesswoman, fashion designer, model, actress, producer, DJ, singer and of course, author. She is the great-granddaughter of Conrad Hilton, the founder of Hilton Hotels. We know her for her roles in The Simple Life (2003), House of Wax and television series like Paris Hilton's My New BFF, Paris Hilton's Dubai BFF, and The World According to Paris. We do know her in addition, for her hard-partying lifestyle and rumored short-lived relationships with Leonardo DiCaprio and Oscar de la Hoya. She has also released music albums and videos featuring stars like Lil Wayne, Birdman, Christina Milian and Nicki Minaj.

Paris has parlayed her media fame into a fashion line and various perfumes with her celebrity endorsement—her fragrances have reportedly earned $1.5 billion. Currently, there are 44 Paris Hilton Stores worldwide and her brand includes perfumes, handbags, watches, footwear, among other products.

In 2004, Paris released her autobiography Confessions of an Heiress: A Tongue-in-Chic Peek Behind the Pose and in 2005, Your Heiress Diary: Confess It All to Me.

EMINEM

Born Marshall Bruce Mathers III on October 17, 1972, he is ranked 82nd on Rolling Stone’s list of The 100 Greatest Artists of All Time; as a solo artist, he has sold more than 100 million albums worldwide – in the United States, he has sold 49.1 million albums and 42 million tracks. Between stage name Eminem and alter ego Slim Shady, we have one of the world’s best-selling music artists and the best-selling artists of the 2000s, in short, the King of Hip Hop.

Raised by his single, sometimes unstable mother in black downtown Detroit, Eminem rose to mainstream popularity in 1999 with the release of his major-label debut album The Slim Shady LP. The LP also earned Eminem his first Grammy Award for Best Rap Album. His next two records The Marshall Mathers LP, and The Eminem Show, also won Best Rap Album Grammy Awards, making Eminem the first artist to win Best Rap Album for three consecutive LPs. In 2009, Eminem made a comeback with the album Relapse after a five year hiatus. He followed that up in 2010 with Recovery which was an international success and was named the best-selling album of 2010 worldwide, joining The Eminem Show, which was the best seller of 2002. Eminem won Grammy Awards for both Relapse and Recovery, giving him a total of 13 Grammys in his career!

On October 21, 2008, Eminem released a tell-all autobiography entitled The Way I Am, which details his struggles with poverty, drugs, fame, heartbreak and depression, along with stories about his rise to fame and commentary on past controversies. This book also contains some of the original lyric sheets from songs such as "Stan" and "The Real Slim Shady.”

Eminem's mother, Debbie Nelson, also released an autobiography entitled My Son Marshall, My Son Eminem, which explains Nelson's life growing up, meeting Marshall Bruce Mathers, Jr. (Eminem's father) and Eminem's rise to, and struggle with, fame, but that one’s a story for another day.

6 Celebrities You Never Guessed Were Authors!

Agreed, it is great writing a book. It’s fun, it brings you in contact with some nice people, it makes you do research and it opens your eyes to a lot of things. What’s more, it can bring you money and fame!

So it shouldn’t surprise us so much when someone is inspired to write and publish a book, even they’re Eminem. But guess what? It does surprise us.

As human nature would have it, we could love and idolize you as a musician, but we start to get uncomfortable when you reveal you would like to seek out your other gifts and talents, say in acting (yes, take note, Rihanna). However, it doesn’t always turn out a disaster.

Anyway, here are six good people you probably knew and got used to as singers, actresses, TV figures and comedians, and you might want to take a look at their books when you get over your surprise.

1. HILARY DUFF

Face of teen idol, Lizzy McGuire, Hilary Erhard Duff was born on September 28, 1987 (age 25) in Houston, Texas, U.S. She is an actress, singer-songwriter, entrepreneur, model, producer and recently, author. Following her rise to prominence in the title role of Disney Channel's teen comedy Lizzie McGuire, she achieved major commercial successes starring in The Lizzie McGuire Movie,  Agent Cody Banks, Cheaper by the Dozen, A Cinderella Story and television dramas, such as Gossip Girl, Two and a Half Men and Ghost Whisperer, in addition to sharing production credits.

After signing with Hollywood Records, Duff expanded her repertoire to include pop music and has released several albums including debut studio album Metamorphosis which was RIAA-certified triple platinum, Hilary Duff and compilation album Most Wanted, certified platinum. The 2007 album Dignity, which displayed a shift to more of a dance-oriented sound was certified gold, and spawned her highest charting US single to date "With Love" which also peaked at number 1 on Billboard's Hot Dance Club Songs chart.
 
In 2010, Hilary published Elixir co-written with Elise Allen under Simon & Schuster, Inc. which was to be the first novel in a trilogy. Warmly received by critics and becoming a New York Times bestseller, Elixir was followed in 2011 by sequel Devoted and finally, True in 2013. Hilary also planned to release a non-fiction book in 2012 based on children coping with divorce.  As of now, she has no ongoing plans for another book.

2. TUPAC SHAKUR

Tupac Amaru Shakur (June 16, 1971 – September 13, 1996), also known by his stage names 2Pac and briefly as Makaveli, was an American rap and hip-hop icon and actor. Shakur has sold over 75 million albums worldwide as of 2010, making him one of the best-selling music artists in the world. MTV ranked him at number two on their list of The Greatest MCs of All Time and Rolling Stone named him the 86th Greatest Artist of All Time. His double disc album All Eyez on Me is one of the best-selling hip hop albums of all time.
 
The themes of most of Tupac's songs revolved around the violence and hardship in inner cities, racism and other social problems. During the latter part of his career, Tupac was a vocal participant in the so-called East Coast–West Coast hip hop rivalry, becoming involved in conflicts with other rappers, producers and record-label staff members, most notably The Notorious B.I.G. and his label Bad Boy Records.
 
On September 7, 1996, Shakur was shot multiple times in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada which led to his death six days later.
 
The Rose That Grew from Concrete by Tupac Shakur is a collection of more than 100 poems that honestly and artfully confront topics ranging from poverty and motherhood to Van Gogh and Mandela presented in Tupac’s own handwriting on one side of the page, with a typed version on the opposite side. A Hardcover book of 176 pages, it was published November 1st 1999 by MTV Books.

3. JULIANA HATFIELD

Yep, the star of Blake Babies and Some Girls is now an author too. By the early nineties, singer-songwriter/guitarist and former Blake Babies member Juliana Hatfield’s solo career was taking off: She was on the cover of Spin and Sassy. Ben Stiller directed the video for her song "Spin the Bottle" from the Reality Bites film soundtrack.
 
The daughter of Philip M. Hatfield (a radiologist) and The Boston Globe fashion critic Julie Hatfield, Juliana was born in Maine and grew up in the Boston suburb of Duxbury. 

Visualizing herself as a singer since her high school years, she sang in school choirs and briefly played in a cover band called The Squids.

When I Grow up: A Memoir by Juliana Hatfield, hardcover of 336 pages was published September 1st 2008 by Wiley Publishing. When I Grow Up takes you behind the scenes of rock life as Juliana recounts her best and worst days, the origins of her songs, the source of her woes, and her quest to find a new purpose in life.

4. STEVE MARTIN

In the morning of August 14, 1945, in Waco, Texas, a certain Stephen Glenn "Steve" Martin was born standing up. Or so he claims in his autobiography, Born Standing Up. An American actor, comedian, musician, author, playwright and producer, Steve came to public notice as a writer for the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, and later became a frequent guest on The Tonight Show. In the 1970s, Martin performed his offbeat, absurdist comedy routines before packed houses on national tours. In 2004, Comedy Central ranked Steve at sixth place in a list of the 100 greatest stand-up comics. Since the 1980s, having branched away from stand-up comedy, he has become a successful actor, as well as an author, playwright, pianist and banjo player, eventually earning Emmy, Grammy and American Comedy awards, among other honours.

In 1993, Steve wrote his first full length play Picasso at the Lapin Agile, and proceeded to write various pieces for The New Yorker. He has also written the novellas, Shopgirl –the story of a 28-year-old woman behind the glove counter at the Neiman Marcus department store in Beverly Hills, Shopgirl was made into a film starring Martin and Claire Danes – and The Pleasure of My Company. In 2007, he published a memoir, Born Standing Up, which Time magazine named as one of the Top 10 Nonfiction Books of 2007, ranking it at No. 6, and praising it as "a funny, moving, surprisingly frank memoir." In 2010, he published the novel An Object of Beauty.

Steve has also written The Underpants: A Play (2002), The Ten, Make That Nine, Habits of Very Organized People. Make That Ten.: The Tweets of Steve Martin (February 21, 2012) (Collection) and children’s’ books Late For School (2010) and The Alphabet from A to Y with Bonus Letter Z (2007).

                                                            To be continued...