As two superstar musical talents transforming pop music, Michael Jackson and Prince could have been allies. Instead, they became rivals. In , Prince's then-most commercially successful album , , was dwarfed by Jackson's Thriller less than a month later.
In , Jackson accidentally set Prince up for humiliation at a James Brown concert: Prince fell off the stage, then tried to run Jackson over with his limo afterwards, according to Quincy Jones. Jackson reportedly enjoyed re-watching the video of the infamous performance when he needed a laugh. Prince got his onstage revenge in , playing a bass solo into Jackson's face at a Vegas show, prompting his rival to call him "a meanie. The album and movie Purple Rain gave Prince's ego a boost in , and when Jackson asked him to collaborate on charity single "We Are the World" in , Prince declined.
He also turned down Jackson's offer to feature on the song "Bad" two years later. They were even competitive outside music: Prince challenged Jackson to play ping-pong and basketball, mocking him mercilessly when he lost. Prince's attitude softened after Jackson's death in He told French newspaper Le Monde , "We are always sad to lose someone we love.
Prince rarely granted interviews — and when he did, he refused to let the interviewer record the conversation or take notes. This wasn't just an A-list ego trip: he was difficult even when he was relatively unknown, as Dick Clark found out when he interviewed Prince live on American Bandstand around According to Dez Dickerson, guitarist for The Revolution, Prince had a mood swing in the greenroom, and told the band not to answer any of Clark's questions. Dickerson described the incident to GQ as "totally calculated" and "excruciatingly uncomfortable.
He said he felt Clark had insulted his hometown, adding, "That really gave me an attitude. The interview stuck with Clark, who 15 years later described it as, "one of the most difficult interviews I've ever conducted, and I've done 10, musician interviews. He told a Star Tribune reporter, "He's an extraordinary performer Though once you're off-camera, he's like everybody else — very normal. Wayne Coyne and the band were, as he put it to City Pages, "hanging around" when Prince and his two security guards arrived and went to his dressing room.
Coyne said the band worked up the courage to give Prince's bodyguard a stack of CDs to pass on to him, adding, "We were so thrilled at the possibility of him hearing our music. Unfortunately, Prince was less enthusiastic.
A short time later, the bodyguard tracked the band down and handed back the CDs, saying, "Prince doesn't want these. Prince officially debuted his anti-Kardashian stance in He invited Kim onstage during his Welcome 2 Tour — then immediately kicked her off when she refused to dance.
A few years later, he doubled down on the hostile sentiment when he took over an episode of New Girl. Shortly after Prince's death, New Girl star Zooey Deschanel told Conan O'Brien about shooting Prince's guest episode, which aired in and was, of course, his idea, as a fan of the show. It involved the gang going to a Prince party, where Jess Deschanel gets some love advice, pancakes, and a makeover from the singer.
No Prince party is complete without celebrities, and some members of the Kardashian family shot cameos for the episode. However, Prince put the record scratch on that. Deschanel remembered that after finding out about the Kardashians' involvement, he had all the scripts and call sheets burned. Vanity Fair reported that in a separate interview, her co-star Lamorne Morris didn't mention the Kardashians by name, but confirmed that upon watching footage of a certain famous family, Prince said, "They would never be invited to a Prince party.
The crazy real-life story of Rick James includes a lot of hate aimed in Prince's direction. Both musicians released their first albums in , but their rivalry really started two years later when James invited Prince to open for him on his Fire It Up Tour.
It was dubbed the Battle of Funk and it turned into war. James's saxophonist Daniel Lemelle said the two would watch each other's performances from the wings. James accused Prince of stealing his moves, his look, and his idea for a girl group. He claimed the musicians in Prince's band were snobs and that he once forced cognac down Prince's throat, making him cry.
In his autobiography via Rolling Stone , James wrote that he started working for Eddie Murphy because he wanted to give the comedian a hit song "and stick it in Prince's ear. Prince definitively won the Battle of Funk, and not only with his music career. The night of that fight in '82 he met James's ex, Denise Matthews, who became Prince's girlfriend and protege under the stage name Vanity. Prince hated other artists covering his songs, let alone being more successful with them, and O'Connor recalled a very tense meeting with him.
Since , O'Connor has told three separate interviewers that after her cover came out, Prince invited her to his house in Malibu and turned violent when she refused to become one of his proteges. She accused him of trying to punch her, and said she had to run away from him at 5 am, knocking on the door of a neighboring house.
In one of those interviews — with the Carver County Sheriff's Office after Prince's death — O'Connor also claimed Prince beat up The Revolution guitarist Wendy Melvoin and worshiped the devil, all under the influence of hard drugs. It wasn't the first time Prince had been accused of assaulting a woman. In , his ex-girlfriend Charlene Friend countersued him after they got into a property dispute, claiming physical and mental abuse — allegations Prince's spokesperson denied.
The lawsuit never came to anything, but it's one of the many secrets Prince tried to hide. If there's one person more frank in his musical assessments than Prince, it's Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards.
When he played the L. Coliseum in his trademark bikini bottoms, the fans threw drink cans at him and his band, booing them offstage. Watts maintained his admiration for Prince, but Richards grew even more hostile. In he told the LA Times , "I think he's very clever at manipulating the music business and the entertainment business I don't see much substance in anything he does.
He called Prince overrated, mocked his height, and claimed he insulted the Stones fans with his presumptiveness. He wrote, "Prince has to find out what it means to be a prince He's a prince who thinks he's a king. Only after Prince's death did Richards appear to mellow. He called Prince , "A unique talent. A true original Learning that Prince was offered the part of flamboyant talk show host Ruby Rhod in The Fifth Element makes perfect sense.
The character and the musician are both supremely confident, fashion-forward even for the future, and their respective cheek microphone games put Lady Gaga to shame.
She was also in the film of the same name. By the time the series concluded, in , Britton had received two Emmy nominations for her role. But the eventual Oscar nominee—who got his big break with the comedy The Year-Old Virgin —didn't book his life-changing sitcom role until he turned And for more Hollywood insight, sign up for our daily newsletter. Stage and screen star Norm Lewis is another actor who had been treading the boards for years before nabbing TV and film roles that made him known to a wider audience.
Few public figures are more prolific than Martha Stewart. But all this didn't come until she passed Her big break, the book Entertaining , didn't hit shelves until she turned 41!
It's not that Vera Wang had to wait for success—she was hired as an editor at Vogue right out of college—but she didn't become a famous designer until years later, when she began pursuing that career full-time. She launched her bridal collection when she was 40 and almost immediately became the go-to for celebs tying the knot. Christoph Waltz had been consistently booking roles in German films and TV shows since the '80s. But her big break came in , when she won an Oscar for her role in The Help , at the age of Oh, and Spencer is also a children's book author.
Just as the U. The now iconic workplace show premiered when he was Gervais went on to create and star in Extras , Derek, and After Life , among other series. Kathy Bates was a major theater actor in the '70s and '80s, and even picked up a Tony nomination along the way in But her big Hollywood break didn't come until she was 42, though, when she played a terrifying kidnapper in the Stephen King adaptation Misery.
Comic book legend Stan Lee passed away in at the age of 95, known to the whole world for basically being the imagination behind Marvel as we know it. But though he'd penned many comics before that, Lee and co- Jack Kirby didn't create the hugely popular Fantastic Four until Lee was More and more iconic heroes and villains would follow, and in , the Marvel Cinematic Universe would launch with the premiere of Iron Man, making the characters even more famous than they were on the page.
But he became a household name when he booked the role of Phil Dunphy on Modern Family , at the age of The series ran for 11 years. For more celebrity trivia sent right to your inbox, sign up for our daily newsletter.
Yes, it feels like Betty White started to bless the world with her comedic chops since before any of us can remember. But the queen of TV didn't get started until she was in her 40s. But while theater fans were familiar with his work, he wouldn't become a household name until he joined the cast of the Cheers spinoff Frasier in , taking on the role of Frasier's dad, Martin Crane, when he was 53 years old. Jane Lynch was 43 when she landed her first big gig in Christopher Guest 's mockumentary Best in Show, and later gained even more fame after a side-splitting role in The Year-Old Virgin at the age of Regis Philbin 's career didn't exactly hit the ground running.
It wasn't until , when he was 57 years old, that Live! With Regis and Kathie Lee premiered and made him a household name. But in , when she was 55, she joined The View , which she's co-hosted on-and-off ever since. Sir Patrick Stewart kicked off his career on the British stage circuit. Dame Judi Dench also became famous on the stage in England earlier in her career. But she didn't cross the pond and become a Hollywood name until she played M in the James Bond film GoldenEye at age Three years later, she scored an Oscar for Shakespeare in Love.
Though Tommy Lee Jones picked up minor roles throughout the '70s and '80s, it was his turn in 's The Fugitive— for which he received an Oscar nomination—that really ushered him into stardom. He was 47 at the time. After minor appearances on the big and small screens in the early s—on The Parkers and in The Fighting Temptations — NeNe Leakes gained national fame at 41, thanks to the reality series The Real Housewives of Atlanta. She continues to be an all-time Housewives fan-favorite.
But even that breakout role didn't come about until he was In , she was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame.
In the '50s, the late Rodney Dangerfield worked as an aluminum siding salesman. Then, in , he gave stand-up a shot. After booking a slot on an episode of The Ed Sullivan Show , he became a sensation at the age of 46; over the following four years, he made more than a dozen appearances on the program, and then went on to film. Her biggest role, however—as Samantha Jones, on Sex in the City —didn't come about until , when she was 42 years old.
He was 41 at the time. I Love Lucy , the show that cemented Lucille Ball as comedy royalty, didn't start airing until Ball turned Of course, it kicked off an impressive screen career—including the shows Here's Lucy , Life with Lucy , and The Lucy Show —that spanned four decades.
It didn't hit theaters until he was Prior to booking the role of Dr. Rumack, Nielsen was mostly known as a serious, dramatic actor. After decades of success on the stages of London's West End, Helen Mirren finally made it across the pond to star on Broadway in , at the ripe age of Eventually, she crossed over to the big screen with roles in 's Gosford Park and 's Calendar Girls , both of which came about when she was in her late 50s.
Ang Lee has been directing films since the early '90s, but his breakout hit— Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon —didn't hit the silver screen until he was in his 40s.
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