15 Celebrities Who Cheated And Revealed Their Reasons Why

Scandalous affairs are hard to hide, especially from the public eye. This doesn’t make infidelity any less common amongst celebrities. Here are 15 stars who opened up about their reasons for cheating on a partner.

1. Demi Moore cheated on Freddy Moore just hours before they got married. While most brides opt for beauty sleep the night before their big day, Moore snuck out to get busy. Demi was just 18 years old on the eve of her first wedding to musician Freddy Moore. Dealing with the death of her father, burgeoning fame, and an intense relationship, she saw cheating as an escape. In her 2019 memoir Inside Out, Moore wrote about her evening of infidelity.

“The night before we got married, instead of working on my vows, I was calling a guy I’d met on a movie set,” Moore revealed. “I snuck out of my own bachelorette party and went to his apartment.”

“Why did I do that? Why didn’t I go and see the man I was committing to spend the rest of my life with to express my doubts? Because I couldn’t face the fact that I was getting married to distract myself from grieving the death of my father,” she wrote. “Because I felt there was no room to question what I’d already put in motion. I couldn’t get out of the marriage, but I could sabotage it.”

2. David Boreanaz compared his desire to cheat to a “demon” possessing him. Boreanaz told E! News, “In a sacred ground like marriage, you find yourself out of it at certain times for reasons unknown that can be destructive. There could be a demon that kind of comes out and overtakes you.”

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Boreanaz got candid about his infidelity with his wife, Jaime Bergman, after one of his former flings extorted him and threatened to leak the details of their affair. Eventually, Boreanaz would claim that his affair strengthened his marriage, calling it “a bonding experience, in the long run.”

3. Jesse James cheated on Sandra Bullock as a method of self-sabotage. Just after winning her Academy Award for her performance in The Blind Side, Bullock filed for divorce. Her split from motorcyclist and Monster Garage star, Jesse James, was a product of his infidelity. James revealed in a Nightline interview with ABC News that his cheating was a result of the child abuse he faced. “Bike builder, Monster Garage TV star…all that stuff is a huge smokescreen so that people won’t see that I’m a scared, abused kid. A 7-year-old,” James admitted.

He later revealed to ABC News, “I think I do things to sabotage my life, including having extramarital affairs, texting, overworking myself, injuring myself, doing stunts and stupid things. I think I do a lot of things in my life that I shouldn’t be doing that aren’t conducive to being a perfect husband, you know, and the affairs are just one of them.”

4. Tristan Thompson claims he was unfaithful to Khloe Kardashian because he didn’t have a healthy example of love growing up. On an episode of The Kardashians, Thompson sat down with Kourtney Kardashian to explain his side of the story. He admitted to her, “I was just cheating for an action, just cheating for a feeling, but also it really came down to not knowing how to love, because that’s the way I grew up.” Seeking an emotional Band-Aid from an affair to heal the wounds of childhood trauma proves to be a common thread amongst cheaters.

5. Speaking of Kardashians, Kris Jenner cheated on Robert Kardashian to see if there were better options out there. In a heart-to-heart with Khloe Kardashian, Kris opened up about a mistake from her past. Jenner shared, “I thought that the grass was greener somewhere else, and I made a huge mistake. That’s my life’s biggest regret.” She also admitted that being young and not understanding the repercussions of her actions was a driving factor in her decision to cheat. Jenner isn’t the only one who thinks that her age influenced her infidelity.

6. Claire Danes had an affair with Billy Crudup because love blinded her perception of the consequences. In 2003, Crudup left his pregnant partner of eight years, Mary-Louise Parker, to be with Danes. Danes also ditched her partner of six years, Ben Lee, to pursue Crudup in an affair that would dominate press coverage. It was so scandalous that Crudup even wrote a letter to The New York Times, begging society to stop fixating on his relationship(s).

Looking back on her affair with Crudup, Danes can see things clearly now. In a 2015 interview on The Howard Stern Show, she remarked, “I was just in love with him, and needed to explore that, and I was 24…I didn’t quite know what those consequences would be.”

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7. In the long lineage of reality stars who’ve cheated, Tom Sandoval links his infidelity to Ariana Madix with his party lifestyle. Sandoval’s cheating scandal, A.K.A. “Scandoval,” has followed him across networks from Vanderpump Rules to America’s Got Talent to The Traitors. His reputation for a nine-year relationship with one Vanderpump costar (THE Ariana Madix), and a simultaneous affair with another (Rachel Leviss), is notoriously messy.

On his podcast, Everybody Loves Tom, he revealed what was going on in his personal life during the time of his affair. “I was on a path that was not great. I was drinking all day, every day. I was chain-smoking cigarettes, going out constantly…chasing the dragon, running away from everything and hiding, hiding, hiding,” he explained. He certainly isn’t the only celebrity who’s blamed his affair on a bad mental state…

8. Hugh Grant cheated on Elizabeth Hurley because he was dissatisfied with his performance in a movie. On a podcast episode of WTF with Marc Maron, Grant offered the inside scoop on his 1995 affair with sex worker, Divine Brown (Estella Marie Thompson).

Grant divulged, “I was about to launch my first Hollywood film.” He continued, “The film was about to come out a week or two after that, and I had a bad feeling about it. I went to see a screening. Everyone in it was brilliant, but I was so atrocious that I was not in a good frame of mind.”

Grant put his mind at ease by paying Brown $60 for oral sex in his car. He was arrested and fined $1,000 for “lewd conduct.” He was so worried about how he looked on film that he ended up posing for a mug shot.

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9. Mario Lopez cheated on Ali Landry at his bachelor party because he wasn’t in love with her. Reflecting on his act of infidelity, Lopez told Howard Stern, “I figured at that point, it was easier to ask for forgiveness. It’s my bachelor party, we were going to have a good time…I was wrong for obviously lying, and I shouldn’t have been in that position.”

In his 2014 memoir Just Between Us, Lopez revealed, “I got inebriated and a little too friendly with a young lady. When it was time to return home, lightning hit me with the truth: I wasn’t in love. But I walked down the aisle [anyway].”

10. Jay-Z was unfaithful to Beyoncé because he shut off his emotions. From Rita Ora to Rachel Roy, rumors about Jay-Z’s infidelity were a talking point of the 2010s. Sparking further speculation, Beyoncé’s sister, Solange Knowles, confronted Jay-Z in an elevator at the 2014 Met Gala. In 2015, public fights between Beyoncé and Jay-Z broke out as the couple attended dinners, but still, they hadn’t addressed his suspected affairs.

In her 2016 album Lemonade and his 2017 album 4:44, Bey and Jay-Z finally wrote about his infidelity in their music. Additionally, he opened up about cheating in an interview with the New York Times. Jay-Z admitted, “You have to survive. So you go into survival mode, and when you go into survival mode what happen? You shut down all emotions. So even with women, you gonna shut down emotionally, so you can’t connect.”

11. John Legend and Dax Shepard confessed to cheating in the past because they’re both addicted to attention. Before their respective marriages to Chrissy Teigen and Kristen Bell, Legend and Shepard admitted to cheating on previous partners. On an episode of Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard, Shepard disclosed, “I have a horrendous history of cheating, fucking deplorable. … Any attention from a girl, I had to have it at all costs.”

Legend went on to admit, “I escaped ‘technically cheating’ by keeping my relationship ill-defined…but it was really cheating. I definitely was dishonest and selfish and just enjoyed this new attention I was getting.”

12. LeAnn Rimes had an affair because she decided to put herself first. Rimes and Eddie Cibrian started seeing each other in 2009, while both were married to other people. The pair would eventually divorce their partners and marry each other.

In the aftermath of her affair with Cibrian, Rimes revealed, “I feel like I’m just now finding myself. I’ve always been one of those people who takes care of everyone else, and their needs, first. This past year, for the first time ever, I put me first.” She continued, “I’m sure some people are thinking that I was totally selfish, but the truth is, there are times in your life when you have to be selfish in order to find out what truly makes you happy.”

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13. Britney Spears cheated on Justin Timberlake after she found out that he was cheating on her. In her memoir, The Woman In Me, Spears admitted that there was infidelity in her relationship with Timberlake on both sides. She wrote, “There were a couple of times during our relationship when I knew Justin had cheated on me.”

“There were rumours about him with other dancers and groupies. I let it all go, but clearly, he’d slept around,” Spears elaborated. “It was one of those things where you know but you just don’t say anything […] So I did, too. Not a lot — one time, with Wade Robinson.”

14. Offset cheated on Cardi B because of bad communication. On a podcast episode of Way Up With Angela Yee, Offset explained his decision to cheat on his wife, Cardi B.

He stated, “I can’t personally speak on why men cheat, but like, when I did do that, I was in a different space […] I was young, I had just got married, I’m getting a lot of money. Really, it was communication. We got married, and then we ain’t really — our communication was good, but…I wasn’t saying my wants and needs, and vice versa.”

15. Dean McDermott cheated on his former wife, Tori Spelling, because of personal insecurities. On his podcast, Daddy Issues, McDermott offered a retrospective take on his cheating scandal with Spelling.

He admitted, “I’ve cheated and it’s so not about the person you’re with […] For me, it wasn’t about T, it was about inadequacies with myself. I felt so bad about myself, I felt like a piece of s**t, I needed to do that to feel some kind of power.”

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