On the Dec. 5 episode of the Inside of You podcast, Hewitt explained how she was sexualized as a young performer. It was a time when she was “insecure” and “didn’t feel self-confident” about herself. “I felt watched. I felt like I had to be everything for everybody all the time. I was called sexy before I ever knew what being sexy was,” she shared. “I was 17 years old on the cover of Maxim, and I had no idea why. I was honored. I loved it. But why?”

And it wasn’t just the Maxim cover, Hewitt also felt sexualized on the set of Heartbreakers, which she filmed in 2001 at the age of 23. “I remember doing ‘Heartbreakers’ at 23 and the director [David Mirkin] was like, ‘We just need you to be sexier.’ I had to pull him aside and be like, ‘I don’t know what that means. I’m only 23,’” Hewitt recalled. “I know that I’m supposed to be this thing for people, but I don’t know what that means. He had to help me figure that out.”

It was an awkward time for her because Hewitt was making that big transition from her teen years into young womanhood. What makes the sexualization even more uncomfortable in 2023 is that fans sometimes voice their wishes that Hewitt still looked like the younger version of herself. 

“It’s weird for me when people are like, ‘That’s the girl that we wanted you to be,’” Hewitt continued. “That girl was so insecure and so confused and trying her best. But this girl [now] — who may not look [that] way — I like who I am. I feel good. I’m fine.” The good news is that the 9-1-1 star now has the confidence to call herself sexy. 

“I mean, not every day, but you know, I have my moments,” Hewitt summed up. “There’s definitely times where I look in the mirror and I’m like, ‘Oh, dear god, what has happened?’ And there’s other times where I’m like, ‘She’s got it. She’s fine.’”

Before you go, click here to see celebrities who have spoken out about being sexualized too young.

Among the rude comments on Mahomes’ recent Instagram pic, for example, are people criticizing every part of the post, from where she is to her appearance. In the post, Mahomes shared a few pictures of her on the sidelines before a match. As for her look, she’s seen rocking a black leather mini-skirt, a black sweater, high matching boots, a cream-colored jacket and a bright red bag.

“Why do wives/gfs feel the need to be on the field before game?? They should ban it. No reason for it,” commented one user. “How old is she? Is she 45?” commented another.

Seeing all these negative comments pile up, the mom of two decided to speak out. “Recently there has been ALOT more rude a– people on here, waaaay more then[sic] normal,” Mahomes wrote on her Instagram Story, per People.

“I’m not sure where y’all came from, but you should probably go back to where you came from…please,” she wrote, pleading for everyone to mind their own business.

Knowing that Mahomes uses her social media to share her life as a wife and a mom to her kids, Bronze, 1, and Sterling, 2, we can’t imagine how stressful it is to see her social media become a place for such negativity.

In fact, before posting her game-day outfit, Mahomes posted hilarious pictures of her kids posing with Santa Claus ahead of the holidays. In the pictures, the family of four is sitting right next to a jolly Saint Nicholas. Unfortunately, however, while the adults all have the same big grins on their faces, Sterling and Bronze both have sad and confused expressions on their faces. Talk about a classic parenting moment!

Here’s hoping Mahomes’ trolls soon find someone else to criticize and her page goes back to celebrating her and her family’s accomplishments, milestones and occasional hilarious Christmas portrait!

Before you go, click here to see the longest celebrity marriages.

In the Wednesday, Dec. 20 episode of The Kelly Clarkson Show, the “Since U Been Gone” singer talked about getting back in the dating game with guest Shannen Doherty, who is also in the middle of a divorce from ex-husband Kurt Iswarienko. While the Beverly Hills 90210 star is ready to find love again, Clarkson revealed that she’s hesitant to make that big leap right now. “I am still in the stage of like really enjoying me, so I am not there,” she said. 

The women bonded over the sweet love their dogs gave them while dealing with the grief over the end of their marriages. Clarkson joked about preferring her furry friend over a boyfriend right now. “I like dog love for the moment,” she said. But she switched to a more serious tone and gave insight into what she’s thinking right now when it comes to the status of her dating life. 

“I think, too, there’s a lot to learn about yourself in a relationship and how you are in a relationship. I think I need a little more work on that end of it. … I think I need a little bit more work on me in a relationship and how to make sure I take care of myself at the same time as somebody else,” Clarkson noted about loving herself first before she brings a partner into her world again. But it sounds like the mom of two is on a healthy path to rediscovering herself.

“It’s not so much that I’m like, ‘Ugh, men,’ it’s just like, maybe a little work on me. And also, I love me, and I love spending time with me! It’s really great. It feels powerful,” Clarkson said triumphantly. And we love that for her! 

Clarkson has been an open book about her 2022 divorce from Blackstock that resulted in a brutal financial fight. He contested their prenuptial agreement and wound up with a one-time payment of $1.3 million, plus $45,600 per month in child support for their kids, River Rose, 9, and Remington Alexander, 7. His $115,000 per month spousal support payments will cease in January 2024.

Before you go, click here to learn more about celebrities who’ve opened up about dating after divorce.

“The Prince of Wales is known to me as ‘One Pint Willy’ because he’s not the best of drinkers,” the former rugby player revealed of the future king during BBC’s The Total Sports Podcast, per Us Weekly.

“[I am] coming from a sport where it is built on the social aspect and a couple of beers being sunk quite often,” he explained. “That is one I will definitely give away for the Prince of Wales. ‘One Pint Willy.’ It’s out there now. Sorry, sir!” How hilarious!

Zara, who was also in attendance, then joked her husband would be “in so much trouble” for revealing the cheeky nickname. “A lot of those nicknames kind of fly around,” she said.

Luckily for royal fans, this isn’t the first time Mike has dished on the royals and their hilarious stories about drinking. During an appearance in his The Good, The Bad & The Rugby podcast in September, for example, Tindall poked fun at special guest Kate Middleton‘s competitive side.

“I’ve seen her play beer pong,” he joked. Middleton, for her part, seemingly denied the rumors. “I’m really not that competitive,” she said jokingly. “I don’t know where this has come from.”

Soon after, however, Middleton admitted to having a competitive side, beer pong and beyond. “I don’t think we’ve actually managed to finish a game [of] tennis, the two of us,” the Duchess admitted, looking at her husband. “It becomes a mental challenge between the two of us.”

William then agreed, saying their games together end up being about “who can out-mental each other.”

And while these two might still have to work through their feelings when it comes to playing games with one another, we’re just loving Mike for spilling their secrets. Let’s keep them coming!

Before you go, click here to see the best photos of Prince Harry and Prince William growing up together over the years. 

Her upcoming album is the 20-year follow-up to her This Is Me… Then hit record, so like her romance, her music career is also split in two parts. Lopez revealed to Variety that she and Affleck are somewhat hesitant to put their lives on display in such a vulnerable way again because they “both have PTSD” from the media circus over 20 years ago. However, she believes that they have a more mature grasp of what is real in their private lives versus the public narrative. 

“But we’re older now. We’re wiser. We also know what’s important, what’s really important in life, and it’s not so much what other people think,” she explained. “It’s about being true to who you are.” When the dynamic duo got engaged the first time around, the details about the big moment was spilled to Diana Sawyer in November 2002.

“It’s just a blanket, a quilt of rose petals, all over the whole entire house,” Lopez shared to Sawyer. “So many candles, and vases, bouquets. And my song “Glad” was playing … I walk in and I was just overwhelmed. I wasn’t expecting it, and I was just like ‘Oh, my God.'” Lopez was crying “incredible purging tears of happiness,” but their love story wouldn’t go the distance the first time around.

After the 2004 split, which was rumored to be caused by Affleck’s wandering eye, Lopez went on to marry Marc Anthony and have twins, Max and Emme. Affleck started a family with Jennifer Garner, sharing three kids, Violet, Seraphina, and Samuel. By 2021, they somehow found their way back to each other after their respective divorces and breaking up with subsequent significant others. 

The engagement in 2022 was a much more subdued affair and only a few details were revealed in Lopez’s On the J.Lo newsletter. “Saturday night while at my favorite place on earth (in the bubble bath), my beautiful love got on one knee and proposed,” she wrote. “I was taken totally off guard and just looked in his eyes smiling and crying at the same time.” The lessons were learned from the painful past as the couple started a fresh page and put Bennifer 1.0 officially behind them.

Before you go, click here to see a complete timeline of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez’s relationship.

And while we can barely contain our enthusiasm with what we already know about these two, the Promising Young Woman star recently revealed even more gushing details about their story together. “We were friends when we were kids. We went to camp together,” Mulligan detailed in a recent episode of the Smartless podcast with hosts Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett, per Page Six.

“I wrote in my diary that he was the nicest, the kindest person I’d ever met and I gave him 9 1/2 out of 10,” the Maestro star remembered.

And while her first impression of the Mumford & Sons vocalist was great, she wasn’t convinced about any of it turning romantic just yet. “I also wrote in my diary that he definitely wasn’t boyfriend material,” she added. “Not that I’d ever had a boyfriend at that time. But I decided that he was not it.”

“We were pen pals for a couple of years, then we lost touch [and] then the internet happened,” Mulligan explained.

When Mulligan was 24, and Mumford was 22, the two reconnected and began their relationship. Now, the two, who tied the knot in 2012, share three kids: daughter Evelyn Grace, 7, son Wilfred, 5, and their newborn daughter, who was born in October of this year.

Whether you knew their story before or not, we’re thinking we can all agree it’s one of the best love stories in the business!

Before you go, click here to see all the celebrity couples with the best stories behind how they met.

To understand the drama that has the internet buzzing, let’s backtrack a little. Baumbach and Gerwig first met on the set of 2010’s Greenberg, per People. The movie, which Baumbach directed, was co-written by Baumbach and his first wife, actress Jennifer Jason Leigh, and starred both Leigh and Gerwig.

And while we may never know what happened in the behind-the-scenes of the movie, Leigh and Baumbach, who had been married since 2005, split when Leigh filed for divorce in 2010 shortly after the movie wrapped, per Distractify.

In the filing, Leigh claimed their split was due to “irreconcilable differences.” At the time, the couple also shared a 7-month-old son, Rohmer, who Leigh requested physical custody of, E! News reports.

According to Us Weekly, Baumbach and Gerwig remained in contact after the divorce and began officially dating sometime in 2011. In 2012, the two co-wrote their first film together, Frances Ha, which Gerwig starred and Baumbach directed.

“What I didn’t know is that Greta was this incredible writer, I mean, I had a feeling she’d be a great collaborator, but that writing really was kind of her thing when she was in college, and so I really lucked out,” Baumbach told Variety at the time. “It was amazing.”

In 2013, Baumbach’s divorce from Leigh was finalized.

And while Baumbach’s dating history might be a simple story of two separate relationships with no overlap, things get even more interesting when considering his work.

In 2019, also the year he welcomed his first child with Gerwig, Baumbach wrote and directed the movie The Marriage Story, starring Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver. The movie tells the story of a breakdown of a family between artistic couple Charlie and Nicole and their 8-year-old son, Henry. Sound familiar? In the story, in addition to their fading connection, Charlie also cheats on Nicole with a member of the theater company.

“It’s a work of fiction, but it is extremely personal at the same time,” Baumbach told the New York Times ahead of the release. He then revealed he showed his ex-wife Leigh a final cut of the movie to let her know what was coming. “I didn’t have any concerns about it, and she really liked it, because it isn’t about our marriage,” Baumbach once again assured. “That’s not to say that there aren’t emotional connections, things that happened to me emotionally that are going to be translated in some way into this story, but I think that’s true for every writer who’s gone through breakups or been in love.”

So there you have it, a full timeline of the Baumbach, Gerwig and Leigh drama. And whether you leave this wishing the newlyweds the best, or wondering what really happened on the set of Greenberg, know that they all seem to have buried the hatchet and become healthy co-parents now. Talk about a modern family!

Before you go, click here to see all the celebrity couples who have stayed together after cheating scandals. 

Well, Variety got the answer as to why the 45-year-old star declined reuniting with Lindsay Lohan, Amanda Seyfried, and Lacey Chabert. “I don’t know; I guess I wasn’t that excited about doing a commercial if I’m being totally honest. A movie sounded awesome, but I’ve never done commercials, and it just didn’t feel like my bag,” McAdams revealed while referring to the rumor that she and Tina Fey tried to find her a Regina George cameo in the upcoming film. (Spoiler alert: It didn’t happen.)

What’s surprising is that there wasn’t a group chat among the original cast members about doing the Walmart commercial together— and McAdams sounds regretful about missing out on the experience. She admitted, “I didn’t know that everyone was doing it. I would, of course, always love to be part of a Mean Girls reunion and hang with my plastics, but yeah, I found that out later.”

The character of Regina came into her life when she was looking for “larger-than-life characters” to play in her career. McAdams told Refinery29 in 2018 that it was the queen bee’s “take no prisoners” attitude that drew her to the role. “I have to thank Regina George for giving me some longevity,” she recalled. “I’m forever grateful to Tina Fey and Mark Waters [the director]. I remember when I read it, I called my agent right away and said, ‘I will play any part in this, please, please, please.'”

With such an appreciation for the film and how it shaped her early career, McAdams might have missed a wonderful pop-culture moment to revisit North Shore High School’s most popular girl in The Plastics. It’s a choice that McAdams sounds like she wish she could go back and change.

Before you go, click here to see our favorite movies and TV shows about imperfect, complicated women.

According to an Us Weekly source, “Joe and Caitlin are both so easygoing that they work really well together.” Their low-key approach to life seems to be one of the things they have in common, and another pal added that O’Connor is not “high-maintenance” nor is she a “big drinker or a party girl.” Manganiello, who has been sober for 21 years, might appreciate that the model isn’t into the Hollywood nightlife. 

In Manganiello’s divorce from Vergara, there were conflicting reports coming from the Daily Mail that “the fact that Sofia is not sober had an impact on their marriage.” The former couple reportedly didn’t see eye to eye on their opinions about alcohol and it possibly led to their estrangement. However, a Vergara friend  defended the Modern Family star, noting that she “could not have been more supportive” toward her then-husband’s sobriety. 

Manganiello and Vergara have yet to disclose what led to their breakup; their joint statement was understandably vague given the sensitive time they were going through. “We have made the difficult decision to divorce,” the July statement read. “As two people that love and care for one another very much, we politely ask for respect of our privacy at this time as we navigate this new phase of our lives.”

The True Blood star first opened up about his battle with alcohol in 2013, revealing to HuffPost Live, “There was a period of about four years where I needed to quit drinking. And the drinking always got in the way [of my career].” Noting that he had to work hard on himself to get his life on track, Manganiello believes that it was one of the best things he ever did for himself. “My life was ruined…I was homeless, careless and broke with no career, so yes, it was worth it [to get sober],” he shared. 

With a fresh start ahead for 2024, and a new girlfriend who seems to share a similar view on life, Manganiello and O’Connor might take their under-the-radar romance to new heights.

Before you go, click here to see celebrities who have struggled with drug or alcohol addiction.

The year also saw new couples ending it unexpectedly early too. Pete Davidson and Emily Ratajkowski, for example, made headlines before splitting after being briefly spotted together. And Chelsea Handler & Jo Koy seemed to be all over each other before announcing their breakup right on their first anniversary. Call it a cursed year or just par for the course, 2022 was definitely a dark cloud over many of our favorite celebrity couples.

So as we prepare for the new year ahead, let’s hope the best for the couples we’ve shipped for years (Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds and Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard, we’re looking at you!) We hope 2023 is full of love and cupid throwing his arrow, for celebrities and everyone else!

In the meantime, check out our round-up of the biggest splits and breakups of 2023 so far. Hopefully your faves won’t make the cut!

A version of this article was originally published on Jan 2023.