By the time he’d uncovered the secret, both Ethel and June had died.
One of June’s ex-boyfriends, Don Furcillo-Rose, later claimed to be the father, but Jack decided not to have paternity testing.
IT’S ALL RELATIVE From Hollywood star’s ‘gangland mum’ to A-lister who had surgery as a BABY to hide real dad… shock celeb family secrets
UNCOVERING a dark family secret sounds like the perfect plot for a Hollywood film – but sometimes life is stranger than fiction.
Life on Mars actor John Simm has discovered his dad was not his real father on a trip into the past for ITV show DNA Journey.
John grew up believing his father was Ronald Simm, who died in 2015, aged 78, but DNA results revealed this wasn’t the case.
He said: “It spun my world, and everything I thought I knew wasn’t real.”
And his mum Brenda was “floored” by the news too.
John said of her and Ronald: “They were together and then they split up and they were both with other people and then they got back together and had me.”
But what’s even stranger is John used to sing and play guitar with Ronald in Lancashire working men’s clubs – and it turned out his real father often drank in the same places.
He added: “The thing that blows my mind, he might have been in the same pub one night and watched me play.
“It’s one of those mad, Back To The Future, Life On Mars things.”
But John isn’t the only celeb to have found a shocking family secret in later life, as we reveal.
Sister showed up on doorstep
Rihanna grew up in Barbados with her parents Ronald and Monica Fenty, and two brothers Rorrey and Rajad.
But when she was 15, she discovered she had three older half-siblings from her father’s previous relationships when one of her sisters, Kandy, showed up on her doorstep out of the blue.
Speaking to The Sun about the moment, Kandy said: “I asked, ‘Are you Mr Fenty?’ When he said yes, I said, ‘Hi I’m Kandy and I’m your daughter’.”
Ronald added: “I guess you could say I was shocked. But I was a bit on the wild side and something of a ladies’ man back in my early days.
“Once Kandy told me who her mother was and explained what had happened, I said, ‘Well, OK, welcome to my family’.”
Rihanna now hangs out regularly with all of her siblings.
Gangster parents
Jackie Chan was abandoned by his parents when they fled mainland China for Hong Kong after the Communists seized control in 1949 – and he never knew much about his family.
It wasn’t until 2003, when researching them for a documentary, Traces of a Dragon: Jackie Chan and His Lost Family, that he discovered the shocking truth.
In reality, Jackie’s mother was a prolific gambler of Shanghai’s criminal underworld, while his dad was a Nationalist spy and gangland leader, and they met when his father arrested his mother for smuggling opium.
He also discovered he had two brothers who were still alive, living in poverty in China.
The film’s director Mabel Cheung told the Guardian: “The fact that his mother was an opium smuggler, a gambler and a big sister in the underworld was a big shock to Jackie and also to us.
“Everybody in Hong Kong knew that his mother was like a common housewife, very kind, very gentle.”
Saw dad in concert
Liv Tyler’s mother Bebe Buell led her to believe her partner Todd Rundgren was her biological father.
Even after Bebe and Todd had split, he continued to pay for Liv’s education.
It wasn’t until Liv was 10 years old, when she went to see Aerosmith in concert with her mum, that she discovered the lead singer Steven Tyler was her real dad.
Liv figured it out when she saw Steven’s younger daughter, Mia, standing at the side of the stage and noticed their uncanny resemblance.
Bebe claimed the reason she never told Liv who her real father was was that Steven was too heavily addicted to drugs when she was born.
Liv is very close now to both Steven and Todd.
Describing Todd in 2012, she said: “I’m so grateful to him, I have so much love for him. You know, when he holds me it feels like Daddy. And he’s very protective and strong.”
Brothers or best friends?
Last year, True Detective co-stars and close friends Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson confessed they’re considering taking a DNA test to see if they’re half-brothers.
It came after discovering Matthew’s mum knew Woody’s father, possibly intimately.
Speaking on Kelly Ripa’s Let’s Talk Off Camera podcast, Matthew said: “You know, where I start and where he ends, and where he starts and I end, has always been like a murky line.
“And that’s part of our bromance, right? My kids call him Uncle Woody. His kids call me Uncle Matthew. And you see pictures of us and my family thinks a lot of pictures of him are me. His family thinks a lot of pictures of me are him.
“In Greece a few years ago, we’re sitting around talking about how close we are and our families. And my mum is there, and she says, ‘Woody, I knew your dad.’
“Everyone was aware of the ellipses that my mom left after ‘knew.’ It was a loaded K-N-E-W.”
Woody’s dad, Charles, was a contract killer who was in and out of prison for murder from 1973, and once claimed to have ᴀssᴀssinated John F Kennedy.
In 1981 he was given two life sentences for the ᴀssᴀssination of a district judge, and he died in prison in 2007.
And, for this reason, Matthew admitted he’s the side of the party holding up the DNA test.
“Look, it’s a little easier for Woody to say, ‘Come on, let’s do it,’ because what’s the skin in it for him?” he said. “It’s a little harder for me because he’s asking me to take a chance to go, ‘Wait a minute, you’re trying to tell me my dad may not be my dad after 53 years of believing that?’
“I got a little more skin in the game.”
Secret surgery as child
Actress Judy Lewis – who appeared in US TV dramas such as General Hospital and Outlaws – discovered Clark Gable was her father after getting engaged to Joseph Tinney at the age of 23.
Joseph, who she went on to marry, told her it was “common knowledge” that the Gone With The Wind legend was her dad.
When she confronted her mother Loretta Young, she said: “YES, you are my sin.”
Devout Christian Loretta had gone to extreme measures to never let the secret out, as Clark was married when Judy was conceived – with Judy much later being revealed to be a product of alleged date rape.
She reportedly hid Judy in orphanages for the first year and a half of her life, lied about adopting her, and surgically had her ears altered when she was seven years old, as they were too similar to Clark’s famously big ears.
TV DNA test
Lindsay Lohan discovered she had a fourth half-sister through a TV show, when her dad Michael Lohan took a DNA test on The Trisha Goddard Show in 2012.
Michael was married to Lindsay’s mum Dina from 1985 until 2005 and they had four children together, including Lindsay.
He had previously denied that he was the father of then-17-year-old Ashley Horn, but a DNA test proved he was.
On the TV show, Ashley said she was “H๏τter than Lindsay” and, alluding to her substance abuse issues, added: “I like being a responsible person.”
She later apologised to the Mean Girls star for “letting the media use me to drag you into this.”
Attempted murderer
Emma Willis was left horrified on Who Do You Think You Are? in 2017, when she discovered her five-times great grandfather Richard Fowler Sr was an attempted murderer.
Sitting alongside a local historian, Emma read about an incident in a newspaper from 1797 where her ancestor and another man went to a house, broke open the door and got a blacksmith and his son out of their beds.
Emma then read on, discovering that the two men stabbed the father and son again at the guard house before torturing the son.
The historian then confirmed the incident took place due to religious tensions in Ireland, and that was Richard was charged, but somewhat miraculously, the father and son weren’t killed that night, sparing him a charge of murder.
Emma said: “It’s hard to think he’s a good man but there’s so much going on it’s hard to make sense of it.”
Slave-owner shock
Before he went on family ancestry TV show, Who Do You Think You Are?, chef Ainsley Harriott thought his family, on his mum’s side, had come from Jamaica as slaves.
But he was disgusted to learn it was quite the opposite.
His great-great-grandfather, James Gordon Harriott, was actually the descendant of a long line of white slave owners – and whose partner was bought when she was just two years old.
He also discovered his great-great-grandmother, on his father’s side, had worked as a prosтιтute – then one of the few options for a “free black woman” – and earned enough to buy seven houses in the port of Bridgetown.
On finding out his history, Ainsley said: “One moment you’re feeling this hatred for people who dominated and controlled and at times abused… and yet, my own grandfather, only twice removed, was a slave owner himself.”
‘Poisoned wife’
On Who Do You Think You Are? opera singer Lesley Garrett discovered her great-great-grandfather Charles could have been responsible for his wife Mary’s death.
She read Mary’s death certificate, which said she died after taking “carbolic acid, accidentally administered”.
A newspaper article, published in a local paper at the time, read that Charles, whose story was completely accepted, said he mixed up two bottles, and accidentally gave Mary the antiseptic instead of her medicine.
Mary died within 20 minutes.
When Lesley told her father Derek what she’d discovered, he said it explained why his own grandparents, Tom and Mary Garrett, cut themselves off from Charles.
Sister was mum
Jack Nicholson was brought up believing his grandmother Ethel May was his mum, while his biological mum June was his sister.
June was 17 years old, unmarried and unsure of the father’s idenтιтy at the time of Jack’s birth.
It wasn’t until he was 37 that Jack found out the truth – when he was informed by a researcher for Time Magazine.
Of the moment of discovery, Jack said: “I’d say it was a pretty dramatic event, but it wasn’t what I’d call traumatising.
“After all, by the time I found out who my mother was, I was pretty well psychologically formed.
“As a matter of fact, it made quite a few things clearer to me. If anything, I felt grateful.”
