The Biggest Bombshells From Britney Spears' Memoir

Spears' 2001 VMAs performance has easily gone down as one of the most iconic performances of the award show, where she famously held an albino python while singing "I'm A Slave 4 U." She has since recalled that one of her favorite performances ever, but per excerpts from her memoir shared with People, she reveals how terrified she was in the moment.

"All I knew was to look down, because I felt if I looked up and caught its eye, it would kill me," she wrote. "In my head I was saying, 'Just perform, just use your legs and perform.' But what nobody knows is that as I was singing, the snake brought its head right around to my face, right up to me, and started hissing. I was thinking, 'Are you f---ing serious right now? The f---ing goddamn snake’s tongue is flicking out at me. Right.' Now. Finally, I got to the part where I handed it back, thank God."

In 2006, Spears became close friends with heiress Paris Hilton, as the two were constantly being photographed in the press as they went from party to party. Spears recalls their time together not as "wild as the press made it out to be."

Spears wrote that she “never had a drinking problem" and that her “drug of choice" was the ADHD medication Adderall, which “made me high, yes, but what I found far more appealing was that it gave me a few hours of feeling less depressed.”

Everybody knows about the former romance between Spears and Justin Timberlake, but what has shocked the world is Spears' revelation she was pregnant with his child and later had an abortion because "he wasn't ready to be a father."

“It was a surprise, but for me, it wasn’t a tragedy. I loved Justin so much. I always expected us to have a family together one day," she wrote. "This would just be much earlier than I’d anticipated. But Justin definitely wasn’t happy about the pregnancy. He said we weren’t ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young."

She continued, "If it had been left up to me alone, I never would have done it. And yet Justin was so sure that he didn’t want to be a father."

Following her breakup with Timberlake, Spears had a brief hookup with actor Colin Farrell. She reflects on the whirlwind romance, writing in her memoir, "Brawl is the only word for it — we were all over each other, grappling so passionately it was like we were in a street fight."

She also mentioned that she didn't want to get "too attached" from Farrell considering she was still getting over Timberlake.

“As I had before when I’d felt too attached to a man, I tried to convince myself in every way that it was not a big deal, that we were just having fun, that in this case I was vulnerable because I wasn’t over Justin yet," she wrote.

Spears married backup dancer Kevin Federline in 2004, and over the course of their marriage, they had two children. They later filed for divorce in 2007, sparking a gruesome custody battle over their sons. Spears' recalls how at one point the SWAT team was called in and busted into her bathroom where she was holding her 16-month-old son Jayden instead of returning him to Federline as required.

That incident led her to be hospitalized on a 72-hour psychiatric hold and was a key factor in the establishment of her infamous court-ordered conservatorship. 

“I just couldn’t let him go. I didn’t want anyone taking my baby,” she wrote. “Before I knew what was happening, a SWAT team in black suits burst through the bathroom door as if I’d hurt someone.”

In 2007, after making headlines for her back-to-back visits to rehab, Spears infamously was photographed with a completely shaved head. She finally opens up why she did that, revealing it was an act of rebellion against her father and all the unwarranted attention and criticism she was constantly receiving as a kid.

"I’d been eyeballed so much growing up," she wrote. "I’d been looked up and down, had people telling me what they thought of my body, since I was a teenager. Shaving my head and acting out were my ways of pushing back."

Only a year later, in 2008, she would be put in a court-ordered conservatorship, granting her father complete control over her personal and financial affairs. Spears describes the experience as stripping her of her womanhood, having become "more of an entity than a person onstage."

"Thirteen years went by with me feeling like a shadow of myself. I think back now on my father and his associates having control over my body and my money for that long and it makes me feel sick," the memoir reads. "Think of how many male artists gambled all their money away; how many had substance abuse or mental health issues. No one tried to take away their control over their bodies and money. I didn’t deserve what my family did to me."

Spears' has become known for her infamous 13-year court-order conservatorship under the control of her father. She reveals that she "went along" with it for "one very good reason:" her kids. “I did it for my kids,” she wrote. “Because I played by the rules, I was reunited with my boys." 

The reunion in question came after a series of public breakdowns in 2008 when she temporarily lost custody of her sons following her divorce from her ex-husband Kevin Federline.

The Notebook is unquestionably one of Hollywood's most treasured films, and it was about to look a lot different. Spears' was almost cast as Allie, as the casting came down to her and Rachel McAdams. As we all know, it ultimately was given to McAdams, a decision that Spears found relieving.

"The Notebook casting came down to me and Rachel McAdams, and even though it would have been fun to reconnect with Ryan Gosling after our time on the Mickey Mouse Club, I’m glad I didn’t do it. If I had, instead of working on my album In the Zone I’d have been acting like a 1940s heiress day and night," she recalled.

In 2004, Spears got drunk with her childhood friend Jason Alexander and had a spontaneous wedding in Las Vegas — a night that she can't even remember. 

“I don’t even remember that night at all, but from what I pieced together, he and I lounged around the hotel room and stayed up late watching movies — Mona Lisa Smile and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre — then had the brilliant idea of going to A Little White Chapel at three thirty in the morning,” the singer wrote.

“People have asked me if I loved him. To be clear: he and I were not in love," she continued. "I was just honestly very drunk — and probably, in a more general sense at that time in my life, very bored."

The marriage unsurprisingly did not last long, as they got it annulled 55 hours later.