Britney Spears’ all-rounder “The Woman in Me” is finally here. In the 275-page memoir, Spears details her journey through pop stardom and her highly publicized battle for guardianship – without skimping on the details.
The book is dedicated to her two sons, but in the acknowledgment, the pop icon made a special note to her fans: “My heart and my gratitude belong forever. This book is for you.”
Spears praises her fans for giving her strength during the darkest hours of her fight for freedom. “I don’t think people knew how much the #FreeBritney movement meant to me, especially in the beginning,” she writes.
“I wasn’t feeling well, not at all. And the fact that my friends and my fans sensed what was happening and did it all for me, that’s a debt I can never repay. If you stood up for me when I couldn’t stand up for myself: I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
Read on to find out the five biggest revelations from the captivating page-turner.
She was almost in “Chicago” — and has complicated feelings about acting
During her first film, Crossroads, Spears accidentally began method acting. “It was like a cloud or something came over me and I became this girl called Lucy.” It took months for her to break free of her character’s personality, and she felt some relief when she landed the lead role in ” The Notebook” lost to Rachel McAdams.
“While it would have been fun to reconnect with Ryan Gosling after our time on The Mickey Mouse Club, I’m glad I didn’t. If I had done that, I would have behaved like a 1940s heiress day and night instead of working on my album In the Zone.”
However, there is one role she regrets turning down. She was offered a role in the 2002 film adaptation of “Chicago” as a “villain who kills a man and also sings and dances.”
“I should have done it. I had power then; “I wish I had used it more thoughtfully and been more rebellious,” she writes. “If only I had been brave enough to stay out of my safe zone and do more things that weren’t just within my knowledge. But I’ve resolved not to let the whole thing rock the boat and not to complain, even if something upsets me.”
She had an abortion after becoming pregnant with Justin Timberlake’s baby
Spears details the beginnings of her relationship with Justin Timberlake, from their first kiss at a “Mickey Mouse Club” party to her iconic denim-on-denim looks at the 2001 American Music Awards. However, she says things aren’t were as perfect as they seemed, and writes, “There were a few times in our relationship when I knew Justin had cheated on me.”
She didn’t confront him about the infidelity, but she had her own date with choreographer Wade Robson, dancing and making out with him in a bar. She confessed to Timberlake and they decided to stay together.
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When she became pregnant, Spears says, “It was a surprise, but it wasn’t a tragedy for me,” adding that she always wanted a family with Timberlake. When he didn’t share her enthusiasm, Spears agreed to have an abortion. “If it had been left to me alone, I would never have done it. And yet Justin was so sure he didn’t want to be a father.”
Spears then describes in detail the physical pain of the abortion, calling it “one of the most excruciating things I have ever experienced.”
Timberlake broke up with Spears via text message while on the set of the Darkchild remix music video “Overprotected.”
She had a two-week affair with Colin Farrell
After her split from Justin Timberlake, Spears set her sights on Colin Farrell. She found out he was filming nearby, so she crashed the set of “SWAT.”
“We would have a two-week brawl. Brawl is the only word for it – we were all at each other and fighting so passionately it was like we were in a street brawl.”
Spears writes that she tried to convince herself that the date wasn’t a big deal, but she adds, “For a brief moment I thought there might be something there.”
Her Diane Sawyer interview was a “breaking point”
Spears was told by her team that she would be expected to speak to Diane Sawyer on the couch in her apartment, much to her chagrin: “I often retreated to my apartment to be alone; Now I was forced to speak there with Diane Sawyer and cry in front of the entire nation.”
None of the “100 percent embarrassing” questions were told to Spears in advance. “I shouldn’t have been forced to speak on national television, forced to cry in front of this stranger, a woman who relentlessly hounded me with tough question after tough question. Instead, I felt like I had been exploited and exposed to the whole world.”
She calls the interview “an internal breaking point for me” and reflects that it would have been a better way to grow on her own than to voice her problems publicly. “But I had no choice. It seemed like no one really cared how I felt.”
She was “really disappointed” by Sister Jamie Lynn, but was “working on feeling more compassion for her.”
When she was held in a mental health facility for months under her guardianship, she texted her younger sister, Jamie Lynn, asking for help getting her released. “Stop fighting it. There’s nothing you can do about it, so stop fighting it,” she replied.
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When Britney returned from the facility, Jamie Lynn suggested her joint projects, including a sister talk show, a sitcom and a romantic comedy.
After the conservatorship ended, Britney felt “betrayed” by her family. “My sister and I should have comforted each other, but unfortunately that wasn’t the case. While I was fighting the conservatorship and getting a lot of press attention, she wrote a book that capitalized on it. She hastily told salacious stories about me, many of them hurtful and outrageous. I was really disappointed.”
Britney acknowledges Jamie Lynn’s own struggles, from growing up as a child of divorce to her daughter’s near-fatal accident. “She will always be my sister and I love her and her beautiful family,” she wrote. “I’m working on feeling more compassion than anger towards her and anyone who I feel has wronged me. It is not easy.”