Justin Bieber has denied allegations he fathered a child in a backstage bathroom and says he has never met the woman who filed the paternity suit against him.
“To set the record straight, none of it is true,” the 17-year-old teen heartthrob declared on Friday during a brief appearance on NBC’s Today show.
As mobs of fans screamed adoringly in Rockefeller Plaza, Bieber called it “crazy” that anyone would make up such a story.
Photo: EPA
“I know I’m going to be a target, but I’m never going to be a victim,” Bieber told Today host Matt Lauer. “It’s crazy, because every night after the show I’ve gone right from the stage right to my car. So it’s crazy that some people want to make up such false allegations.”
The paternity suit was filed in San Diego Superior Court by Mariah Yeater earlier this week. She had just turned 19 when she says she and Bieber, then 16, had a brief sexual encounter after one of the singer’s concerts last fall at Los Angeles’ Staples Center.
She said she gave birth to a boy in July and believes Bieber is the father because there were no other possible men she had sex with at that time.
Asked if he knows Yeater, Bieber told Lauer, “Never met the woman.”
Yeater is asking a judge for child support and a paternity test. A hearing is scheduled for Dec. 15. Her lawyer has described her as a stay-at-home mother who is looking for adequate child support if a paternity test determines Bieber is the father.
Meanwhile, in Las Vegas on Friday, court records revealed that Yeater faces a bench trial on Dec. 12 on a misdemeanor battery charge that could get her six months in jail and a US$1,000 fine. She has pleaded not guilty in the case.
A police report says Yeater, who attended high school in Las Vegas, slapped her 18-year-old ex-boyfriend on Dec. 21 last year. The two were arguing about a window broken on his new girlfriend’s car. And in Los Angeles, police have said Yeater could be investigated for having had sex with a minor in connection with the Bieber claim.
In other hot gossip, Kim Kardashian is “heartbroken” over her decision to divorce professional basketball player Kris Humphries after only two months of marriage, but life will go on, her mother says.
“Just because somebody is getting a divorce doesn’t mean life is over,” mom Kris Jenner said. “She’s not the first person to get a divorce, and she won’t be the last, no matter what the length of the marriage.”
Jenner, who divorced Kardashian’s father, O.J. Simpson’s attorney Robert Kardashian, in the early 1990s and is married to former Olympic decathlon gold medalist Bruce Jenner, says reports that her reality TV star daughter’s relationship was made for TV are false.
“That would be insulting to this wonderful viewership that has followed us from Day 1,” she said. “I don’t think any of us are in that kind of situation where we have to go out and ... create opportunities to make more money. I think we are just fine.”
She also said the family members won’t stop sharing their lives with the public. “[The breakup] doesn’t mean that the rest of us are going to change our personalities in any way and, you know, completely turn into different people,” she said on Thursday. “We’re going to carry on and hopefully be much stronger as human beings and as a family.”
After Kardashian, 31, filed for divorce earlier this week, citing irreconcilable differences, she left for a business trip to Australia with her sister Khloe Kardashian.
Jenner said she hadn’t spoken with Humphries about the split and didn’t know if her daughter had, either.
Some might argue that Bieber and Kardashian are overpaid, but Drew Barrymore and Eddie Murphy are in a league of their own, according to a survey conducted by Forbes.com and published on Thursday.
Top stars can make tens of millions of dollars on a single film, and the payout can be justified when a movie like Pirates of the Caribbean brings in several hundred million at box offices. But when their movies bomb, that’s another story.
Barrymore saw 2010’s Going the Distance earn just $17.8 million in ticket sales. Her 2009 movies Everybody’s Fine and Whip It fared worse.
Forbes.com said the actress returns just US$0.40 for every dollar movie studios spend for her participation. By contrast, Murphy’s films returned US$2.70 for each dollar he was paid.
Compared to Barrymore, “Murphy is a financial superstar,” wrote Dorothy Pomerantz, who compiled the list.
But Beverly Hills Cop (1984) star Murphy has struggled in recent years, too, with bombs like Imagine That and Meet Dave.
The Web site compiled the list from Hollywood’s 40 top-earning actors, and based it on each star’s compensation on his or her last three films and the operating income on those films. From that, Forbes.com derived a return-on-investment.
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