The Untold Truth Of Sharon Osbourne
Sharon Osbourne may be one of television's unlikeliest stars. Her actual job — managing the career of rockstar husband Ozzy Osbourne — gave way to a whole new career thanks to The Osbournes, the 2000s MTV reality hit that captivated TV viewers. Not only did the massive success of the show bring Ozzy a whole new fanbase, The Osbournes also made stars of Sharon and two of the couple's children, Kelly and Jack.
As Sharon's IMDb page attests, in the years since then she's built herself into a bona fide television brand. In addition to numerous guest-starring appearances on TV shows ranging from Will & Grace to Supergirl, she's also spent plenty of time behind the judging table of The X Factor UK and America's Got Talent. As it that's not enough, since 2010, she's been one of the co-hosts of CBS daytime series The Talk, along with various side projects, such as Travel Channel's The Osbournes Want to Believe.
Viewers can be forgiven for assuming they know all there is to know about this multitalented TV host, music manager, and all-around force of nature. However, there's plenty to discover about the untold truth of Sharon Osbourne.
2003 was an exceptionally terrible year for Sharon Osbourne
Back in 1992, Queen Elizabeth famously declared that year to be her annus horribilis, a Latin term that translates to "horrible year." For Sharon Osbourne, her annus horribilis turned out to be 2003, which she candidly revealed in an interview with Barbara Walters for ABC News' 20/20.
The year's lowlights, she told Walters, included son Jack Osbourne's rehab for opioid addiction — culminating in his suicide attempt — and a brief separation from Ozzy over his own escalating addiction issues, all while she battled colon cancer. However, Sharon maintained that the Osbournes' struggles weren't that unique. "Other people have cancer, other people have husbands who are addicts, children that are addicts. And we never said we were perfect. I am far from perfect. I'm like the biggest mess-up I know," she said.
Sharon also admitted she regretted her earlier decision to let all three of her children drop out of school, and had come to realize that she gave them more freedom than teenagers should have. If she were able to do it all over, she "would have given them boundaries as far as who they can hang out with and who they can't..."
Sharon Osbourne's first experience hosting a talk show was a disaster
Sharon Osbourne has proven herself to be adept as a television host after a decade on CBS daytime series The Talk. However, her first attempt at daytime television was not nearly so successful, with her syndicated The Sharon Osbourne Show canceled after just one catastrophic season on American television. Reviews for the show, which debuted in fall 2003, were brutal. After just two episodes aired, USA Today described the show as "a soon-to-be-discarded cultural oddity."
A few years later, U.K. network ITV debuted The Sharon Osbourne Show on British television. While The Guardian reported this version of the show made a "promising debut" with initial viewership of 1.9 million, those viewers didn't stick around. Ratings for the show's second episode, The Guardian noted, shrank to 1.5 million, a loss of one-fifth of her audience. Before long, that number plummeted to 1 million, and then less than 950,000 soon after.
The following spring, The Guardian reported the show's future was "in doubt," neither renewed not canceled. An "insider" guessed — correctly, it turned out — that "Sharon's show might well be one of those shows that just slips away."
Sharon Osbourne can't go for more than a minute without swearing
During The Osbournes' run on MTV, the family's penchant for profanity meant there were often more bleeped-out words than audible dialogue. Sharon Osbourne, in fact, has never shied away from cursing. She made that clear during a 2004 interview with Entertainment Weekly, when asked how long go without swearing. "Oh, s***.... See? I don't think I've ever made it more than a minute," she quipped.
"I f***ing love curse words," she told Vanity Fair in 2011, revealing the curse word that is her absolute favorite. "I love 'f***.' I know that's not the most original, but I just adore it," she declared. "You can use it in so many different ways."
Appearing regularly on television, she confessed, had led her to attempt to temper her language. "I have to make a concerted effort to not say the words I'm constantly thinking. But at the same time, I like to be spontaneous," she told VF. "So it's a constant battle between my natural instincts to say the first thing that pops into my head and being well aware that I have to keep it clean for the audience."
Weight-loss surgery made Sharon Osbourne feel like a 'cheat'
Sharon Osbourne has been characteristically candid about her lifelong battle with her weight. "I've struggled with my weight for my entire life. I've been fat and I've been thin," she told Us Weekly in 2012. In 1999, she underwent gastric band surgery, in which a silicone band is placed around a portion of the stomach to shrink its size.
While Osbourne "lost a ton of weight," the aftereffects of the surgery were not pleasant. As she explained to Entertainment Tonight (via the New York Daily News), "People are saying, 'You look wonderful!' I'd go, 'Thank you, I just have to leave and vomit.'" Beyond nausea, Sharon admitted to guilt about resorting to surgery in order to lose weight. "I felt [like] such a cheat when I had that band on my stomach," she said.
That led her to have the band removed, which unfortunately resulted in a weight gain of "about 45 pounds." This motivated her to take a new tactic in her war on weight by embracing the low-carb Atkins diet. "It's really not a diet. It's a lifestyle change," she told Us Weekly, revealing she'd lost 28 pounds after just three months.
Sharon Osbourne once quit The X Factor in the middle of an episode
Sharon Osbourne joined The X Factor UK in 2004, and her history on the British singing competition was marked by drama. This was evident when she abruptly quit the show in the midst of a live broadcast, declaring, "I'm out!"
She returned a few days later, but subsequently revealed her exit was due to the alleged affair between fellow judges Simon Cowell and Danii Minogue (which Cowell confirmed in the biography Sweet Revenge: The Intimate Life of Simon Cowell). "I couldn't say anything at the time," Sharon told The Sydney Morning Herald. "How do you say 'I'm leaving because she's sucking his d**k!?' It was very uncomfortable."
After a few exits and returns, Sharon left for good in 2018. "I really don't think I'm needed," she said in a statement issued on Facebook. However, rumors abounded that her departure was not her choice, but the result of some snide comments she'd made on The Howard Stern Show slamming Cowell as a "f**king pain in the a**" and dismissing the contestants as "little s**ts" who "all suck" and sing "f**king karaoke." She subsequently confirmed she'd been fired, but insisted it was because Cowell "thought I was too old."
Will Sharon Osbourne ever retire?
While Sharon Osbourne and rock star husband Ozzy Osbourne certainly have enough money to kick back and spend the remainder of their days chilling on a tropical beach, she has no plans to retire anytime soon.
"I never think about the future. I live in today," she said in a 2019 interview with Celebrity Access, citing the examples of some still-active musicians who are a decade older than she is and still going strong. "But look at [Rolling Stones drummer] Charlie Watts, he's 78. Look at Paul McCartney, he's 77," she declared. "Age, it's not about age. It's not about saying, 'I'm not going to tour anymore.' Do you want to retire from everything?"
Given their immense wealth, Sharon, one of a few talk show hosts who live insanely lavish lives, said that she and Ozzy didn't need to keep chasing after money, but keep working because they simply love what they do. "It's about, 'What am I going to do? Make hairdressing appointments, and have massages all day?' This is what I do," she explained. "My husband doesn't want to go away, and buy a place in Palm Springs and say, 'See ya. I'm going to play golf.' No way."
Becoming Ozzy Osbourne's manager led to a huge rift with her family
Prior to TV stardom, Sharon Osbourne's focus was managing the career of husband Ozzy Osbourne. As a manager in the rock milieu, Sharon carved out a hard-earned reputation as one of the toughest.
That toughness was something she inherited from her father, talent manager Don Arden, who died in 2007. According to his obituary in The Guardian, Arden — nicknamed "the Al Capone of pop" — managed such bands as the Animals, the Small Faces, and Black Sabbath. When Black Sabbath broke up, Arden managed the group's singer, Ozzy Osbourne, who split from his then-wife and married Sharon. According to The Telegraph, Arden gave Sharon Ozzy's management contract as a wedding present — which ultimately led to a years-long rift between Sharon and her father when she crossed him.
"It was a very bad time for me because I kind of lost my whole family," she told Metal Hammer. "I realized then that my father's whole thing was money; it's not family, it's money. If you're with him, you're great. If you want to go out on your own, you're dead and that's what I was — I was dead to them."
Sharon Osbourne and her father didn't speak for 15 years
While managing the career of husband Ozzy Osbourne, Sharon Osbourne incurred the wrath of her father, Don Arden, and things got ugly. As The Telegraph recalled, Ozzy was signed to Arden's label, Jet Records; Sharon broke the contract and signed Ozzy to another label, a move that infuriated her father. He took her to court, with their daddy-daughter legal battle finally settled when she paid him $1 million.
Arden — described by the Daily Mail as "the most feared man in music" — didn't speak to his daughter for well over a decade. They ultimately reconciled in 2001, with Arden even making a brief appearance on The Osbournes. As Sharon told Celebrity Access, she and her father remained on good terms until his death in 2007. "I was with my dad a good three years before he died, and I was heartbroken. Heartbroken," she admitted. "Listen, my father, a huge part of me is my father. He gave me an unbelievable musical education. My father opened my eyes to so many amazing experiences and amazing people and things like that. I was heartbroken."
Sharon Osbourne shared her feelings on daughter Aimee's refusal to appear on The Osbournes
It would be easy for viewers of The Osbournes to assume that Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne are the parents of two children, Jack and Kelly. However, they have another daughter, Aimée, who didn't appear on the show — because she refused to take part in it.
In a 2020 episode of The Talk, as reported by People, Sharon admitted she was "sorry" that Aimée wasn't a part of the show, but insisted that she supported her decision. "I understand how she felt. It was chaos," Sharon explained, revealing that a crew of approximately 30 people would film their every move "24 hours a day." Their home, she admitted, "wasn't a home anymore. It was a studio. So, I get why she didn't like it."
However, Sharon declared she had no regrets about the experience. "But would I have done it differently?" she said. "I didn't know what I was doing then. So you know, I wouldn't have done anything differently because I had an unbelievable time doing it."
Sharon Osbourne has been on the receiving end of Ozzy's dangerous behavior
Sharon Osbourne's relationship with husband Ozzy Osbourne has played out in the public eye, and it hasn't always been smooth sailing. Much of this has been the result of Ozzy's legendary intake of drugs and booze over the years, resulting in some pretty extreme behavior.
In the 2020 documentary Biography: The Nine Lives of Ozzy Osbourne, as recounted by Us Weekly, Ozzy recalled waking up feeling "the calmest I had ever felt in my life," only to discover he was in jail, charged with the attempted murder of Sharon. "[It was] not exactly one of my greatest achievements," he admitted.
As Sharon explained, Ozzy was very high at the time. "I had no idea who was sat across from me on the sofa but it wasn't my husband... he just said, 'We've come to a decision that you've got to die.' He was calm — very calm — then suddenly he lunged across at me and just dived on me and started to choke me," she said. Sharon later gave him an ultimatum, telling him, "If you do this again, either I am going to kill you or you are going to kill me. And do you want that for the kids?"
Sharon Osbourne almost divorced Ozzy over his cheating scandal
Attempted homicide wasn't the only issue in Sharon Osbourne's marriage to Ozzy Osbourne. In addition to his rampant substance abuse, Sharon also had to contend with Ozzy's cheating. This came to a head in 2016, when she discovered he was having an affair with hairdresser Michelle Pugh. "I'm not proud of that," Ozzy later told GQ of his infidelity, adding, "I'm lucky she didn't leave me."
She nearly did. At the time, E! confirmed that the couple had split up. Sharon shared that she'd moved out of their home, telling viewers of The Talk (as reported by Us Weekly), "I honestly at this point today have no idea what I'm going to be doing with the rest of my life." Ozzy responded by posting an apology on Facebook, admitting he'd relapsed and had been "drinking and taking drugs" for the past 18 months.
They subsequently reconciled. As E! reported, in an August 2016 episode of The Talk, Sharon revealed Ozzy was being treated for sex addiction. "He's working at it. It's hard because it affects the whole family," she told viewers. "And it's quite embarrassing to talk about."
She's planning a biopic about her relationship with Ozzy
Given all the drama within Sharon Osbourne's relationship with husband Ozzy Osbourne over the years, it would appear that the couple's long and winding love story has all the elements for a great movie — a fact that has not gone unnoticed by the couple's son, Jack Osbourne. According to an August 2020 report in Rolling Stone, a movie about the pair was in the works, with Jack in the producer's seat. Admitting the film was still in the "very, very early" stages, he confirmed the project to be "an active development."
"I hope it will be a story that everybody can relate to," Sharon said, promising the tone will be far less "squeaky clean" than previous rock biopics such as Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocketman. "Our film will be a lot more real," she said. "We don't want it to be squeaky, shiny clean and all of that. We're not making it for kids. It's an adult movie for adults."
Sharon Osbourne was hospitalized after testing positive for COVID-19
In December 2020, Sharon Osbourne took to Instagram to share an announcement: She had tested positive for COVID-19. "After a brief hospitalization, I'm now recuperating at a location away from Ozzy (who has tested negative) while The Talk is on scheduled hiatus," she wrote.
Interestingly enough, throughout the coronavirus pandemic, Sharon and her co-hosts on The Talk had been filming the show virtually, via computer from their individual homes. They returned to the studio in the fall, reported Variety, with stringent safety protocols in place. Despite those protocols, however, all indications point to Sharon becoming infected on the set; just days earlier, Sharon's co-host Carrie Ann Inaba revealed that she'd tested positive. "I'm home with some symptoms and will be sequestering as per the CDC guidelines, resting and taking care of myself," she wrote in an Instagram post.
Sharon's diagnosis fulfilled the worst fears of her daughter Kelly Osbourne, who shared her feelings about the pandemic in a Instagram post back in March 2020. "The truth is I am scared too," she wrote. "Both of my parents are high risk especially my dad."