The celebrity mug shot has become an industry unto itself, fueling everything from memes and t-shirts to late-night comedy bits as the unfortunate souls pictured become instantly recognisable entries in the cultural lexicon.
Donald Trump has become the latest addition – and the first United States president – to join that infamous cadre of the police-portraited arrested. The ever-publicity-conscious former reality TV star has already acknowledged the iconic status of any possible picture, trying to cash in on the prospect by releasing a fake one on a t-shirt (for $47 as a re-election campaign “donation”) back in April. But any real picture had yet to materialise – until today.
Now, the 45th president glowers straight into the camera, brow furrowed and sizable bushy eyebrows lowered as he faces his fate. The image, within seconds, went viral and global; regardless of anyone’s opinion of the controversial politician, it is an undeniable fact that Trump’s mug shot is both historically and culturally significant – and soon to be seen everywhere, forever.
As the Trump mug shot arrives with fanfare, The Independent looks back on the infamous others which have achieved immortal status in pop culture since their owners first compulsorily posed for police behind bars. Some have sought to distance themselves from the arrests; some have capitalised upon the publicity, even if publicly striving to change their wayward ways.
The future of the Trump image, however – and what he and his team choose to do with it – remains anyone’s guess.
Hugh Grant
The English actor, known for his foppish charm and rom-com roles, was arrested in the early morning hours of 27 June 1995 – a Tuesday – in the company of a 23-year-old sex worker he’d solicited on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. Her name was Divine Brown, born Estella Marie Thompson, and police almost immediately set upon the couple after the film star parked his white BMW on a residential street, arresting them for engaging in “an act of lewd conduct”.
“Within hours, the world’s tabloids were on fire – “Hugh Dirty Dog!” yelped the New York Post, Grant’s immediately infamous and sheepish mug shot splashed across its front page,” The Independent’s Adam White wrote for the 25th anniversary of the arrest. “After he was released on $250 bail, Grant’s publicity team sprung into action.”
“Last night I did something completely insane,” Grant, then 34, said in a statement. “I have hurt people I love and embarrassed people I work with. For both things I am more sorry than I can ever possibly say.”
Hugh Grant, then 34, was arrested in Los Angeles for ‘lewd conduct’ with a sex worker in the early hours of 27 June 1995— (Getty)
Grant was dating Elizabeth Hurley at the time, and the two were among the most photographed couples of the era; she initially stood by him, and the Englishman appeared on Jay Leno’s late-night talk show 11 days after the arrest to answer a blunt opening question: “What the hell were you thinking?”
“I think he was almost ahead of his time in terms of actually putting his hands up and apologising,” Ewan Robertson, director of crisis communications at the corporate communications consultancy Citigate Dewe Rogerson, told The Independent in 2020. “Something that brands and companies have only realised more recently is actually that, if you do make mistakes, apologising for it isn’t necessarily an issue. The public are far more accepting if you’re open and transparent about it than trying to hide it and cover it up.”
The film star, now 62, has gone on to enjoy a long and lucrative Hollywood career.
Lindsay Lohan
Former child star Lindsay Lohan has had more than a few brushes with the law since she first took Hollywood by storm at the age of ten with the Disney film The Parent Trap.
In May 2007, she was arrested and charged with driving under the influence and possession of cocaine after crashing her Mercedes in Beverly Hills – days before the then-21-year-old was due to start filming a new movie. She checked into rehab but was arrested again in July on suspicion of driving under the influence, driving on a suspended license and possession of cocaine, the infamous mug shot from that incident pictured below.
Over the years, Lohan, now 37, was briefly jailed five times and sentenced to rehab for a variety of violations ranging from failing to perform her community service to skipping counseling sessions, AP reported.
In this booking photo provided by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, Lindsay Lohan is seen at the Lynwood Correctional Facility on 20 July 2010; she received a 90-day jail sentence for the August 2007 no-contest plea to drug and alcohol charges— (Getty)
“Since 2007, Lohan was convicted in three cases — a drunken driving and drug case, a theft case filed over a stolen necklace, and a reckless driving case filed after the actress crashed her Porsche into a dump truck on Pacific Coast Highway while on her way to a movie shoot,” AP reported in 2015, when a California judge closed the book on her last criminal case in LA.
“The drug and DUI case were resolved in 2012, 4 1/2 years after she was arrested twice in quick succession. Despite taking a plea deal that allowed her to avoid jail time, Lohan struggled to comply with the terms of her sentence and was ordered jailed after she missed a court appearance,” AP reported.
“It took more than 50 court hearings to resolve the trio of cases, with the actress being forced to appear 20 times in person.
“Lohan’s court appearances had a tendency to become major spectacles, with deputies creating a red carpet-worthy line so photographers could document the starlet’s entrances and exits to court. Commentators often critiqued Lohan’s fashion and choice of hair color, and someone even showered the actress in confetti as she walked into the Beverly Hills courthouse for one hearing.”
The 37-year-old has since stepped back from the limelight, getting married and welcoming her first child this summer.
“Lindsay Lohan and her financier husband, Bader Shammas, welcomed a beautiful, healthy son named Luai,” a representative for the star said in a statement to The Independent last month. “The family is over the moon in love.”
Jeffrey Epstein
The late, disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein was first arrested in July 2006 in Florida after a grand jury indicted him on a single count of soliciting prostitution – shining a light on what would become an infamous web of young women, grooming and abuse.
In June 2008, Epstein was sentenced to 18 months in jail after pleading guilty to two state charges: one count of solicitating prostitution and one count of soliciting prostitution from someone under the age of 18. Under a secret arrangement, the US attorney’s office agreed not to prosecute Epstein for federal crimes, and he served most of his sentence in a work-release program that allowed him to leave jail during the day to go to his office before his 2009 release.
For the next decade, multiple women who said they are Epstein’s victims fought a legal campaign to get his federal non-prosecution agreement voided to hold the financier and others liable for the abuse. Virginia Giuffre emerged as his most vocal and visible accuser, claiming in lawsuits that, beginning when she was 17, Epstein and his girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, set up sexual encounters with royalty, politicians, academicians, businessmen and other rich and powerful men, including Britain’s Prince Andrew, all of whom denied the allegations.
]In this handout provided by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Jeffrey Epstein poses for a sex offender mug shot after being charged with procuring a minor for prostitution— (Getty Images)
Epstein was again arrested, this time on federal sex trafficking charge, in July 2019 after federal prosecutors in New York conclude that they weren’t bound by the terms of the earlier non-prosecution deal, AP reported.
He was found dead in his jail cell the following month – and, while his death has been ruled a suicide, conspiracy theories have abounded regarding his demise. The Epstein case, his schemes and ring of women have spawned countless articles, documentaries and other projects, firmly entrenching his alleged crimes in the public consciousness.
Mel Gibson
Acclaimed actor and director Mel Gibson, then 50, was stopped and arrested in July 2006 on California’s Pacific Coast Highway, charged days later with misdemeanour drunken driving as well as driving with an elevated blood alcohol level and an open container of booze in the vehicle.
The following month, he pleaded no contest to a single misdemeanour in a deal that called for alcohol rehabilitation, fines and probation – but the legal ramifications paled in comparison to the repetitional damage Gibson suffered from the anti-Semitic rant he gave following his arrest.
Gibson was arrested for driving under the influence on the Pacific Coast Highway in July 2006 – but the anti-Semitic rant he gave following the arrest did more damage to his career— (Rex Features)
In an apology to the Jewish community, he said in 2006: “I am a public person, and when I say something, either articulated and thought out, or blurted out in a moment of insanity, my words carry weight in the public arena. As a result, I must assume personal responsibility for my words and apologize directly to those who have been hurt and offended by those words.
It later added: “I am not an anti-Semite. I am not a bigot. Hatred of any kind goes against my faith.
“I’m not just asking for forgiveness. I would like to take it one step further, and meet with leaders in the Jewish community, with whom I can have a one on one discussion to discern the appropriate path for healing.”
Despite the apology, the actor was still notoriously dropped, at least for a time, by Hollywood super agent Ari Emanuel, and Gibson did not direct another movie for a decade – a hiatus that “was largely due to being virtually shut out from Hollywood,” Variety reported in 2020.
The rant “was followed by leaked tapes in 2010 where Gibson screamed racist remarks, including using the n-word, at his then-girlfriend, Oksana Grigorieva, the mother of one of his nine children,” according to Variety. “She later alleged Gibson was physically abusive,” Variety reported. “Even before his fall from grace, Gibson had routinely been in trouble for homophobic comments.”
In 2016, Gibson referred to the arrest on the outlet’s podcast, Playback, calling it “an unfortunate incident,”
“I was loaded and angry and arrested,” he said. “I was recorded illegally by an unscrupulous police officer who was never prosecuted for that crime. And then it was made public by him for profit, and by members of — we’ll call it the press. So, not fair. I guess as who I am, I’m not allowed to have a nervous breakdown, ever.”
Paris Hilton
Like her fellow tabloid staple Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton has more than one brush with the law under her belt, casualties of the hotel heiress’ notorious party girl days in her 20s. In 2006, after Hilton and Nicole Richie had become a pop culture phenomenon with their reality series The Simple Life, she was arrested in Hollywood after she was seen driving erratically and was found to have a blood-alcohol level of .08 percent, the minimum to warrant an arrest.
The year after she starred in ads for burger chain Carl’s Jr, Hilton told officers she was “starving” and “wanted to have an In-N-Out burger.”
But she told reporters the indigent was “nothing,” claiming: “Everything I do is blown out of proportion and it really hurts my feelings.”
Celebrity heiress Paris Hilton, then 29, was arrested on drug charges in Las Vegas in August 2010— (Rex Features)
The arrest set off a chain of other traffic stops and troubles that ultimately saw the heiress – dominating headlines the whole time – spent three days in jail in June 2007.
Three years later, she was arrested in Las Vegas for cocaine possession and pictured for the mug shot above. Then 29, she pleaded guilty in September 2010 to two misdemeanor charges and was sentenced to one year of probation and ordered to pay a $2,000 fine, complete 200 hours of community service and an intensive substance abuse program.
She went on to pursue various ventures in social media and entrepreneurship, marrying venture capitalist Carter Reum in a star-studded 2022 ceremony. The couple announced earlier this year that they had welcomed a son, Phoenix, via surrogate.
Jeremy Meeks
In an unusual case of a mug shot turning a person into a celebrity, Jeremy Meeks was already a convicted felon when he was arrested at age 30 by California police on 18 June 2014 on felony weapons charges. The Stockton Police Department put his mug shot on its Facebook page, garnering more than 10,000 likes overnight from people (mostly women) admiring his looks. That was to be just the tip of the iceberg; Meeks went viral, became a meme and sparked the hashtag #feloncrushfriday on Twitter.
Jeremy Meeks, then 30, was a convicted felon whose 2014 mug shot was posted on the Stockton Police Department’s Facebook page, subsequently going viral for his good looks— (Stockton Police Department)
The February following his arrest, Meeks was convicted by a federal judge of one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm, serving 13 months in prison before his release in March 2016 – and the release of his first modeling headshot three months later. He made his runway debut in 2017 and went on to model for major names such as Tommy Hilfiger, dipping his toe into acting, as well.
Meeks made further headlines for his personal life after he became embroiled in a cheating scandal, eventually divorcing his wife and having a baby with the daughter of a British businessman before that relationship with Chloe Green ended also in 2019.
Nick Nolte
Ten years after being named People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive, actor Nick Nolte was arrested on 11 September 2002 and charged with driving under the influence – his wild-haired mug shot, complete with Hawaiian shirt and dazed facial expression, instantly appearing everywhere.
It wasn’t his first arrest, though; years earlier, in 1961, he was busted for selling fake draft cards, fined $75,000 and sentenced to 75 years in prison, later suspended.
Nick Nolte was arrested in California and charged with driving under the influence in September 2002, wearing a memorable outfit at the time of his arrest— (Getty)
“I’ve had two mug shots in my lifetime. It’s hard to get those,” he told AP in 2018, when he released his memoir. “And if you get them, you better make sure you examine the circumstances that you got them. The best way to deal with the biggest mistakes in your life is to discuss them. With everybody, including God.”
In his book, he claims he writes that, on the day of the arrest, he took GHB before going to the gym and actually drove to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, but did not attend because he was inebriated, before he was pulled over on the Pacific Coast Highway.
“GHB was one substance I ran into that I shouldn’t have messed with,” he told People in 2018, adding that he was living a much quieter life after battling addiction.
“I was just worn out,” said Nolte, who is now 82. “Just worn out.”
Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra was arrested twice in Bergen County, New Jersey, in 1938 in connection with a romantic entanglement with a woman, according to records.
In 1998, the FBI released most of its file on the singer, who passed away at the age of 82 earlier in the year. Sinatra had requested the file himself under the Freedom of Information Act and had viewed it before his death.
The file detailed how the FBI “obtained an enclosed picture of Frank Sinatra and the following information regarding the two occasions on which Sinatra was held in the Bergen County Jail,’’ The New York Times reported
Singer Frank Sinatra was 23 years old when he was arrested and booked for adultery in New Jersey in 1938— (Bergen County Sheriff’s Office)
He’d been arrested on 26 November 1938 and charged with seduction, which was marked “Dismissed,” then arrested again the following month and charged with adultery.
“Neither of the acts with which Mr. Sinatra was charged is against the law today, but his initial charge in 1938 stated that ‘on the second and ninth days of November 1938 at the Borough of Lodi’ and ‘under the promise of marriage’ Mr. Sinatra ‘did then and there have sexual intercourse with the said complainant, who was then and there a single female of good repute,” the paper reported.
“This, the charge stated, was ‘contrary and in violation of the revised statute of 1937.’
“The report noted that Mr. Sinatra was released on $1,500 bond and that the complaint was withdrawn when it was determined that the woman involved was married,” according to the Times. “A complaint of adultery was substituted, with Mr. Sinatra’s bond being lowered to $500. That charge, too, was dismissed.”
OJ Simpson
NFL star OJ Simpson’s infamous mug shot followed an even more notorious police chase in 1994 that led to his arrest in connection with the murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown, and her friend, Ron Goldman. The pair were found stabbed to death on 12 June 1994, and Simpson – whose marriage to Brown had ended to years prior – became a person of interest not least because he’d pleaded no contest to a domestic violence charge against her in 1989.
Simpson was expected to turn himself in to authorities on 17 June but instead, as a passenger in a white Ford Bronco, led police on a low-speed and highly-televised police chase through Los Angeles. The 90-minute pursuit ended with the athlete’s arrest at his home in the upscale neighborhood of Brentwood. He was charged with both murders, and the trial was equally publicised, lasting 11 months before a California jury returned a not guilty verdict in October 1995. It brought to prominence lawyer Robert Kardashian, whose family went on to carve out a multi-billion brand empire – and became known as the “Trial of the Century.”
OJ Simpson was arrested in June 1994 after leading police on a slow-speed chase through Los Angeles, eventually being found not guilty of murdering his ex-wife and her friend – though the NFL player’s legal troubles continued— (LAPD)
Simpson was later found liable for the wrongful death of and battery against Goldman and battery against Brown in a civil trial, ordered pay $33.5m in damages. But his legal troubles were not older, and arguably became more bizarre; in 2007, he was arrested for his role in an armed robbery of sports memorabilia at a Las Vegas hotel – going on to serve nine years in a Nevada prison.
He was released in 2021, the same year his lawyer said Simpson also would continue to fight court orders that he owes at least $60m in judgments stemming from the 1994 killings, AP reported. Simpson turned 76 last month.
Justin Bieber
Baby-faced pop star Justin Bieber was still a teenager when he was arrested and booked in Florida on 23 January 2014 – and posed with an ear-to-ear youthful grin for his mug shot.
Police took the singer into custody after officers allegedly saw him drag-racing on a residential street in a yellow Lamborghini; Bieber later admitted smoking marijuana, drinking and taking a prescription medication, police said at the time.
Dressed in orange, the singer appeared dishevelled, but in high spirits, as he smiled for police behind the camera— (Miami Beach Police)
He pleaded guilty in August 2014 to misdemeanor charges of careless driving and resisting arrest. The plea deal included a 12-hour anger management course, a $50,000 charitable contribution and fines and allowed Bieber to avoid a driving under the influence conviction.
Seven years after the arrest, when he was 26, Bieber addressed the incident on Instagram, calling it “not my finest hour” and explaining he was “Not proud of where I was at in my life.
“I was hurting, unhappy, confused, angry, mislead, misunderstood and angry at god.. I also wore too much leather for someone in Miami. All this to say God has brought me a long way. From then til now I do realize something.. God was as close to me then as he is right now.”
