Perez Hilton attending Paper Magazine's Beautiful People Party in New York on April 25, 2014. Bennett Raglin/WireImage When Perez Hilton committed to stop bullying celebrities, drawing penises and ejaculate splatters on paparazzi photos of them using MS Paint, and publishing slurs like “whoreanus” for millions of readers on his popular blog, it became national news.
The New York Times’ Brian Stelter wrote about the shock-blogger’s sudden change of heart in fall 2010 with a headline, “Perez Hilton Vows to End Celebrity Insults,” under which he credited Hilton as a “master at maximizing publicity for himself and his website” while serving up a “steady online diet of humiliation for his celebrity targets.” Hilton, real name Mario Lavandeira, broke the news himself in a YouTube video titled “I’m Going to Be Doing Things Differently,” and explained it further in a reflective interview with Out, in which he credited close friend Lady Gaga for supporting the decision to play nice.
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Showing that savvy for maximizing PR, Hilton requested a spot on Ellen DeGeneres’ No. 1 talk show. Against the advice of those in her inner circle, the onetime “queen of nice,” who closed her daily program with the catchphrase “be kind to one another,” welcomed him in for an episode that aired in October 2010. “From now on, I want to be part of the solution and not part of the problem,” Hilton told DeGeneres, a resolution he claimed to have arrived at after much soul searching and in the wake of public backlash for participating in the “It Gets Better” anti-bullying campaign for LGBTQ youth as critics blasted him for being the blogosphere’s most notorious bully. Hilton, an out gay man himself, also said he would stop outing gay stars, something he had regularly done and shown little remorse for until a rash of teen suicides became a cultural flashpoint, among them 18-year-old Tyler Clementi, who was outed when an intimate encounter with another man was shared online by his roommate.
What came to light months later is that Hilton also had an A-lister to thank for his transformation. Jennifer Aniston, one of his frequent targets, whom he’d nicknamed “Maniston,” happened to spot Hilton walking in a Los Angeles parking garage as she and a friend were leaving dinner, so she took her chance to address the online harassment face-to-face. “It was one of those great moments. It was a lovely meeting and I was just like, ‘Why are you so mean?'” Aniston recalled of the “human” moment in 2011, also during an appearance on DeGeneres’ couch. “It’s really rewarding and inspiring and heartwarming to have Jennifer Aniston give me her seal of approval,” Hilton later said in an interview. “For her to have made this proclamation on Ellen DeGeneres’ show means I’m turning the corner in terms of public perception. There’s no turning back.”
That didn’t hold true forever, however, because the internet has a habit of bringing everything back. In the 16 years since Hilton’s vow to do better, during which he mostly remained committed to the mission — aside from a handful of questionable excursions in the murky waters of celebrity gossip — negative public perception of Hilton resurfaced in the wake of a horrific self-harm and suicide attempt that unfolded in real-time on TikTok Live Aug. 4. (As of late August, family members confirmed that he remained hospitalized in Florida while being treated for a drug overdose, blood loss, lacerations and broken bones sustained during the nightmarish scene, and mental health issues.) A chasm formed in social media comment sections. Legions of longtime fans prayed for a full recovery, calling on God to protect Hilton, who had recently come out as a self-proclaimed “believer” of Jesus Christ following a near-death experience and 21-day hospital stay due to sepsis earlier this year. Detractors, meanwhile, called what happened “karma,” or worse.
“This is the same guy who made millions turning celebrities into punching bags. Addiction? Clickbait. Mental health? Clickbait. Divorces? Clickbait. Public meltdowns? Christmas fucking morning,” reads one widely shared post that mentioned his personal attacks on the appearance of then-teenager Rumer Willis, whom he regularly referred to by a derogatory nickname. “You don’t get to spend two decades selling tickets to everyone else’s humiliation and then act offended when somebody buys a front-row seat to yours. This isn’t ‘cancel culture.’ This is the bill finally showing up.”
Perez Hilton in the Chanel celebrity suite during the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 11, 2006. (Photo by Carlo Allegri/Getty Images) Bill Maher and playmate Bridget Marquardt with Hilton at a Playboy party in L.A. on Aug. 15, 2006. (Photo by Michael Buckner/Getty Images for Playboy Enterprises, Inc.) Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt (right) with Hilton at a charity event on June 8, 2008. (Photo by Michael Buckner/Getty Images) His former publicist, Ben Russo, who represented Hilton from his early days through a meteoric rise as the most popular and successful celebrity blogger, caught the “extraordinary debate” unfolding online, so he took the rare step as a personal rep by writing a column to defend his beloved friend. “The person being judged today is simply not the person people remember from a website two decades ago. None of us can rewrite our past, but I believe we have to allow people the possibility of becoming something more than the things they may have done,” Russo wrote in the piece published by Page Six. “Accountability matters. And Perez took it. But if accountability offers no possibility of redemption, it is not accountability. It is permanent punishment.”
Russo’s point hits at the heart of the fiery online debate over cancel culture — who is worthy of redemption, who isn’t, what they must do to win back public approval and how long that takes.
In an interview, Russo expanded upon the points he made in the column, particularly relating to compassion and how it doesn’t require people to forget the past. He hopes that people realize Hilton is a human being. After all, Hilton has also explained that he spent time making amends to celebrities behind-the-scenes and reaching out to everyone from Britney Spears to Khloe Kardashian to apologize directly. Hilton, known as Mario to friends and family, has grown and matured a lot over these past two decades after welcoming three children via surrogate, said Russo, adding, “being a father really changed him.”
But the debate wasn’t confined to comment sections or to Substack, where journalist Tracie Morrissey called Hilton “the internet’s original hater.” It’s been happening in real life in Hollywood, where his impact on media and culture remains a topic of conversation. An A-list talent publicist recalled what it was like to deal with Hilton back in the day while working at a firm that represented many of his targets, young stars like Nicole Richie, Mischa Barton, Lindsay Lohan, Reese Witherspoon and more.
“He was fucking cruel for putting those cum splotches and penis drawings on women’s faces. I also remember the mea culpa, but not everyone accepted it because it was almost like, Fuck you, you were unkind for so long and it really hurt people,” the rep explained, adding that clients like Richie were known to be upset by his attacks. If any rep or colleague called to complain, she claimed Hilton was dismissive. “It was like a high school burn book, and he was bringing that nonsense to a legitimate business in Hollywood at a time when it was already hard to be young.”
A flourishing market of celebrity weeklies, insatiable paparazzi and the public’s seemingly bottomless appetite for gossip created a perfect storm of drama for celebrities, particularly young stars. “Everyone was trying to live, grow up and make mistakes, as we all do, but there was a terrible person out there calling everyone out in front of millions. And he wasn’t some nameless, faceless person like some of these other outlets, like Gawker or Radar Online. People knew Perez,” the rep continued. “Obviously, it is very sad to see what he’s going through but part of me still feels like, well, you reap what you sow. Can we give him grace if he didn’t give us grace? He thought he was on top of the world, making money and becoming famous. That was his goal from the beginning.”
Another source close to Hilton countered by saying he may have behaved badly but it was in the past, a much different era in media and pop culture. “Outing people, calling people fat, that’s obviously something we don’t do anymore,” said a media insider, adding it was not uncommon in the blog and tabloid space of the early aughts. “We did a lot of things as a society in 2007, 2008 and 2009 that we would never do today.”
Hilton at the MTV Video Music Awards at L.A.’s Paramount Pictures on Sept. 7, 2008. (Photo by Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images) Hilton and Amanda Bynes at his 31st birthday party at L.A.’s Viper Room on March 28, 2009. Bynes was among the stars who sought out Hilton by stopping by the Coffee Bean location to introduce herself. (Photo by Angela Weiss/Getty Images) Hilton with onetime good friend Lady Gaga at Wango Tango in Irvine, Calif. on May 9, 2009. Jesse Grant/WireImage Lindsay Lohan and Hilton at an Us Weekly party in L.A. on April 22, 2009. Chris Polk/FilmMagic Hilton didn’t always want to be famous — at least not as a blogger. He wanted to be an actor. Mario Armando Lavandeira Jr. was born and raised in Miami to Cuban parents, Teresita and Mario Lavandeira Sr. Hilton, who has a younger sister, Barbara “Barbie” Lavandeira, attended a private, all-boys Catholic school, Belen Jesuit Preparatory School. His father died suddenly of a brain aneurysm when Hilton was 15, and Hilton has said the loss left lingering questions as he spent years wondering whether his father would’ve accepted a gay son.
After graduating from high school in 1996, Hilton moved to New York to chase his acting dreams. He attended New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, where he pursued a drama degree. After graduation in 2000, Hilton spent time as a media relations assistant for gay watchdog group GLAAD while freelancing and auditioning on the side. He scored an prestigious early acting gig in 2001 by appearing as “male student” on HBO’s critically acclaimed series The Sopranos.
A passion for acting inspired Hilton to make the move to Los Angeles in 2002, where he spent a few years in the Hollywood hustle while juggling short-lived day jobs. (He was reportedly fired as a reporter at tabloid weekly Star.) In fall 2004, he dipped his toes into the burgeoning blog business by launching PageSixSixSix.com, a cheeky nod to the iconic gossip column. A legal tussle ensued when Page Six parent company The New York Post filed a lawsuit. He agreed to drop the name in favor of a rebrand as PerezHilton.com, riffing on one of the most famous “it girls” of that era, hotel heiress Paris Hilton, who would later become a close friend.
The name became an alter ego. “Perez is a character, an exaggerated version of me,” Hilton once told The Guardian. “He can say things I would never say.” The creation turned heads and stoked interest from insiders. “I called him and took him to lunch,” recalls a former National Enquirer editor. “His blog was a new format at the time, and he was breaking stories in a funny way with a point of view that was interesting, and not quite as cruel as it would become.” The editor, who has since left the tabloid business, added that he and Hilton bonded over a shared background and a genuine thirst for gossip.
“He was a real hard worker though he was struggling in the early days, completely broke and living in a shitty apartment somewhere. I actually bought him lunch because he was telling me how broke and hungry he was. Then, almost overnight, he blew up.”
The Perez Hilton rebrand happened in May 2005, and by that point he had already received a nickname of his from tabloid TV show The Insider, who dubbed his blog “Hollywood’s Most-Hated Website.” Within a year, he was reportedly generating more than one million page views per day thanks to his rapid-fire posts. By 2007, he was recording daily page views in the range of 7-10 million, besting other outlets like Gawker and The Huffington Post. It helped that Hilton became one of the go-to sources for celebrity reporting and commentary amid public crises for troubled stars like Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears.
He wasn’t alone. Hilton happened to catch fire at a boom time for blogs and websites in the mid aughts. “The availability of high-speed internet was becoming affordable, meaning, we no longer had to dial in to go online. Our computers were always connected to the internet — a revolution at the time,” explains Trent Vanegas, a fellow pioneer in the space who co-founded the popular Pink is the New Blog.
Their peers included Jared Eng of Just Jared, Michael K. of DListed, Elaine Liu of Lainey Gossip, The Superficial, Jamarlin Martin of Bossip and more. “Because anyone could create a blog, the ability to voice opinions on certain topics became much more accessible on a wide scale,” Vanegas added. “For me, personally, I just wanted a fun outlet to write about my favorite things in pop culture. I never dreamed that anyone else would care.”
Millions did, and the clicks disrupted a traditional print media ecosystem dominated by People and Us Weekly. “For magazines, you had to wait a week to see the photos and read the dishy gossip,” noted Vanegas. “Blogs had the ability to provide much of the same content — sometimes the exact same photos — on a daily basis. I would hear all the time how people started their day by checking their favorite blogs before school or work. Or, they would read their blogs during their lunch hours or right after work or school. By the time the magazines and tabloids came out that week, the news was already old.”
With attention came cash. “The traffic was high enough that I was able to make more in one month than my year’s salary as a high school teacher,” said Vanegas, who moved his operation from home base in Detroit to Los Angeles. (He ended up selling his site and now works as a project manager for Roddenberry Entertainment overseeing the company’s 60th anniversary events for Star Trek.)
Though Hilton has largely stayed mum on how much he was making, sources close to him confirm it was “millions per year” at the height of his fame. His website reportedly charged upwards of $50,000 for a banner ad on blog’s landing page in 2007, and traffic ballooned from there. A source said he once owned two homes in Los Angeles; his main residence sold in 2023 for a whopping $3.695 million according to Realtor.com. In 2010, Gawker reported that Hilton declined an offer to sell his site for $20 million.
He parlayed blog fame to TV gigs, book deals (his first tome, Red Carpet Suicide, published in 2009), movie roles, event appearances, reality shows and ancillary businesses. After the softening of his brand, he launched nice, playful sites like CoCoPerez.com for fashion, FitPerez.com for fitness and wellness, TeddyHilton.com for animals (named after his dog), and Perezitos.com for kids and families. He briefly ran a music management firm and mounted music tours.
Not bad for someone who started blogging out of a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf location on Sunset Boulevard, where stars came to him to say hello, trade gossip and get in his good graces. As the site blew up, Hilton recruited both his mother and younger sister to join his growing empire and they remain deeply involved to this day. He also moved the professional operation from Coffee Bean (his first headquarters for the free WiFi) to a two-bedroom apartment, and later, the entire floor of a Wilshire Boulevard office building. An insider noted that Hilton helped the business grow by being a workaholic and writing every item himself. But as it grew and the demands on his time multiplied, he acted more as an editor-in-chief. Though he might not have been writing each item or blog post, he “signed off on everything,” they said.
While his insults may be what many remember, Hilton was widely praised for lifting up artists, especially singers, thanks to what insiders call a true gift for spotting those on the rise long before others. He parlayed that talent into a record company imprint with Warner Bros. He aggressively and passionately hyped the early music of Lady Gaga, helping to propel her to the mainstream, and similarly supported the careers of Katy Perry, Amy Winehouse, Mika and Adele. “He’s been championing me in America,” Adele said in 2008 after being nominated for four Grammy Awards, good news that arrived from Hilton himself via text message.
Katy Perry and Hilton at his 32nd birthday party at Paramount in L.A. on March 27, 2010. Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic Jessica Meisels, president and founder of Fingerprint Communications, recalled that she invited Hilton to his first Hollywood party, an entrée that offered social clout among the skeptical Hollywood crowd. “I had a personal relationship with him as all good publicists do with important media outlets and reporters,” she explained. “He calls himself the original influencer and he kind of was. He took his job very seriously and he enjoyed coming to events, doing a good job and working really hard. As complicated as his website was, if you got talked about by him, you mattered. The people he wrote about, it helped build a lot of their influence. Whether it was the good, the bad or the ugly, he was also befriended by a lot of them. People wanted to get on his good side so he didn’t talk shit about them.”
His birthday parties became must-attend events in Los Angeles, regularly hosting stars like Perry, Justin Bieber, Lohan, Bynes and more. Another veteran publicist and media insider confirmed that a mention on his blog could change a star’s career — for better or worse — and dictate the day’s news cycle. “Perez had so many eyeballs on him, it was almost like guaranteed syndication,” he said. “We’ve always had AP and Reuters but there weren’t a lot of places to get virality at that time if you wanted a story to travel. If Perez covered something, you knew that that story would take on a life of its own because 50 other blogs were going to pick up whatever he was posting.”
Hilton at a New Year’s Eve party in New York on Dec. 31, 2014. Robin Marchant/Getty Images The rep also gave him credit for something far less positive: popularizing internet hate. “There’s always been a place for celebrity gossip but he took it to the next level,” he said. “I really think he started rage bait and hateful comments, which we see everywhere from [X] to Instagram. Just look at how hateful social media can be. It didn’t used to be like this. We weren’t consumed by information the way we are now. Perez was part of the era that ushered in this insatiable appetite for constant updates and minute-by-minute gossip.”
But, the rep wondered, who is ultimately responsible: “Is it the producer or the consumer? He posted it but millions of people ate it up.”
Appetites change. The immediacy of social media lured millions away from celebrity blogs, and Hilton’s profile, like so many of his peers, took a hit. Not that he was any less prolific. An early adopter of online trends, Hilton was quick to YouTube and has continued to post regularly there. When podcasts became popular, he started one of those, too. Up until his suicide attempt, he hosted a weekly show in partnership with iHeart, alongside high-profile radio personality Chris Booker.
He raised his family in Los Angeles until 2023, at which point he made the decision to move to Las Vegas, where he worked regularly over the past three years by making special appearances and attending high-profile events like F1 races in addition to running his website and posting frequently across social media platforms. Sources close to Hilton said he has always had an affinity for Sin City — the razzle dazzle of it all meshed well with his larger-than-life personality — and he wanted a nice home and access to good schools for his three children. “He loved Vegas,” said a source. “And he really thrived there.”
So it came as a shock to some when he made what has been described as an impromptu decision to leave Las Vegas for the Miami area in the wake of his sepsis battle and subsequent surgery to remove a blood clot from his leg. Per Hilton, the months-long medical battle started when he took flu medication without following label instructions in early 2026. “I didn’t take any of my medication with food. I never have, and you’re supposed to take all of this medication with food,” he said in a revelatory YouTube video posted on his channel titled “My Stupidity Got Me In The Hospital For 21 Days! This Is The Most Important Video I’ve Ever Shared.” He added that his poor decision making led to an ulcer that led to a perforation that led to sepsis.
He claims that God visited him amid the health challenges, saving his life not once but twice. “One of the most special things about this experience is that god presented himself to me,” Hilton said in an emotional video. “It was not a feeling. God presented himself to me…I grew up Catholic. I was baptized, had my Communion confirmed, went to Jesuit school for seven years, but I was never a believer until now.”
The life-changing moment inspired him to start reading the Bible daily — he shared scripture passages with his loyal fan base and started attending church regularly — and eventually launch a merch website, BuyPopStuff.com, where he sold Jesus-themed memorabilia like sweatshirts, candles and mugs. The e-comm site, he said, was necessary because he was facing extremely high hospital bills. “Your boy is in hustle mode,” he said of the venture in an Instagram Reel.
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Though in Instagram Reels and on TikTok Hilton seemed joyful about the return to Florida, where his mother (who had been living with him) could be closer to her family and friends, behind the scenes he was having a difficult time, per two sources. “He was severely depressed after getting out of the hospital and questioning whether he made the right decision to move to Florida,” a source said. “He missed Vegas.”
According to the Sepsis Alliance, depression is among the symptoms of post-sepsis syndrome. Hilton was open about battling hair loss, fatigue, shortness of breath in the wake of his medical fight. During a recent online confessional after his sepsis hospitalization, Hilton said he had planned to take better care of himself and get more rest each night after only sleeping between four and five hours a night while trying to keep up with the flow of his business and celebrity news.
While appearing on a late August episode of The Perez Hilton Podcast with a solo Booker (who hosted the show in Hilton’s absence), Hilton’s brother-in-law wondered what many had suggested in the comments section, that Hilton’s suicide attempt could be the result of post-sepsis psychosis. However, psychiatrist Dr. Josef Witt-Doerring posted a lengthy YouTube video about the suicide live stream said the timeline doesn’t match up as it had been many months since his sepsis battle.
An insider came up with another theory: “I think a lot of it has to do with carrying the weight of being the Perez Hilton character for so long.” Still, only Hilton knows for sure and it could be months before he is released from mental-health care and returns online, and presumably shares the story himself. Meanwhile, his site returned to active posting Aug. 17, reporting on the death of Hayden Panettiere.
As he recovers, friends are hoping for the best. Said Meisels, “I hope he’s getting the help that he needs, and that he focuses on himself and not what he’s done to others. Everybody in Hollywood that’s ever been somewhat successful has a story or two or more about things they wish they hadn’t done. People live and learn. It’s about moving forward, doing the right thing and letting go of the past.”
Justin Bieber and Hilton at his 32nd birthday party at Paramount in L.A. on March 27, 2010. Jean Baptiste Lacroix/WireImage Hilton at a book signing for his children’s tome The Boy With Pink Hair in L.A. on Sept. 1, 2011. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images) Hilton and his mom at the L.A. premiere of Michael Jackson’s The Immortal World Tour on Jan. 27, 2012. (Photo by Mark Davis/Getty Images) Hilton at Logo’s NewNowNext Awards at Hollywood’s Avalon on April 5, 2012. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images) Hilton enters the Celebrity Big Brother house at Elstree Studios in England on Jan. 7, 2015. (Photo by Stuart C. Wilson/Getty Images) The Hiltons, Paris and Perez, at a party in L.A. on June 19, 2019. Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images THR Newsletters
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