Celebrity breakdowns

In the summer of 2001 Mariah Carey showed up on the set of MTV’s “Total Request Live” pushing an ice cream cart filled with popsicles and dressed in little more than a t-shirt with the word “Loverboy” on the front. “I just want one day off when I can go swimming and eat ice cream and look at rainbows,” she told Carson Daly. Then she did an impromptu striptease and gave Daly the shirt as a present (she was wearing a skimpy tank top underneath). It was a weird sad moment and the star checked into a hospital later that week.  (Lee Celano / AFP)

Kidder’s life has been…intense… thanks to a lifelong struggle with manic depression. But things got really weird in 1996 when a computer virus erased three years of work on her memoir. When a file retrieval service told her all was lost, Kidder went from distressed to delusional. Convinced the CIA and her ex-husband novelist Thomas McGuane were trying to kill her, she threw away her purse in an airport because she thought there was a bomb in it and wound up living for a few days with a homeless man named Charlie in a cardboard box in downtown L.A.  (Annie Wells / LAT)

Courtney Love has been screwed up ever since she joined the celebrity world as the front woman of the band Hole and the outsized wife of grunge superstar Kurt Cobain. But her career reached new lows in 2004 when in the same week she flashed David Letterman at least six times on his late night talk show, and got arrested for hurling a microphone stand into the audience at a show in New York that hit a 24-year-old in the head.  (Frederick M. Brown / Getty Images)

In 1996, the actor was found screaming in the middle of traffic on Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks. He was carrying a gun, although not waving it around, and he was reportedly yelling, “Fight! Don’t give up! Fight the power!” Lawrence’s physician said the actor had failed to take prescribed medicine and was suffering a seizure. Another doctor said Lawrence was suffering from “complete exhaustion and dehydration.”  (Chris Pizzello / AP)

Keep your fingers crossed for Houston. America’s beloved songstress of the ‘80s and early ‘90s recently came out of some dark days marked by drug abuse, fights with ex-hubby Bobby Brown and inexplicable pilgrimages to Israel. But signs are looking good: In August 2009, Houston and mentor/producer Clive Davis released a new album, “I Look to You,” which, as Times pop music critic Ann Powers points out, “doesn’t soar like the old days, it’s fine to hear Houston working on her own recovery plan.”

Houston’s cutting a record with old mogul-pal Clive Davis. But then again, that record has been rumored to come out for some time now.  (Laura Rauch / Associated Press)

Sometimes it’s best not to go off script. After allegedly being heckled during a stand-up routine at the Laugh Factory in 2006, the “Seinfeld” star broke from his act and fought back by hurling expletives at the supposed jesters, (who, by the way, were black) -- including repeating the “N-word.”  (Kevork Djansezian / Associated Press)

Life imitating art? After a messy, public separation from husband Kevin Federline, the pop star/tabloid staple picked up an umbrella and took her frustration out on a paparazzi’s SUV. She later apologized via her website, saying:

“I was preparing my character for a role in a movie where the husband never plays his part so they switch places accidentally. I take all my roles very seriously and got a little carried away. Unfortunately I didn’t get the part.”  (Jae C. Hong / Associated Press)

In 2005, the hot-headed leading man was arrested for throwing a telephone at an employee at New York‘s Mercer Hotel, where he was staying while promoting the boxing film “ Cinderella Man.” Previous scuffles have included mouthing off when his 2002 BAFTA awards tribute to ailing actor Richard Harris was cut short, a fight in a London restaurant and throw-down at the Plantation Hotel in Coffs Harbour, Australia.  (Louis Lanzano / Associated Press)

First word got out about the October 2006 on-set skirmish between Washington and his “Grey’s Anatomy” co-star Patrick Dempsey, in which Washington allegedly outed innocent bystander/costar T.R. Knight by calling him a “faggot.”

Then, at the Golden Globes that January, Washington attempted to clear his name by telling reporters “No, I did not call T.R. a faggot” -- only to make matters worse.

After he was fired from the nighttime soap, Washington spoke out again, this time blaming to ordeal on his race and telling Newsweek “If a black man can’t get forgiveness in this country, when so many other people like Robert Downey Jr. and the governor of California get second and third chances ... I think that says a lot about race and this country where we stand.”  (Kevin Winter / Getty Images)