Perez Hilton has spent more than two decades ricocheting between fame and infamy, scandal and redemption, reinvention and regret.
He dreamed of becoming an actor, but ended up Hollywood’s most notorious gossip blogger, building an internet empire by rattling the biggest stars of the ‘00s. However, scandals, celebrity feuds and changing pop culture tastes forced the self-styled “Queen of Mean” to confront — and reckon with — the Perez of his past.
That culminated in the most horrifying way imaginable this week.
On Tuesday night, the 48-year-old appeared to cut himself with a knife and talked of suicide during a horrific TikTok livestream, prompting frantic viewers to call emergency services. He is now being treated in hospital.
The single dad-of-three has long battled with his weight and depression, and just months ago survived a near-fatal bout of sepsis, before dramatically declaring he had found God.
Friends say his mental health crisis came out of nowhere, just weeks after uprooting his family from Las Vegas for a new beginning in his native Miami.
“He barely drinks, I can’t actually remember the last time I saw him drinking any alcohol and he definitely doesn’t do drugs, so all of this is completely out of character,” one source close to Hilton told The Post.
“It’s not like this has been a downward spiral. It just hasn’t.”
However, Hilton has been open about his mounting medical bills and the cross-country move taking a toll on him, as well as struggling to escape the vicious online character that made him infamous.
“Old Perez is like a permanent tattoo I can’t get rid of,” he told a reporter in 2019, in previously unpublished interview obtained by The Post.
He started out as Mario Lavandeira Jr., born to Cuban parents in Little Havana, attending a Jesuit Preparatory School, then New York University to study drama before moving to Los Angeles.
While Hollywood didn’t want him, the internet did.
Hilton launched (ahem) PageSixSixSix.com in 2004, which was quickly renamed PerezHilton.com, a moniker he also adopted as his stage name, a riff on the then-biggest internet star Paris Hilton.
It was the dawn of the anything-goes celebrity-blog era, with Britney Spears melting down in front of paparazzi and Lindsay Lohan’s discretions ruling the tabloids.
Hilton, who is openly gay, capitalized. He became known for scribbling crude images over paparazzi shots, inventing insulting nicknames and gleefully skewering celebrities’ bodies, relationships and personal crises.
He relentlessly mocked Britney Spears during her highly publicized mental-health struggles and, following Heath Ledger’s death in 2008, notoriously sold T-shirts reading: “Why couldn’t it be Britney?”
He publicly speculated about — and in some cases outed — stars, including Lance Bass and Neil Patrick Harris, arguing at the time that exposing gay celebrities was legitimate reporting.
Hilton claimed he was drawing in over eight million readers a day in 2007 and became as recognizable as many of the celebrities he covered.
Three years later, the tide was turning. Hilton had racked up feuds with the Black Eyed Peas and Lady Gaga, sparked outrage by posting a photograph which appeared to show 17-year-old Miley Cyrus without underwear and found himself embroiled in lawsuits with paparazzi over using their copyrighted photos.
“One of the many things I regret is that I hurt so many people by giving them nasty nicknames, and above all that I was unkind to the children of celebrities,” he later wrote in his 2020 memoir “TMI: My Life in Scandal.”
Hilton tried to show a different side of himself by appearing on reality shows such as the UK edition of “Celebrity Big Brother” and “Worst Cooks in America.”
Life also changed when he became a father through gestational surrogacy, welcoming son Mario Armando Lavandeira III in February 2013, daughter Mia Alma in 2015 and daughter Mayte Amor in 2017.
All three children are genetically his and were conceived using eggs from the same anonymous donor, but carried by different surrogates.
Sources told Page Six he has always been a “devoted dad” and fatherhood changed him a great deal.
“I’m really happy. I strive to be even happier … I want to work hard at being even happier. That requires thought, analyzing, observing. And I love that as I get close to 41, I’m doing things differently than before,” he said in the 2019 interview.
Hilton’s mother, Teresita, has remained a major part of his life and helped him raise the children, while he’s also close to his sister, Barbara.
“The person Mario is away from his social media and online character of Perez Hilton is so different from the person that people think of him as,” the friend said. “He’s so kind, a little shy, self-deprecating and incredibly funny.
As part of a public reinvention, Hilton also focused on his physical health.
At his heaviest, Hilton said he tipped the scales at 255lbs, but lost more than 60lbs through years of diet and exercise. He said in 2025 maintaining his transformation was a daily fight.
“I am a food addict,” Hilton told The Post at the time. “If I fall off the wagon, like an alcoholic, it takes so much to get back on.”
Amid hosting a podcast, running his site — which in recent years has become a more niche interest — and making TV appearances, 2026 has proven a year of significant upheaval.
In March a bout of flu spiraled, with Hilton later saying he had been taking medication without food and developed an ulcer, followed by a stomach perforation which led to sepsis.
“My stupidity landed me in the hospital for 21 days,” Hilton said while recounting the ordeal in a video posted on Instagram. “My body kept falling apart.”
A subsequent blood clot in his leg provided another serious health scare.
“It scared the hell out of him and was a massive awakening,” a source told The Post.
Then Hilton, raised Catholic and educated by Jesuits, but not really a believer, found God.
He said himself what he experienced, he could only call “miraculous.”
In a tearful video after his hospitalization, he apologized and admitted he had hurt people in pursuit of attention, money and clicks.
“Nobody’s perfect, but my mistakes are very public,” he said in a video shared on social media earlier this year. “The internet is forever. Receipts are forever. I carry with me deep shame and regret. I’m sorry, I will continue to apologize.”
In June, he suddenly announced he and his family were leaving Las Vegas, saying “This is heaven-sent. God told me to move to Miami.”
Hilton acknowledged he felt guilty about uprooting his children, and the city held difficult memories for him.
“For the longest time, for 30-plus years, I did not love Miami,” he said in a June 17 clip, explaining priests had constantly shamed students at his school about homosexuality, and his father and grandfather had died there.
“Even though I was born and raised there … I got out of there as quickly as I could because I had so much trauma associated with my time in Miami.”
Sources separately said Wednesday Hilton found establishing a new home in Miami more difficult than expected, and financial woes were baring down on him.
“Some pretty extreme medical bills really hit him hard,” the source said. “He’s one of the hardest-working people I know, and suddenly being faced with these mounting financial pressures was a lot for him.”
Hilton is also the breadwinner for his entire family, which added to pressures, sources said. However, nobody could be prepared for the horrific scenes livestreamed this week, which shocked the world.
“Our focus remains on Perez’s health, recovery and the privacy of both him and his family,” his reps said Wednesday.
And those close to him are hoping he takes his own advice, imparted seven years ago when he said experiencing depression in his 20s taught him something which would help if he hit dark times again.
“I’ll know that it’s temporary,” he said.
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