15. In 2001, after a bizarre appearance on TRL that involved her showing up unannounced, pushing an ice cream cart, and stripping off her clothes, she spent two weeks recovering in a Connecticut mental hospital, citing extreme exhaustion for her breakdown. She later revealed in 2018 that she had been diagnosed with bipolar II disorder at the time, but kept her diagnosis private. “I’m just in a really good place right now, where I’m comfortable discussing my struggles with bipolar II disorder,” she told People at the time. “I’m hopeful we can get to a place where the stigma is lifted from people going through anything alone. It can be incredibly isolating. It does not have to define you and I refuse to allow it to define me or control me.”
16. Just months after her stay in the institution, Carey unleashed Glitter on the world. The film and its soundtrack were such bombs that they prompted Virgin Records to buy her out of her record deal for $50 million. She would sign a contract with Island Records in early 2002, launching the record label MonarC in the process.
17. Glitter isn’t the only film Carey has appeared in over the years. She earned some pretty great reviews for her work as a social worker in friend Lee Daniels‘ award-winning 2009 film Precious. In 2013, she appeared in another Daniels’ film, The Butler, playing Hattie Pearl, the mother of the film’s titular butler, Cecil Gaines (played by Forest Whitaker).
