5 Celebrity Parents Who Kept Their Partners’ Identity a Secret

Some celebrities go to extreme measures to keep their personal lives private, especially when it comes to their family.

Last month, news broke that Mindy Kaling was expecting her first child, but she has not revealed the father’s identity. The news took many fans by surprise, as the actress wasn’t in a confirmed relationship.

While many hope to learn the father’s identity, Kaling, including other stars, has decided to keep it a secret.

This isn’t the first time someone in Hollywood announced a pregnancy without revealing their partners’ identity.

Read below to learn what celebrities kept the identity of their child’s parent a mystery.

January Jones

January Jones still hasn’t revealed her son’s father’s identity. 

The Mad Men star welcomed her now 5-year-old son Xander Dane in 2011. She has explained that Xander’s dad’s identity was “not something public needs to know.”

In 2013, the actress told The Edit, “I knew I would be raising my son alone. It was something I went in to knowingly, I was prepared mentally — and I was excited about it.”

At the beginning of this year, she opened up about her birthing experience. “My younger sisters and my mom and my doula were in the room; my brother-in-law and my dad were next door. I only wanted women with me. Female energy,” she told Red. “It was a 30-hour process but it was awesome. I’d love to do it again.”

Mia Farrow

Mia Farrow had the entire word thinking Woody Allen was her son Ronan Farrow’s biological father until she made a confession in 2013. During an interview with Vanity Fair, Farrow said that Ronan’s dad was “possibly” Frank Sinatra. 

She was married to the singer from 1966 to 1968. She began dating Allen in 1980 and welcomed Ronan in 1987.

Even Allen has previously commented on Ronan’s feature, saying he looks a lot like Sinatra.

However in 2015, a Sinatra biography stated that it is not possible for the “Fly Me to the Moon” singer to be the biological father because he was impotent and incapacitated by a stomach surgery at the time Ronan was conceived.

Minnie Driver

Minner Driver kept the identity of her son Henry’s father a secret for quite some time.

She revealed that producer Timothy J. Lea was the father nearly three years after welcoming her son in 2008. The two met while on set of the television series The Riches.

“We weren’t together and he wasn’t directly in the business, so I chose to protect him and not have a rain of publicity, she told The Guardian in 2012, adding, “I know, but it’s ridiculous. He’s not famous. There’s no big story.”

Earlier this year, Driver spoke about her now 8-year-old son. “He was a very unattractive baby, so I know what it’s like to go ‘You don’t have to tell me that he’s beautiful cause I know he’s not. But I love him,’” she said, adding that he is a brilliant musician.

Bebe Buell

Bebe Buell’s daughter Liv Tyler didn’t know who her father was until she was 8 years old. 

Tyler discovered Areosmith rocker Steven Tyler was her father on her own. “I kind of figured it out because he looked exactly like me and I have a sister named Mia who is a year younger than me and I saw her standing on the side of the stage at a concert and I was literally like looking at my twin … and I looked at my mum and she had tears in her eyes and I kind of put it all together,” Tyler said on the Jonathan Ross Show in 2015.

At the time of Tyler’s birth, Buell had ended her short relationship with the singer and was dating Todd Rundgren. 

Padma Lakshmi

Padma Lakshmi was not completely positive who the father of her daughter Krishna was when she first got pregnant in 2009.

At the time she was dating the late IMG CEO Teddy Forstmann, who passed away in 2011, as well as Adam Dell.

In her memoir “Love, Loss and What We Ate,” she wrote, “A question began to nag at my giddiness: not so much ‘How?’ but the far more uncomfortable ‘Who?’”

After a paternity test, it was revealed that Dell was Krishna’s biological father. Dell took the Top Chef host to court over custody of their daughter in 2011. They settled the case amicably in 2012. Earlier this year, the couple rekindled their romance.