Pop superstar Britney Spears was released from police custody Thursday morning after being arrested on suspicion of driving while intoxicated near Los Angeles, according to legal filings and US media reports.The 44-year-old singer was arrested Wednesday night and booked into custody by the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department on suspicion of DUI, several entertainment news outlets said, citing police sources. Spears was reportedly taken into custody at around 9:30 pm and released on Thursday, at 6:07 AM local time, sheriff’s office records show. Britney’s court appearance had been set for May 4.
Britney Spears’ representative react
“This was an unfortunate incident that is completely inexcusable. Britney is going to take the right steps and comply with the law,” a representative for Spears said in a statement to entertainment outlet Deadline. “Hopefully this can be the first step in long overdue change that needs to occur in Britney’s life.”
About Britney Spears’ rise to fame
Spears, born in Mississippi and raised in Louisiana, was a teen pop phenomenon who became a defining superstar of the ’90s and 2000s.She rose to fame from Disney Channel’s ‘The Mickey Mouse Club’ to MTV and beyond, with such era-defining hits like ‘… Baby One More Time’, ‘Oops! … I Did It Again’ and ‘Toxic’.Most of her albums have been certified platinum, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, with two diamond titles: 1999’s ‘… Baby One More Time’ and 2000’s ‘Oops! … I Did It Again’. Her last full-length album, ‘Glory’, was released in 2016.
Britney Spears put under conservatorship
Spears became a focus of tabloids in the early 2000s, and a source of public scrutiny, as she battled mental illness and paparazzi documented the details of her private life. Following a public breakdown in 2007, Spears was placed under the conservatorship of her father Jamie Spears, who controlled her money and her personal life, even as she continued to perform high-profile concerts.In 2008, Spears was placed under a court-ordered conservatorship, run primarily by her father and his lawyers, that would control her personal and financial decisions for well over a decade. Later, as cultural opinion evolved to recognize the misogynistic media coverage of the time, Spears’ fight to control her life became the focus of the #FreeBritney movement. It was dissolved in 2021.
Britney Spears releases memoir
In her 2023 memoir ‘The Woman in Me’, Spears insisted she never did hard drugs and that she did not have a drinking problem, but admitted that she was taking Adderall, the ADHD medication.
