The iconic socialite goes skydiving in an excerpt from her revealing new memoir.
After witnessing Paris Hilton’s 20+ years in the spotlight, you might think you’ve already heard everything there is to know about her. She would like to change your mind about that.
In the early 2000s, when Hilton first exploded in popularity as a party girl turned tabloid fixation turned TV star with the reality hit The Simple Life, she wrote a book called Confessions of an Heiress. At the time, an inside look at Hilton’s secrets was all the press could want. The catch? The book was light on actual confessions — which was clearly intentional, as indicated by the book’s subtitle: “A Tongue-in-Chic Peek Behind the Pose.”
The persona of a spoiled, over-the-top “dumb blonde” is what defined Hilton’s image through her early career, catapulting her to A-list fame but also creating an indelible impression that would be hard to shake. In the years since, Hilton has explained that she saw herself as playing a character at the time, giving the media the one-dimensional identity they wanted while using the attention as a launching pad to create a staggering business empire that now includes nearly 30 fragrances, a podcast, a Netflix cooking show, and a career as a DJ for which she earns $1 million per set. Along with her sister Nicky Hilton, she’s grown up and wised up on how to redefine herself in the public eye.
That includes the revealing 2020 documentary This is Paris, in which she shared for the first time the upsetting details of how she was abused at a boarding school as a teenager, which had wide-ranging effects on her for years to come (and brought her to the White House last year to advocate for children who had similar experiences).
And now, she’s opening up even further with Paris: The Memoir, which is overstuffed with personal insights about the stories observers think they know, even though they’ve never heard Hilton’s side. The book includes its fair share of heavy topics, touching on Hilton’s trauma from the abuse at school and the infamous sex tape that both made her a household name and mortified her in public, along with plenty of juicy, page-turning stories we haven’t yet heard.
In an exclusive excerpt, Hilton, now 42, takes us back to the whirlwind that was her 21st birthday party, a multi-city extravaganza that you probably still see photos of on Instagram and TikTok today. What you don’t know is what she did after the party — and the existential lesson she learned.
People told me it was stupid to go skydiving the morning after my 21st birthday party in Las Vegas, but back then, I didn’t care, and now I know they were wrong. If you want to go skydiving the morning after a Level 9 rager, go for it. Your 21st birthday is prime real estate for stupid, and a lot of stupid things you do in your 20s lay the foundation for wisdom later on. As you wise up, you realize that all the stupid things you didn’t do — those are the regrets. My 20s were like, damn, girl. Leave no stupid behind. Love the wrong men. Hate the wrong women. Wear the Von Dutch.
I have no regrets.
Okay, I have a few regrets.
Skydiving is not one of them.
My 21st birthday celebration in 2002 spanned multiple days and time zones with a whole lineup of design-forward dresses, platform heels, and diamond tiaras. This was the genesis of my iconic silver chain mail dress by Julien MacDonald — a dress Kendall Jenner cloned for her 21st birthday party in 2016. That’s how timeless this garment is. I wore mine again (hell, yes, I kept it!) on my last night in Marabella, Spain, when I was DJing there in 2017. Dancing in that dress is better than a milk bath. I want every girl to feel that way on her 21st birthday: free, happy, beautiful, and loved.
Invincible.
A fascinating assortment of people danced to my handpicked playlist: my sister and cousins, childhood friends like Nicole Richie, hot matriarchs including Mom, Kris Jenner, and Faye Resnick, random legends like P. Diddy — all the family and friends who’ve been a constant in my life, but also a lot of cool people who came and went because some friendships just have their seasons, and that’s okay.
This was before my professional DJ days, but I always had an instinct for the ebb and flow. Club music of the early aughts was made for raging: Chemical Brothers, Depeche Mode, and my soul song: Ultra Naté’s “Free.”
I didn’t want that night to be over. For most of my adult life, nightmares chewed through my brain and tore up my stomach. I was terrified to fall asleep, so I kept dancing until my body was like, Stop.
The next thing I knew, my phone was vibrating in my armpit.
Someone was pounding on my hotel room door. “Paris, wake up. We have to get to the airstrip.”
And then I remembered that I had told everyone I was going skydiving.
The room reeled like a disco ball. My right eyeball was in supernova.
This was going to suck.
On the way to a tiny airstrip outside Las Vegas, I kept telling myself: don’t be lame, don’t be lame. I knew that if I vomited or cried, someone would take pictures. Some of these people were trusted friends, but others I didn’t know, so I defaulted to trust no one mode. I covered my head with my jacket and trembled like a wet dog.
I was so dehydrated and wrung out, I couldn’t even comprehend the instructor’s “blah blah tandem jump—blah blah freefalling first mile ….” They strapped the apparatus on me, and the small airplane took off.
Now I was 100% sober, and I was scared.
Everyone was laughing and talking, yelling because the engine was so loud. I just sat there on the lap of this guy who was literally strapped to my body — our bodies spooned together — so that was weird, and then they opened the door, and a blast of freezing cold air roared in.
Above this door was a sign. Red letters. All caps.
THIS DOOR MUST REMAIN CLOSED
But now this door is open.
Every time someone jumps, everyone else scoots forward.
Jump. Scoot.
Jump. Scoot.
I feel the edge under my feet. The wind whips away the sound of my screaming like a loose thread.
“On three!” says the guy, but it was like, “One,” and then—
Nothing.
Everything.
Air.
Unbearable brightness.
A blessed rush of adrenaline.
I expected to feel like I was falling. Like the ground was flying up at my face. It’s not like that. You start out miles above the earth, so even though you’re falling at 120 miles per hour, the space around you is so vast, your perspective is that of a slow-moving cloud.
There was nothing to hang onto. Nothing to let go. No audience to play for. I opened my arms and felt unpolluted joy.
A state of grace.
I’m here.
I survived.
I love my life.
Marilyn Monroe said, “Fear is stupid. So is regret.”
In general, I’ve found this to be true. Many times, throughout my life, the most terrifying moments have led to the most fulfilling. Freefalling over the Nevada desert is just one example.
From Paris: The Memoir by Paris Hilton. Copyright © 2023 by 11:11 Media, LLC. Reprinted by permission of Dey Street Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
