Stamos' new book, 'If You Would Have Told Me,' is out now.
John Stamos is opening up in his revealing new memoir, pulling back the curtain on past relationships and personal secrets he's never shared before. The book, If You Would Have Told Me, takes readers back to the beginning of Stamos' career on General Hospital and delves into details from his sometimes difficult childhood.
Along the way, the 60-year-old actor candidly writes about his much talked-about divorce from model Rebecca Romijn, as well as the heartbreaking end of his relationship with actress Teri Copley, the highs and lows of his fling with Lori Loughlin, and his love-at-first-sight intuition with current wife Caitlin McHugh.
He also opens up about finding his place in Hollywood, including a nose job operation that went awry and his working relationship with the Olsen twins. .
Catch all the biggest revelations from If You Would Have Told Me below.
He had a nose job -- twice
"Everyone who gets a nose job tries to find some excuse other than vanity, but let's call it what it was -- vanity," Stamos writes. He recalls his nose being the only thing he could look at when he saw himself on TV for the first time, saying, "My nose is beginning to detract from my performance."
Unfortunately, he wasn't happy with the results of his surgery. "My nose [looked] kind of pushed up like Peter Pan or something," he writes. Shortly after, he had another operation, this time by Michael Jackson's plastic surgeon. "Who better to handle the delicate task of resculpting my nose than the man who created a whole new face for M.J.?" he muses.
He and Rebecca Romijn haven't seen each other since the final day of their divorce mediation
In his book, Stamos remembers his first meeting with ex-wife Rebecca Romijn, whom he exchanged phone numbers with at a party he initially attended with his Full House co-star, Lori Loughlin. Following the exchange, the two quickly fell in love.
"We travel the world together, spend holidays with family, and grow closer and closer," he writes. "The glam stuff gives way to an intimate relationship, the kind of comfort that feels like home. Less Victoria's Secret catalog lingerie and more topknot-and-sweats. She is my best friend; someone I genuinely care for."
Stamos and Romijn wed in 1998. "After two years of dating, I propose to her on Christmas Eve, naked. It's a spontaneous moment, so I don't have a ring," he remembers. Five hundred guests attended their wedding at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
The couple stayed married for nearly six years before announcing their separation in 2004. In his book, Stamos reveals they separated privately almost a year before that, in March 2003.
"Something cruel and calculating creeps into the pleasant patter of the day," he writes of his relationship's downfall. "She smiles at me a little less, doesn’t look me in the eyes over dinner, takes phone calls in the other room. Whispers behind doors. She makes a trip to the store seem clandestine."
"It's a strange, f**ked-up 'what the hell is happening' type of heartbreak that up to this point I've never felt. I wasn't prepared for this one," Stamos writes. "I never knew I could be so angry and and hate-filled toward another human being, much less one I had been dedicated to for a decade."
He discovered Teri Copley in bed with Tony Danza
Stamos and actress Teri Copley briefly dated in the 1980s. He writes of the relationship fondly, saying, "I've never felt like this before. It's indescribable, but I'll try. There's an ugly-sounding Danish word for this beautiful feeling: forelsket. It's the first spark of infatuation, euphoric bliss, intoxication, and that smitten moment just before you fall off the cliff into love."
The happiness didn't last, though, and Stamos goes on to recall the relationship's traumatic end in which he claims he found Copley in bed with Tony Danza.
Stamos headed to Copley's house to check on her after claiming she gave him "the cold shoulder" when he returned from touring with car show appearances and performing with the cover band Papa Doo Run Run. Upon arriving at Copley's home, Stamos saw a car parked in the driveway, where he noticed "a hairbrush, keys, boxing gloves and a half-unrolled poster of my girlfriend, naked, barely covered by a white sheet."
Not recognizing the car or the poster, Stamos writes that he tried Copley's front and side doors, and when those failed to let him in, he headed to the actress' guesthouse. There, he found "four feet protruding from the shabby-chic, floral print duvet that once kept me warm."
"My heart is beating out of my chest. My mind is racing, and the room is spinning," he writes. "I feel like throwing up all over her white shag carpet. It's my worst nightmare."
In an interview with People, Stamos describes the alleged incident as "physically painful" and "worse than anything."
But Copley, now 62, told People that her relationship with Stamos was already over at the time of the incident. "I wondered, 'What was John doing there?' because we had broken up," she said. "He just looked at me and shook his head, and walked away.
He and Lori Loughlin shared a kiss in the Haunted Mansion
In the book, Stamos writes that he and Loughlin went on a "long-lost date at Disneyland" before they met years later on Full House.
"We made out at the Haunted Mansion," Stamos writes. "She can't remember the moment. Guess it wasn't as great for her as it was for me. Still, it's the first thing I think of when she walks in for the 'chemistry read' [on Full House]. That faded kiss ignites something, and the words on the page flow back and forth between us effortlessly."
He recalls his 2015 DUI incident -- "It makes me sick to my stomach"
"I don't want to kill myself, but there's a selfishness in death that I flirt with," Stamos writes in his book about his 2015 DUI incident. "It makes me sick to my stomach. I'm spinning around in the streets, out of my f**king mind. I could have killed a kid, wiped out a family or a grandmother coming home from Bible study. I'm jeopardizing everything in my life: my career, my reputation, and worst of all, the kid my parents raised, a guy I kind of like."
In the book, Stamos says it was his DUI -- and his family and friends' support afterward -- that inspired the beginning of his sobriety. "I can't believe I have so many loving people in my life trying to help," he writes. "I need to get better for them."
He remembers the Olsen twins' Full House audition, and why they almost didn't make the cut
When writing about the beginnings of Full House in his memoir, Stamos says the Olsen twins' audition didn't go smoothly. He recalls that the girls, who were just six months old when Full House began, cried their way through the audition.
"As much as I want to give the munchkin the benefit of the doubt, I don't." Stamos writes. "Let's be professional here. Buck up. My career is on the line, Mary-Kate and/or Ashley. Now it's my turn to scream. 'That’s it!' I bark at Jeff and the Miller-Boyett bros. 'It's either me or them. They're not going to work out. They'll ruin this show and my career.'"
Stamos goes on to say that after a few more auditions with other children, he realized Mary-Kate and Ashley were perfect after all. The rest, as they say, is history.
He says it was love at first sight when he met his now-wife, Caitlin McHugh
"When you meet the woman who will be the love of your life, your future wife, the mother of your child, it's like getting shot through the heart," Stamos writes in the book. "You see her, BANG! She smiles, BANG! And if she opens her mouth and she's smart, funny, and kind, BANG, BANG, BANG!"
Stamos and McHugh met on the set of Law & Order: SVU, then later reconnected and wed in 2018. They share one son, 6-year-old Billy.
Stamos reveals he was sexually abused by his babysitter as a child
In his book, Stamos reveals he is a survivor of sexual abuse from a babysitter he had as a child. "My hand is heavy in hers; I'm holding my breath, I feel trapped," he writes of the experience.
Stamos told People last week that writing the book helped him realize what he had been through.
"I mean, I knew, it was always in the back, and I do so much advocacy for the [survivors]," he said. "I felt like, I remembered it slightly. It has always been there, but I packed it away as people do, right?"
If You Would Have Told Me is on shelves now.
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