VENTURA, California, U.S. (AP) — Britney Spears was arrested in southern California on Wednesday night and booked in the early hours of the following day, though the exact charge remained unclear, according to the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office website.
Requests for comment were sent to the sheriff’s office, to the California Highway Patrol — identified as the agency that made the arrest — and to Spears’s representative.
Spears was taken into custody around 9:30 p.m. in Ventura County and was released on Thursday, according to sheriff’s office records. She has a court hearing scheduled for May 4.
Born in Mississippi and raised in Louisiana, Spears rose from teen pop sensation to a bona fide star of the 1990s and 2000s. She climbed to fame from Disney Channel’s The Mickey Mouse Club through MTV and beyond, with era-defining hits such as “…Baby One More Time,” “Oops! … I Did It Again,” and “Toxic.”
Most of her albums have earned platinum status from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), with two diamond-certified titles: “…Baby One More Time” (1999) and “Oops! … I Did It Again” (2000). Her most recent full-length album, Glory, was released in 2016.
Spears became a tabloid focal point in the early 2000s and a subject of public scrutiny as she wrestled with mental health issues, while the paparazzi chronicled the details of her private life.
Later, as cultural attitudes evolved to recognize the misogynistic media coverage of the era, Spears’s struggle to regain control of her life became the centerpiece of the #FreeBritney movement. In 2008, Spears was placed under a court-ordered guardianship, largely administered by her father and her lawyers, which controlled her personal and financial decisions for more than a decade. The guardianship was dissolved in 2021. Two years later, she published revealing memoirs that became best-sellers, “The Woman in Me.”
