Earvin "Magic" Johnson used the press conference platform to announce to the world on November 7, 1991, that he was HIV positive. "Because of the HIV virus I have attained, I will have to announce my retirement from the Lakers," he said. "Sometimes we think, well, only gay people can get it…it's not going to happen to me. And here I am saying that it can happen to anybody. Even me, Magic Johnson."

How best to come out of the closet? For Ellen DeGeneres, yep, make it a cover story. "This has been the most freeing experience because people can't hurt me anymore," she told Time magazine.

Before there was Bill Clinton's sex scandal, there was Jimmy Carter's admission of desires. "I've looked on a lot of women with lust," he told Playboy magazine in its November 1976 issue. "I've committed adultery in my heart many times." (Left, Mr. Carter with his wife Rosalynn at the Toronto International Film Festival Sept. 10, 2007.)

Major League Baseball slugger Jose Canseco turned to a classic form of confession: writing it all down. In his 2005 tell-all "Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big," he revealed his (and other MLB players') wide use of steroids. "I would never have been a Major League-caliber player without steroids," he wrote.

After actor Hugh Grant was caught with a prostitute in July 1995, he opted out of the "no comment" route -- a rarity in Hollywood -- and made public apologies on shows like "Larry King Live" (left), "Live with Regis and Kathie Lee" and "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno." "In the end you have to come clean and say, 'I did something dishonorable, shabby and goatish,'" Mr. Hughes told Mr. King.

James Frey buckled under The Smoking Gun's accusations that his memoir, "A Million Little Pieces," was fraught with lies, and fessed up to Oprah Winfrey on national television. "But I think I come out of it better. I mean, I feel like I came here and I have been honest with you. I have, you know, essentially admitted to…to lying," he said on the show.

Not all American Idols should be idolized, Katherine McPhee revealed to People magazine. "I'd been struggling with bulimia since I was 17," she said in June 2006, shortly after coming in second on the reality show.

Rev. Jimmy Swaggart decided to confess his sins -- encounters with a prostitute -- to the thousands in his congregation. "I have sinned against you. I have brought shame and embarrassment to you. I beg your forgiveness," the TV evangelist sobbed in his 1988 apology sermon.

Rather than lie about how she's achieved her svelte body, Kathy Griffin decided to bare all – and document all her nips and tucks on "Entertainment Tonight" in 2003. "When I first had a nose job …[there was] all this, like, shame about it and stuff," she told CNN's Anderson Cooper that year. "And I mean, [I] talk about it in my act now all the time." (Left, Mrs. Griffin at a Emmy party Sept 16, 2007.)

While many people choose Oprah Winfrey as the person they confide in, the queen of talk has confessions of her own. She's spoken of being sexually abused, and in 1995 she revealed on one of her shows that she had smoked crack cocaine in her 20s. "I have done [cocaine]," she said. "It is my life's great secret."