Britney Spears was arrested Wednesday night (local time) in Southern California and booked early the following morning, according to the Ventura County Sheriff’s office, which didn’t say what charge she faces.
Messages seeking comment were left with the sheriff's office; the California Highway Patrol, which was identified as the arresting agency; and Spears' representative.
US media have reported she was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol.
Spears was arrested around 9.30pm (local time) in Ventura County and released on Thursday, sheriff's office records show. She has a May 4 court date scheduled.
Spears, 44, 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.
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.
Later, as cultural opinion evolved to recognise the misogynistic media coverage of the time, Spears’ fight to control her life became the focus of the #FreeBritney movement.
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. It was dissolved in 2021. Two years later, she released a bestselling, tell-all memoir, The Woman in Me.
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