Britney Spears was arrested on Wednesday on suspicion of D.U.I. after officers observed her driving erratically at high speeds, according to a California Highway Patrol spokesman.
Ms. Spears was pulled over just before 9:30 p.m. and held overnight in Ventura County before being released just after 6 a.m. on Thursday, according to online inmate records from the county sheriff’s office.
A spokesman for the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office said it had not yet been presented with a case related to Ms. Spears and could not make a decision about filing charges until that happened.
“This was an unfortunate incident that is completely inexcusable,” a representative for Ms. Spears, 44, said in a statement. “Britney is going to take the right steps and comply with the law and hopefully this can be the first step in long overdue change that needs to occur in Britney’s life. Hopefully, she can get the help and support she needs during this difficult time.
“Her boys are going to be spending time with her,” the statement continued. “Her loved ones are going to come up with an overdue needed plan to set her up for success for well being.”
Through a string of hits in the late 1990s and early 2000s like “ … Baby One More Time” and “Toxic,” Ms. Spears became one of music’s most ubiquitous stars and a symbol of the era’s blockbuster remake of bubble-gum pop. She scored five No. 1 hits on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart and sold tens of millions of albums.
Her face on the cover of a music magazine or supermarket gossip publication also all but guaranteed big sales — especially when she ran into trouble.
In 2006, she was pictured driving her S.U.V. while holding her infant son Sean in her lap, not in a child seat as required by law. The next year, she was seen with a shaved head, hitting a photographer’s car with an umbrella. By then, Ms. Spears’s personal struggles had taken over her public narrative.
In 2008, when she was 26, she was placed in a conservatorship after her father petitioned a California court for authority over his daughter’s life and finances, citing her public mental health struggles and possible substance abuse.
She remained in that conservatorship for 13 years. In June 2021, Ms. Spears spoke in court, telling the judge overseeing the conservatorship, “I just want my life back.” Later that year, the judge, Brenda Penny, terminated the conservatorship.
In recent months, Ms. Spears’s posts on Instagram, where she regularly shares videos of herself dancing alone, have raised alarm.
One post from late February showed her looking very disheveled with her makeup smudged. Her bare breasts were exposed, though covered with a red heart emoji. A post in November showed bandages around her hands and wrists as well as one knee. “I fell down the stairs at my friend’s house,” she wrote in the caption.
On Thursday morning her Instagram page was deactivated.
Ms. Spears published a memoir, “The Woman in Me,” in 2023 and has teased a possible return to music. She recently entered into a deal with the music company Primary Wave to sell her interest in her song catalog.
She is set to appear in Ventura County Superior Court on May 4.
Matt Stevens and Maya Salam contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett contributed research.
Michaela Towfighi is a Times arts and culture reporter and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for early career journalists.
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