She was the only Osbourne who was determined to avoid the spotlight.
So much so that as the cameras moved into the family’s sprawling Beverly Hills mansion, Aimee Osbourne, who was then just 16, moved out.
While MTV’s The Osbournes, which launched in 2002, catapulted her younger siblings Kelly and Jack to worldwide fame, Aimee stayed in the shadows, refusing to be drawn into the world of reality television.
Yet almost 25 years later she’s finally broken her silence, appearing extensively in a two-hour long feature length documentary about her father Ozzy, the legendary Black Sabbath frontman who died, aged 76, in July – just two weeks after returning to Britain for a farewell concert.
Ozzy Osbourne: No Escape From Now, which is available to stream on Paramount Plus from October 7, features for the first time the full Osbourne clan, including Ozzy and Sharon, and their three children: Aimee, 42, Kelly, 40 and Jack, 39.
Including footage recorded before the legendary rocker’s death, it charts his final six years as he battles a litany of health problems.
Known as the ‘silent’ Osbourne, Aimee has, according to reports, not had the easiest relationship with her mother and siblings – particularly Kelly – over the years.
At one stage, the sisters weren’t on speaking terms, with Kelly admitting in an interview they just ‘didn’t understand each other’.
Aimee Osbourne has finally broken her silence, appearing extensively in a two-hour long feature length documentary Ozzy Osbourne: No Escape from Now
Pictured L-R: Sharon Osbourne, Aimee and Ozzy Osbourn in 2004
Her father Ozzy, the legendary Black Sabbath frontman died, aged 76, in July – just two weeks after returning to Britain for a farewell concert. Pictued L-R: Kelly (far left) Sharon, Aimee (centre) and Louis (right, son of Ozzy and Thelma Riley)
Yet Aimee was there for Ozzy’s final days, and joined the rest of her family for the documentary in a touching show of unity, as they describe how the iconic rocker battled ill health for years.
The documentary begins with Ozzy’s late-night fall in February 2019, at the family’s Los Angeles mansion, when he tripped over a step going to the bathroom, and broke his neck – an injury that was initially overlooked.
A former hellraising drug addict, it’s fair to say that Ozzy was hardly in the best shape before the fall: he’d suffered a near-fatal quad bike accident in 2003 in which he crushed several vertebrae.
Yet it was this dramatic fall, 16 years later, which started his descent into a serious decline.
Soon afterwards he was diagnosed with a genetic form of Parkinson’s Disease, and never recovered full mobility.
In the show, Ozzy reveals for the first time how, at one point, he sank into a deep depression, which left him suicidal.
In a typically witty, expletive-ridden message from the grave, we hear Ozzy describing the dark thoughts that stalked him.
‘The thought of not doing gigs anymore. I went into a dark place. I’m on antidepressants now actually because I was getting ready to off myself.’
But with his trademark humour he adds: ‘But then I thought, “What are you f***king talking about?” Because knowing me, I’d do it and I’d be half dead … I’d set myself on fire and I wouldn’t die. That’s my luck.’
Aimee calmly summarises the situation thus: ‘He’s had many accidents that I’ve witnessed, but you could tell this was not one he was necessarily going to get away with in the same way.’
Her feelings proved to be eerily prescient and the film draws a direct connection from the fall in 2019, to his eventual demise in July this year, from heart failure at the family’s UK home in Buckinghamshire, just 13 days after an emotional farewell concert.
If all good movies must have a villain, then in this tale it is the surgeon who treated Ozzy.
Known as the ‘silent’ Osbourne, Aimee has, according to reports, not had the easiest relationship with her mother and siblings – particularly Kelly – over the years
Ozzy Osbourne: No Escape From Now, which is available to stream on Paramount Plus from October 7, features for the first time the full Osbourne clan, including Ozzy and Sharon, and their three children: Aimee, 42, Kelly, 40 and Jack, 39
For while we see him moments before the surgery dancing from the waist up in his hospital bed to the delight of his family, hours later it is a very different story.
As Kelly puts bluntly. ‘I watched my dad from being able to sit up to having posture like f***ing Gollum,’ referring to the hunched creature from Lord of the Rings.
Aimee, who’s kept her private life very much to herself over the years, and has never married or had children, appears as a sea of calm among the chaos.
‘He was in hospital for weeks,’ she explains. ‘I think just in a lot of shock, also traumatised, to fall like that and then go through that, and then not be able to bounce back like he had in the past, and then having to cancel the tour, that was really, I think, his biggest heartbreak.’
‘We brought him home, but the pain just never subsided,’ continues Sharon. ‘It was unbearable, constantly. I know he’s a drama queen. He’ll do anything for a pain pill, but it was for real. I mean, you can look in someone’s eyes and know.’
‘Every month, instead of getting stronger, he got weaker… every month went by, he would be fading, fading, fading.’
Sharon scoured America for the best surgeons to undo the damage, but despite repeated corrective surgeries, Ozzy never fully recovered.
The toll on Ozzy wasn’t just physical but mental, and this is the darkest chapter in the film.
After three years of chronic pain, and going longer than he had ever gone without performing on stage, depression hits.
Ozzy says: ‘No matter what you do, it’s always there. When you’re in a certain amount of pain, it affects your thought pattern and you can’t enjoy anything.’
He also struggled with the constant attention of his carers and health team.
‘I’ve not been on my own for f***ing four years,’ he says. ‘I end up doing is sitting in the toilet reading a book. It’s to be on my own. We all need that little bit of space for ourselves.’
In the show, Ozzy reveals for the first time how, at one point, he sank into a deep depression, which left him suicidal
In his lowest moments he apologises to Sharon for being a burden on her. With tears in her eyes she explains: ‘Some days that he wishes he was dead. He’s in so much pain he can’t take it. He just wishes he could go’
The documentary begins with Ozzy’s late-night fall in February 2019, at the family’s Los Angeles mansion, when he tripped over a step going to the bathroom, and broke his neck – an injury that was initially overlooked. Above, the family pictured in 2002
In his lowest moments he apologises to Sharon for being a burden on her. With tears in her eyes she explains: ‘Some days that he wishes he was dead. He’s in so much pain he can’t take it. He just wishes he could go.’
Yet, it’s not gloom. Fans of the Osbournes will be delighted to see, once again, the bonhomie and wisecracking between the couple who were married for more than four decades.
In one scene he chastises Sharon for falling asleep on the sofa.
‘I wasn’t asleep. I just had my eyes closed,’ she says, repeating an age-old defence.
Ozzy replies: ‘You snore when you pretend to sleep you know.’
You also see a more genteel side to the star, a man who spends his days painting and shooting targets with his personalised gun bearing his moniker ‘The Prince of Darkness’, and doting on his grandchildren: Kelly’s one-year-old son, Sidney, and Jack’s four daughters, Pearl, 12, Andy, nine, and Minnie, six, Maple, two.
Also there, laid bare before the cameras, is the stark difference between the two Osbourne sisters.
At one point Kelly is ranting about Black Sabbath sacking her father from the band in 1979 saying how ‘it destroyed him’. Aimee calming rationalises the events, saying: ‘I would imagine in part it has something to do with substance abuse.’
(Ozzy was indeed sacked by the band, as his dependence on drugs was making him an incredibly erratic – and rarely present – front man. He eventually rejoined the group in 1979).
And it is music that proves to be his saviour: In 2022, he manages to record an entire new album, Patient Number 9, which earns him two Grammy awards.
He’s also asked to perform at the Commonwealth Games in his hometown of Birmingham.
After refusing for months, he finally agrees just a week before the scheduled performance.
The documentary shows a terrified – then increasingly awe-struck – Sharon watching her frail, suicidal husband come alive on stage.
Pictured: Sharon and Aimee out and about in, Los Angeles, America in 2016
‘I just couldn’t believe he was doing what he was doing. He was back doing what he was meant to do,’ she says.
A year later, however, his health is in rapid decline once again, and he puts out a statement announcing that he is retiring from touring.
The couple start making plans to move back to England – to Welders House, the Grade II-listed Georgian mansion in Buckinghamshire that the couple purchased in 1993 – where he always said he wanted to end his days,
The stress of Ozzy’s failing health is etched on Sharon’s face, as we see her visibly shrink on-screen with each year that passes.
Sharon, who’s always been open about her past battles with her weight, started using weight loss injections in 2022, which saw her lose more than three-stones.
In latter years, however, her increasingly gaunt frame started raising concerns.
Kelly notes: ‘I think what’s happening to my mum is the most heartbreaking part of this whole thing. And I think that watching the man that she loves most in this world wither is really, really hard.’
Aimee adds: ‘They were both so used to the “go, go, go”. And I think for that to be taken away at such a drastic level, it’s been heartbreaking and terrifying.
‘And you know, my mum’s role has been about maintaining control of all the moving parts. To have all those things essentially break away has been extremely painful.’
But Ozzy, who at this point is 75 and has around the clock care, is determined that if he can’t tour than he should at least be able to do one final concert.
‘I don’t feel finished yet,’ he says. ‘I want to say to my fans, thank you for the years. I haven’t said that. That’s what it is all about.’
Sharon, ever the manager, kicks into action and organises Back To The Beginning, a farewell show at Villa Park, Birmingham for July 2025, and signs up heavy metalicons from Guns N Roses, Metallica and Red Hot Chilli Peppers.
But two months before his planned final performance, we see Ozzy being helped into a chair by his nurse, as Sharon explains that he has been battling a broken vertebrae, pneumonia and sepsis.
The rock legend vulnerable in his chair and with sadness in his voice, talks of his absolute determination to make it over to the UK.
When the cameras moved into the family’s sprawling Beverly Hills mansion, Aimee, who was then just 16, moved out
‘I’ve got to be there. I have to be there. There’s no two ways about it. I have to be there,’ he says, as Sharon looks on tearfully.
The sheer resilience of the man is astonishing to behold. Despite his constant health woes, he is seen working out with a personal trainer every day to be able to perform.
Back in England, in Ozzy is days away from his farewell gig and heartbreakingly reflects on what retirement with his wife will be like.
‘The English summer is fantastic,’ he says. ‘It’s a new thing for us both, I’m looking forward to getting this gig over. Hanging my mic up and spending some time here. We’ve never, we’ve never been free. After this gig we’re free.’
At the final encore, Ozzy is placed in his bat-shaped throne and as he is raised from beneath the stage to the roar of the 42,000 strong crowd the Black Sabbath which seems to bring the seriously ill rocker to life.
‘I’m nervous. It’s my last hurrah, so it’s gonna be pretty emotional for me up there,’ he says.
‘I just hope I don’t think of Sharon when I am up there because otherwise tears will start coming. Because we’ve done a lot of miles together, me and my old girl. This is it, the last thing and I’ve accepted it.’
But despite his talks of his retirement with his beloved wife, in his last interview in the documentary he seems aware of his own mortality.
‘It’s time,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think I was going to live past 40. I shouldn’t have lived past 40 but I did. But if my life is coming to the end, I really can’t complain. I’ve had a great life.’
In one touching scene Ozzy reflects on his life with Sharon. ‘If it wasn’t for Sharon Osbourne, I would not be there now.
‘I would definitely not have the success, or wouldn’t be sober. I’d be six feet under. All the guys I used to do drugs with, they’re all dead. The one thing I did have was my Sharon.’
And he did – right to end. Two weeks later he died – with Sharon by his side.
Ozzy Osbourne: No Escape From Now is available to stream on Paramount Plus from October 7.
