It’s easy to look around and feel like everyone else has it together. Especially celebrities. After all, they have looks, money, and personal assistants. It must all be easy, right? The truth is, even the rich and famous struggle with mental health issues. Here are four stars who have spoken up about how anxiety, panic, and PTSD have affected their lives.
Emma Stone has an Academy Award and a Golden Globe to her name. She was also diagnosed with an anxiety disorder and panic disorder as a child. She had her first panic attack when she was just 7 years old.
“I was sitting at a friend’s house and all of a sudden I was absolutely convinced that the house was on fire,” she said in an interview. “I was just sitting in her bedroom and obviously the house wasn’t on fire but there was nothing in me that didn’t think I was going to die.”
Stephen Colbert may be the king of witty banter with guests on his award-winning late night comedy show. But he shared in a Rolling Stone interview that early in his career he struggled with anxiety, and took medication to help with it.
“I had a bit of a nervous breakdown after I got married—kind of panic attacks,” he recalls. “My wife would go off to work and she’d come home—because I worked at night—and I’d be walking around the couch. And she’s like, ‘How was your day?’ And I’d say, ‘You’re looking at it.’ Just tight circles around the couch.”
Lena Dunham has been praised for her honest portrayals of mental illness on Girls, the HBO series she created and starred in. And she’s been open about the reality that mental illness is a part of her own life.
“I was diagnosed with pretty serious PTSD. I have a few sexual traumas in my past and then I had all these surgeries and then I had my hysterectomy after a period of really extreme pain,” she shared on a podcast. “Basically, it stopped feeling like I had panic attacks and it started feeling like I was a living panic attack.”
Missy Elliott is the first female rapper to have six platinum albums. Yet even that level of success can come with ups and downs. Elliott said in a Billboard interview that she has dealt with anxiety since childhood. And even as a rap icon, she worries about others judging her or laughing at her.
She shared that she went to the hospital for a panic attack the night before performing at the 2015 Super Bowl halftime show. “Like, IVs in my arm, everything,” she told Billboard. “Nobody knew.”
Ryan Reynolds sure looks like he has it all together, from his heartthrob movie roles to his beautiful wife and three adorable daughters. He says it’s his daughters who motivated him to talk openly about his lifelong struggle with anxiety.
“I know I am not alone,” he posted on Instagram. “And more importantly, to all those like me who overschedule, overthink, overwork, over-worry and over-everything, please know you are not alone.”
Can you relate?
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