Plenty of celebrities thrive on the attention they get from being famous, but sometimes, they just want to live as “normally” as possible. While some are able to successfully go unnoticed, others suffer some unexpected consequences of celebrity.
Here are 23 times celebs tried to live like “regular” people and immediately regretted it:
1.
In 2007, Naomi Watts simply tried to go grocery shopping by herself at Whole Foods in LA. However, because she’d recently given birth, paparazzi were clamoring for pictures of her. Some followed her through the aisles, while others used their long lenses to capture pictures through the windows and doors. Police officers were called to the scene, where they ordered over 30 photographers to leave the premises. After checking out, Naomi reportedly had to hide in the outdoor garden section. Her friend drove directly up to an exit to collect her.
2.
Michael Jordan grew up attending church, but when he became an NBA star, he had to stop going because of how distracting his presence was to the rest of the congregation. In 1989, he told GQ, “When I go to church, any church I go to, it doesn’t seem like church to me, because everybody stares. I went back to my own church in Wilmington a few times since I’ve been in the pros, and it really hasn’t been the same old church. It’s more or less ‘Well, Michael is here today, let’s have him speak for us.'”
3.
Kevin Bacon once tried being a “normal” person for an afternoon — and absolutely hated it! In 2024, he told Vanity Fair that he “went to a special effects makeup artist, had consultations, and asked him to make [him] a prosthetic disguise.” Wearing glasses, a fake nose, and fake teeth, he went to The Grove, a mall in Los Angeles, where no one recognized him. He said, “People were kind of pushing past me, not being nice. Nobody said, ‘I love you.’ I had to wait in line to, I don’t know, buy a fucking coffee or whatever. I was like, ‘This sucks. I want to go back to being famous.'”
4.
When Gwyneth Paltrow wore her Shallow Hal fatsuit in public, she was perceived very differently than she was used to. She told W magazine, “The first day I tried [the fatsuit] on, I was in the Tribeca Grand [hotel in New York City], and I walked through the lobby. It was so sad; it was so disturbing. No one would make eye contact with me because I was obese. I was wearing this black shirt with big snowmen on it. For some reason, the fat clothes they make … The clothes they make for women that are overweight are horrible. I felt humiliated because people were really dismissive.”
5.
After Matt Damon publicly dumped Minnie Driver on Oprah in 1998, she couldn’t go grocery shopping without seeing headlines about the breakup on magazines. She told Entertainment Tonight, “I don’t care who you are, that is agony, and it’s like a strange, surreal dream. But I know he didn’t put that picture there. It’s so tricky, because it’s not deliberate; he couldn’t have helped how famous he became and how his life was being picked over, in the same way that mine was.”
“It’s funny now, when I think about walking down the magazine aisle in my local supermarket at midnight with my best friend, we were like, ‘Are you seeing this? This is super weird.’ My friend, Alexandra, was like, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe this is happening, like, I feel like we’re in a movie. I would totally watch this movie, even though I know you’re super heartbroken, but this is really weird,'” she said.
6.
To prepare for their roles in The Bear, Ayo Edebiri and Jeremy Allen White spent a few months training in a professional kitchen. However, because Jeremy was more famous, he received preferential treatment. Ayo told Deadline, “People recognized Jeremy, but nobody knew who I was at all, which was good for research. It was kind of annoying when I was like, ‘Yeah, I stayed up late to clean until 12, and Jeremy was like, ‘I got to go home!'”
7.
In 2015, Justin Bieber went on a beach vacation, where he reasonably expected he had enough privacy to be nude. However, he didn’t notice that paparazzi were watching him and taking pictures. Later, when he appeared on Ellen, the host blamed him for the non-consensual photos.
8.
Tia and Tamera Mowery remained enrolled in a normal high school during their Sister Sister days. Tia told HLN, “High school kids can be mean. Our experience as actors in high school wasn’t really the best experience. I think, a lot of the times, kids automatically assume that, maybe, you think you’re better than they are because you’re on TV.”
Tamera added, “It got so bad that I felt like I needed to say something. There were times when we would be in the halls getting our books out of the lockers, and I will never forget, a kid screamed down the hall, and he said, ‘Your show sucks!’ Just like that. Out loud, in front of all the kids. And I said, ‘You know what? I’m sick and tired of this. I’m finally gonna say something.’ And then I turned around, and I said, ‘Well, the checks don’t!'”
9.
As a child actor who still attended regular school, Taylor Momsen was “relentlessly” teased over her role as Cindy-Lou Who in How the Grinch Stole Christmas. She told Podcrushed, “Every time I would start at a new school or go somewhere else, I don’t even think the kids knew my name. I was just ‘Grinch Girl.’ Not even my character name, just ‘Grinch Girl…’ I got used to it, but it was alienating… I would go to school for a couple of months and then leave to go work and come back. Making friends was always challenging for me.”
10.
When Taylor Swift attended her friends Jack Antonoff and Margaret Qualley’s Jersey Shore wedding in 2023, massive crowds of fans gathered outside a restaurant where the newlyweds were holding a dinner. The fans reportedly chanted Taylor’s name and tried to film her.
Reportedly appearing stunned, Taylor politely waved to the onlookers, but as viral videos of the crowds spread, criticism for the gathered fans poured in. They were called out for disrespecting Taylor’s privacy as well as intruding on Jack and Margaret’s big day.
Many people brought up Taylor’s reaction to the crowds gathered outside her home in her Netflix documentary Miss Americana.
11.
Similarly, in 2017, Taylor Swift was a bridesmaid in her childhood best friend Abigail Anderson’s wedding. Security shielded Taylor from the crowd gathered outside the venue with drapes and an umbrella. Some fans reportedly booed her and chanted, “Very disappointing, not cool.”
12.
Because Basic Instinct was her 18th movie, Sharon Stone wasn’t prepared for the huge spotlight it thrust upon her. When it hit theaters, she continued living her normal life — driving a small car, eating in restaurants, and living in a house on a street with public access. However, the intensity of her new fans made her life difficult and unsafe. They climbed on top of her car and banged on the restaurant glass. She couldn’t afford to hire private security, so police had to be outside her home 24/7.
She was so famous in the immediate years after the release of Basic Instinct that, during O.J. Simpson’s infamous police chase in 1994, officers warned her the situation was “dangerous” and moved her to a hotel, where they kept watch at her door and reception. She told InStyle, “[The police] were like, ‘Find a secure house behind a gate.'” So, Sharon purchased the only gated home within her budget — a shell of a house in need of renovations.
13.
When Sharon Stone tried to join a dating app, she was reported for being a catfish. In 2019, she tweeted, “I went on the @bumble dating [site] and they closed my account. Some users reported that it couldn’t possibly be me! Hey @bumble, is being me exclusionary ? Don’t shut me out of the hive.”
The dating app’s official Twitter account replied, “There can only be one [Queen] Stone. Looks like our users thought you were too good to be true. We’ve made sure that you won’t be blocked again. We hope that everyone in our community takes a sec to verify their profiles. (Catherine Tramell from Basic Instinct gets a pass today!)”
14.
Zayn Malik lives a quiet life in rural Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The townspeople are respectful of him, but dating has been a struggle — particularly when he tried Tinder. He told Nylon, “It’’s not been too successful for me, I’ll be honest. Everyone accused me of catfishing. They’re like, ‘What are you using Zayn Malik’s pictures for?’ I’ve been kicked off once or twice.” So, he stopped using dating apps, adding, “I’m really content and happy with being single for the first time in my life.”
15.
Dating apps were an even bigger failure for Zac Efron, who failed to get any matches. He told the Times, “Amazingly, when I signed up for Tinder, nobody swiped me! They thought it was fake…that never happened… Dating is something I’ll never be able to do. As in the dictionary definition of dating, because one way or another, I’ve impacted that person’s life, and they’ll soon realize it. A date has to be very long to dispel whatever people think about me.”
16.
On an episode of Radio Andy, Andy Cohen said, “I’m on Tinder. I never check it, but I’m on Tinder, and…I’ve been kicked off Tinder for people saying I was impersonating me.”
17.
On Watch What Happens Live, Sam Smith said, “I joined this dating site called Hinge in the UK, and they chucked me off of it after one night cause they thought I was a catfish pretending to be me.”
In response, Hinge’s official Twitter account posted, “Sorry @SamSmith! We know you’re too good at goodbyes but give us a second chance at finding you (+ @Andy) someone special. We will verify your profile.”
18.
Shaquille O’Neal also got accused of being a catfish on a dating app. On Jimmy Kimmel Live, he said, “I signed up for Tinder, put in my name, and I tried to make a person meet me. And they didn’t believe it was me.’ I was like, ‘It’s me, it’s Shaq.’ And she said, ‘Shaq would never be on this.’ So I had to hit delete. I had to delete my account.””
19.
Lewis Capaldi has been “kicked off” of Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge because “people think [he’s] fake.” On the Diary of a CEO podcast, he said, “I love Tinder, Tinder’s great, but Hinge is what I really want to get on, because I feel like, mid-20s, that’s what people are on.”
20.
Alicia Silverstone got in trouble for actually being a catfish. When she first joined a dating app, she made a fake profile because she “wasn’t comfortable yet being [herself].” However, the fake profile got [understandably!] banned, so, inspired by Sharon Stone and Drew Barrymore, she made a profile as her real self…only for that one to get banned, too. On The Drew Barrymore Show, she said, “I had a date with someone planned. [But] the day I went in to find out about the date [like] where we were meeting or whatever, I [found out that I] had been banned. Poor guy. I got kicked off as myself, too.”
21.
After appearing on Love Island in 2022, Paige Thorne returned to her career as a paramedic but was quickly let go. On the Not My Bagg podcast, she said, “I was like, ‘I’ll go back to being a paramedic,’ but my job was like, ‘Don’t really want you to do that ’cause you post pictures in bikinis.’ I was so upset. I worked really hard to be a paramedic. It was so much training, and I worked three years before that, COVID, did it all, and they were like, ‘Actually, thanks, but no thanks.'”
Paige tried to make it as an influencer but soon realized it wasn’t for her. She was able to get another job as a paramedic, but her reality TV fame sometimes makes things complicated. She told Vice, “[Patients’ families] stare and ask me, ‘Are you so and so?’ But like, in this moment in time, on a 999 call, I’m not her. I think the people I meet on the job find it really strange to see me in that perspective.”
22.
Amy Hart quit her flight attendant job at British Airways to go on Love Island, then returned after the show. However, she had to quit again over fear of safety concerns with fans filming her. On her Instagram story, she said, “I can’t work there anymore because I am there to be in charge of the safety of the whole plane, and right now, that just wouldn’t be attainable because people would be filming… It’s just not sustainable for me to work there right now, but maybe one day, they said I could go back at some point, who knows?”
She went on to host multiple podcasts, including Amy Hart’s Mum’s Club, Hart to Hart with Amy Hart, and Love Island: The Morning After.
23.
And finally, Olivia Caridi got the villain edit on The Bachelor Season 20. Wanting to return to work as a TV news anchor, she “would send [her] tape to every station in the country.” However, they continuously rejected her, telling her things like, “You’d be a PR nightmare. We couldn’t do that; you didn’t look great on the show. We’d lose viewers.” She told the Every Girl, “That was heartbreaking because my career before the show was my world, and to know that a horrible experience on a reality show hurt that really broke me. When I first moved to New York City, I even tried for babysitting jobs, and parents would Google me and say, ‘We don’t want you around our kids.’ I really couldn’t believe how frustrating it was to be shunned in that way because of The Bachelor.”
She now works as a lifestyle influencer and UGC creator on TikTok.