Famous Celebrities You Didn’t Know Had Anxiety Disorders

Celebrities are famous for a reason: people around the world absolutely love them! And for the most part, celebs like being around their adoring fans. After all, who wouldn’t want to be constantly surrounded by people who think you’re the greatest thing since sliced bread?

As it turns out, some celebrities don’t like this (or, at least, not all the time) because they are dealing with anxiety disorders. For someone famous, such a disorder is like a curse: the more famous they get, the more people they have to deal with. And the more people they have to deal with, the more anxious they get.

Just who are the most famous celebrities with surprising anxiety disorders? Keep reading to see if your favorite celeb made the list!

Emma Stone

Emma Stone is one of the most adorable and adored celebrities in all of Hollywood. It’s not hard to see why: in addition to her great beauty, she has plenty of wit and charm to spare. She pours those qualities into her characters, which is why she’s basically America’s very own girl next door. Despite all that, though, this Easy A star has suffered from panic attacks since she was a child.

Fortunately, Stone was able to make the most of it. When possible, she uses the anxiety she feels to make the anxiety and other emotions of her onscreen characters that much more believable. After a time, she tackled the problem by writing a literal book about it: I Am Bigger Than My Anxiety. In it, she describes her anxiety disorder as a green monster that grows larger when she pays attention to it and diminishes when she doesn’t.

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Ryan Reynolds

Ryan Reynolds is one of the most popular movie stars in the world. He’s had a long and lucrative career, but these days, he’s most famous for portraying the Marvel character Deadpool. The MCU in general and Deadpool in particular are both wildly popular, which is why this onscreen superhero has fans everywhere. He can’t always appreciate their adoration, though, because he has suffered from anxiety his entire life.

Like Emma Stone, Ryan Reynolds tries to be proactive about his anxiety. Sometimes, he will slip into a different persona during interviews in order to protect his state of mind. Other times, he practices mindfulness meditation techniques and uses meditation apps to help keep calm. And while he hasn’t written a book about anxiety, Reynolds has one more thing in common with Stone: namely, that he has become an advocate for mental health awareness.

Lady Gaga

In some ways, Lady Gaga is the last musician you’d expect to have anxiety. That’s because her musical brand is one that is fearless in its creativity and peerless in its originality. Simply put, Gaga always walks, talks, and acts like a confident queen. Beneath all that bravada, however, this musical legend has been battling anxiety and depression her entire life. Fortunately, she utilized her experience with mental health issues to create the Born This Way Foundation, which was designed to help teens deal with their own mental health problems in a healthy and constructive way.

This foundation was created out of the love Lady Gaga has for her fans, many of whom grew up without a real support system for their mental health. Gaga is trying to provide that support system, and she’s living proof that having mental health problems doesn’t keep someone from being successful. You see, her entire Lady Gaga personality was created to help her overcome depression. She basically imagined a persona stronger than her depression, and embracing that persona helped make her a stronger and more confident performer.

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Jennifer Lawrence

Jennifer Lawrence has starred in many films, including X-Men: First Class and Silver Linings. However, it’s fair to say that she is most famous for starring in the Hunger Games movies. In those films, she plays a reluctant warrior whose quick thinking and quicker reflexes help her win in a battle royale against other contestants. And that role is representative of the confidence she exudes onscreen, which is why so many fans look up to her as a role model.

In real life, Lawrence isn’t quite so confident because she has suffered from social anxiety since she was young. At least, that’s how she characterized it because this anxiety became part of her life as soon as she went to school and had to be around other students. Later, fame effectively made her anxiety worse because she became hyperaware that any joke she made or anything she said in an unguarded moment would be turned into countless negative headlines around the world.

Like Ryan Reynolds, Lawrence manages her anxiety by occasionally putting on a different persona when she’s out in public. This allows her to present herself as the cool, calm, and collected girlboss her fans have always seen her as.