Hollywood is notorious for being an image-focused, shallow-minded, uber-critical industry, and no matter how beautiful and talented you are, you’re bound to face some harsh criticism. Thanks to the Internet and social media, celebrities also have the added bonus of getting hurled insults from anonymous users and online trolls who try to chip away at their self-esteem. Living in the glare of the spotlight is just one of the reasons so many celebrities end up scary-skinny, as victims of eating disorders and other self-destructive behavior. If you already have body image issues before you enter the limelight, you can bet that the paparazzi and the public will feed those monsters until they grow big and strong.
While this article focuses on female celebrities, eating disorders don’t just affect women, and in fact some male celebrities have been vocal about their own struggles, such as Zayn Malik and Russell Brand. However, in Hollywood, it seems that women far outweigh the guys when it comes to suffering from anorexia and bulimia. These are just 15 of them who have been brave enough to speak up and get help. If you or someone you know is suffering from an eating disorder, contact NEDIC here or NEDA here.
15 Jessica Alba
Jessica Alba has one of the hottest bodies in Hollywood, but even she isn’t immune to the pressures that come with living life in the spotlight. The actress-turned-momtrepreneur of The Honest Company first got her big break back in 1999 with the TV show Dark Angel, and to prepare for the physically demanding role, Jessica started an intensive training regime, which she credits as being the leading cause in her battle with anorexia. She started becoming obsessed with exercise, and effectively starved herself, whittling down her famous figure to only 100 pounds.
In an interview with Glamour, Jessica says that it was growing up and becoming a woman that had her reaching for the comfort of an eating disorder, saying, “When I went from a girl’s body to a woman’s body with natural fat in places, I freaked out.” She credits treatment for her ability to survive her ordeal, and while she has been candid about her personal demons, her struggles with anorexia are not all that well known.
14 Candace Cameron Bure
It seems like it was a case of life imitating art, as Fuller House actress Candace Cameron Bure dealt with her own body image issues, much like those of her character DJ Tanner on the original Full House TV show. However, it wasn’t during her time as a child star that Candace was at war with her body. Instead, it was well into her adult life when she moved to Montreal for her husband, Valerie’s, hockey career.
Living in a new city where she knew no one, refraining from work for the first time since she was five years old, and having a husband who was often away from home left Candace feeling lonely and depressed, and so she turned to food for solace. Using food as an emotional crutch caused Candace to fall into a deadly cycle of bingeing and purging that continued on-and-off for years. In an interview with People magazine, Candace reiterated what many people with eating disorders feel: “It was never about the weight for me. It was an emotional issue.”
13 Alexa Penavega
Another child star who suffered under the glare of the spotlight, it wasn’t until years later that actress Alexa Penavega opened up about her struggles with bulimia. In fact, it took a stint on the show Dancing With the Stars for Alexa to come clean about her struggles, which she said developed in response to a movie producer telling her that she was too fat. It sent her on a downward spiral of bingeing and purging that lasted for six years. Although she knew it was detrimental to her emotional, mental, and physical wellbeing, Alexa offered a look at how those who suffer feel, saying that, “You want to get rid of it but you struggle because, in a strange way, you enjoy it.”
Since Alexa had no one to talk to about her struggles at that time in her life, she is now focusing on tackling the issue of eating disorders head-on so that other people can feel more comfortable talking openly about their own battles.
12 Lily Collins
Only this past January did model and actress Lily Collins open up about her struggles with body image and eating, due to her portrayal in her new movie, To the Bone, which sees her character, a teenage girl named Ellen, suffering from an eating disorder. Lily said that taking on the role was difficult and dramatic, because she had suffered from eating disorders as a teenager, which she detailed in a chapter of her book of personal essays, Unfiltered. She’s said that the combination of her book release and getting the script for To the Bone (written by Marti Noxon of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame and a victim of a decade-long battle with anorexia and bulimia herself) were signs that she needed to discuss the topic of eating disorders and generate conversations around them among both men and women, even though the subject matter may still be considered taboo.
11 Nicole Richie
Unlike many others of this list, Nicole Richie’s battle with anorexia was a shockingly public one, as it occurred when she was already a fixture of tabloid magazines and entertainment news shows. However, while the evidence was plain for all to see, Nicole has been hesitant to say that she has been a victim of an eating disorder, instead saying that she has a natural tendency to be overly critical of her body and that stress causes her to lose her appetite.
Back in 2006 in an interview with People, Nicole admitted that she was too thin and that she doesn’t want girls to try to emulate her looks. She had also admitted to seeing a nutritionist, doctor, psychiatrist, and personal trainer. Like many people who suffer from eating disorders, Nicole’s battle seems to be something she’ll fight all her life, as her weight has plummeted to scary-skinny levels and bounced back to a healthy frame that saw her become the mother of two children.
10 Zoë Kravitz
Another actress who relived her tumultuous personal history on the big screen, Zoë Kravitz starred in the 2014 film The Road Within which saw her weight drop down to unhealthily thin levels – a stark reminder of the battles she had already endured throughout her teenage years and into adulthood.
From about the age of 16, the actress says she dealt with anorexia and bulimia, and said that part of it was due to being surrounded by fame at such a young age. Being surrounded by the beauty of her mother and the endless supply of supermodels her father dated took a toll on Zoë’s self-esteem, which saw her measure her worth by how big (or not big) she was physically. When she got the role in the film, she and her family worried that her old demons would return – and they were right to be worried, since Zoë herself declared that she couldn’t see how much weight she’d lost at the time. “It was f*cked up, man.”
9 Hilary Duff
As a teenager between the ages of 17 and 19, Hilary Duff was an actress and singer whose battle with anorexia mostly went under the radar, because it occurred around the same time as more headline-grabbing names like Nicole Richie, Lindsay Lohan, and Mary-Kate Olsen. However, Hilary definitely was sick, at one point dropping down to 100 pounds. Unlike some people who suffer from eating disorders, Hilary was unable to point to one specific moment that caused her to go down this deadly path; she simply said she started being aware of how she looked in photos, and adjusted her eating and workout regimen accordingly. In addition to her intensive schedule of touring and travelling, Hilary was also involved with the much-older Good Charlotte rocker Joel Madden (now married to Nicole Richie), which may have added to the stress she was feeling. Hilary says she remembers being unhappy at the time, her hands cramping because she wasn’t getting enough nutrients to feed her muscles, and credits her sister, Haylie, with helping pull her out of it.
8 Troian Bellisario
Pretty Little Liars actress Troian Bellisario first opened up about her history with eating disorders and self-harm in a PSA advocating for mental illness awareness and support programs, saying that early detection and people taking her seriously are what allowed her to get the help she needed before things got worse. In an interview with Seventeen, Troian says both behaviours were the result of trying to keep her emotions on lockdown in order to protect her parents from her feelings and present herself as the image of perfection. In turn, however, those emotions manifested into self-destructive behaviour.
Perfectionism is a trait that many people with eating disorders exhibit, as control is often the primary reason for an eating disorder, not food. Fortunately, Troian conquered her demons and now says she is much happier and healthier than she ever was, and currently uses her experiences to rally for funding towards mental health and eating disorder programs.
7 Mary-Kate Olsen
Mary-Kate Olsen’s struggle with anorexia is one that, like Nicole Richie, was highly publicized despite the fact that the Olsen twins seem to shun the spotlight, in favour of heading up their ultra-successful fashion line, Elizabeth and James. Although both Ashley and Mary-Kate have always been petite and slender (they stand at 5”1 and 5”2), back in 2004, Mary-Kate was looking markedly frail, with her spine standing out from her skin in backless gowns and her skin pulled taut.
Having lived her entire life under the glare of the paparazzi, it was fame, the stress of starting college and a new chapter in her life, and a biological predisposition that set Mary-Kate up for the inevitable, and after an intervention among family and friends, she was quietly checked into a facility that dealt with eating disorders. Like Nicole Richie, though, Mary-Kate seems to have a lifelong battle ahead of her, as she was photographed looking much thinner than usual just this past September.
6 Zosia Mamet
The actress who plays the vibrant and fast-talking Shoshanna Shapiro on the HBO TV show Girls actually had a much harder time growing up than her pampered alter ego. Beginning in early childhood, Zosia Mamet dealt with body image issues that were linked to her own mother’s dislike of her body. Her eating disorder began when she was 8, and while Zosia does not blame her mother, she notes that, “She struggled, so I struggled.”
While Zosia admits that she is not fat, and has never been fat, she says that having an eating disorder is like having “a monster in my brain that tells me I am.” She has since sought help at an eating disorder facility and is now at a healthy weight, but mostly she wants other girls to avoid what she went through, explaining that we need to start mothering ourselves and “thank our bodies for everything they give us rather than criticizing them for everything they don’t.”
5 Nicole Scherzinger
She may be beautiful, and as the lead singer of The Pussycat Dolls, singer and dancer Nicole Scherzinger definitely had plenty of sex appeal, but behind the fishnets and booty shorts, she was actually battling bulimia for eight years, at the height of the Pussycat Dolls’ fame.
Nicole first went public with her disease back in 2012, and has only been more open about that dark time in her life since. Calling her battles with bulimia her drug and addiction, she admitted that even at the time she knew it wasn’t normal or healthy, which is why she kept it a secret from her family and bandmates for so long. It took an instance when she blacked out while on tour in Malta to realize that things needed to change, since she was also starting to lose her voice from the constant purging. She has since said that she is now happy and healthy, because she thought, “I’m going to lose everything if I don’t love myself.”
4 Kesha
Kesha is someone who has dealt with multiple legal battles as of late in her case against Dr. Luke, where she alleges sexual assault and the onset of body image issues, saying that Dr. Luke compared her figure to that of a refrigerator. Kesha completed a rehab program for her battles with bulimia and anorexia back in 2014, but in an interview with Vogue, she stated that that time in her life was also incredibly confusing. “The worse it got, the more positive feedback I was getting. Inside I was really unhappy, but outside, people were like, ‘Wow, you look great.’”
In response to her admission, fans everywhere have been pulling for Kesha so that she can truly come into her own as the artist she’s meant to be, out from under the controlling hand of Dr. Luke. In an Instagram post that saw her raise two middle fingers in the air, Kesha captioned it by saying in part, “I have decided to take my life back…I will not just be f*cking quiet and hide.”
3 Portia de Rossi
Her longtime battle with anorexia is well-documented, partly because Portia de Rossi herself wrote about it in great detail in her book, Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain. While Portia had been dealing with body image issues since the age of 12 when she began working as a model, she says her time on the show Ally McBeal, surrounded by rail-thin castmates, is what really pushed her over the edge. At one point, she was only consuming 300 calories a day, working off the amount she’d ingested from a stick of gum, and dropped down to 82 pounds. Her eating disorder became so life-threatening that she collapsed on the set of a film and was suffering from cirrhosis, osteoporosis, and organ failure.
After going into treatment, in her book Portia gives credit to her wife, Ellen DeGeneres, for helping her through such a dark time in her life, and says that now when she looks in the mirror, she may see that she’s not perfect, but she’s okay with that.
2 Lady Gaga
It was nice to see everyone with a brain and eyes come to the defence of Lady Gaga after her incredible Super Bowl performance when she – gasp! – showed a bit of tummy, especially when you consider the fact that the talented singer has battled bulimia and anorexia since she was 15.
Unfortunately, Gaga has dealt with trolls criticizing her weight before, and after photos surfaced of her “packing on the pounds” in 2012, she posted a photo in her underwear and the caption read, “Bulimia and anorexia since I was 15.” As a woman who urges her Little Monsters to love themselves, Gaga also started a “Body Revolution” page on her website in order to educate and instil a sense of compassion among others. Even though her career and music may be for public consumption, her body is not, and the shaming of it – especially for someone with a history of eating disorders – is definitely not cool.
1 Demi Lovato
Few people have been quite as outspoken as Demi Lovato about her personal demons, who began talking when she entered rehab at the age of 18 back in 2010 for bulimia and self-harming. However, her history with body image issues dates way back to early childhood, when she was as young and 3 and 4 years old and in the beauty pageant circuit, being raised by a mother and grandmother who both suffered from bulimia as well. After the beauty pageants, Demi was thrust into the Disney spotlight, forced to endure all the humiliations that come with puberty, including weight gain.
Now a healthy, happy young woman and body positivity role model, Demi explains that recovery is an ongoing process, and admits that it’s a struggle she’ll probably have to deal with for the rest of her life. However, being a person who speaks openly about her own issues and defends those who are still fighting, Demi is definitely an active participant in encouraging men and women everywhere to love themselves.
Sources: people.com, huffingtonpost.co.uk, bustle.com
