14 Celebrities Who Attempted to Live Like Normal People to Varying Degrees of Success
It’s simple: If you want to live a good, normal life, like the common folk, simply gain riches beyond your wildest dreams and use them to purchase land outside of a major city. Otherwise, you’re going to have to endure the adoration of the masses.
Taylor Swift
She served as a bridesmaid to her childhood best friend in 2017, but she was already popular (and rich) enough that she had her private security shield the ceremony from her gathered fans using umbrellas and drapes.
Ayo Edebiri and Jeremy Allen White
The two tried to work in a real kitchen to prepare for The Bear, but White was way more famous than Edebiri at the time, so he got the celebrity treatment while she had an authentic shitty job experience: “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!’”
Jeff Daniels
Daniels moved to New York to pursue an acting career, and as soon as he broke out with 1983’s Terms of Endearment, he moved right back to Michigan. He’s lived a relatively normal small-town life ever since, saying of fame that “I knew how fleeting it was and I didn’t trust it for a second, so I moved to Michigan.”
Michael Jordan
He had to stop going to church once he became famous, because they always turn him into a preacher: “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.’”
Sharon Stone
She’d been in over a dozen movies by the time Basic Instinct came out in 1992, so she thought she was equipped to handle a little popularity. She quickly realized she hadn’t properly prepared for that level of stardom when her very public house was bombarded by fans and people jumped on her car. Having never hired a security team, local police had to be stationed outside of her home.
Sharon Stone (Again)
In 2019, she realized she still couldn’t live like a normal human being when she tried to join Bumble, and other users got her profile shut down because they thought she was a catfish.
Gwyneth Paltrow
She took her Shallow Hal fat suit for a spin in public, and was devastated by the lack of fawning from strangers: “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.”
Zac Efron
He says he’s too famous to ever date in the traditional sense: “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.”
John Hughes
He set most of his films in Chicago, and decided to live on a farm outside of town. He says that when you live in LA or New York, “you spend too much time with other people in the business and you trade ideas back and forth and it all sort of comes out looking the same.”
Taylor Momsen
Her role as Cindy-Lou Who in How the Grinch Stole Christmas haunted her when she got to high school: “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.’”
Tia and Tamera Mowery
At the height of their fame, the sisters continued going to normal person high school, where they were bombarded by peers who assumed they’d be aloof jerks. Tamera recalled a time when “a kid screamed down the hall, and he said, ‘Your show sucks!’... And then I turned around, and I said, ‘Well, the checks don’t!’”
Matthew McConaughey
In his traditional nebulously cerebral fashion, he says living in Texas instead of Hollywood gives him a better relationship with time: “I just feel at home there. A mile feels like a mile, 60 minutes feels like an hour and a day feels like 24 hours.” He did splurge on a cheap trailer in Malibu, but he swears it’s pretty bare-bones: “I wake up, and I’ve got a pair of pajamas and one pair of pants.”
Naomi Watts
A post-partum trip to Whole Foods in 2007 turned into a postapocalyptic zombie scene when she was hounded by Watts-hungry photographers. The cops had to be called, and they cleared 30 paparazzi out of the store while she hid in the outdoor garden section.
Kevin Bacon
He had makeup artists put prosthetics on his face until he was no longer recognizable, and had to spend an afternoon without adulation: “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.’”