Major Celebs Who Were Bullied In School

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Fame has an amusing way of changing a celebrity's story in ways they may not have imagined in childhood. Many major public figures adored by millions of people today weren't exactly popular while growing up. The glitzy lives they live now — dominated by blinding lights, red carpets, devoted fanbases, and Hollywood glam — are far removed from the tormented, bullied youth years they survived in school. 

Funnily enough, many a time these celebrities were targeted by their school peers because of the very things that made them famous. Take, for instance, Ed Sheeran and his distinct ginger hair or Lady Gaga's unending appetite for creativity. But quirky misfits finding their footing — and eventually success — is perhaps one of Hollywood's most enduring and endearing storylines; fittingly enough, many of the entertainment industry's denizens are case studies in this very arc. 

To be reminded of these celebrities' past chapters is also a way to see through the veneer of stardom that appears to separate them from their fans, many of whom may have gone through similar experiences of bullying in their regular lives. It's a way to find human connection and also some assurance that our challenging youthful years don't have to define what we eventually make of ourselves. Here's a list of some major celebs who were bullied in school and how they went about it. 

Kate Winslet has been endlessly candid about the experiences of bullying she withstood as a schoolgirl, as well as how they overlapped with her self-esteem as an actor, who got her start in entertainment at a young age. "I had been bullied at school. They called me Blubber. Teased me for wanting to act," she narrated at the 2017 WE Day UK event (via Time Magazine). "I was even told that I might be lucky with my acting, if I was happy to settle for the fat girl parts." 

Even Winslet's drama teachers weren't always encouraging, with some shockingly choosing to spotlight her weight instead of her prodigious acting talent. While Winslet didn't let the commentary bog her acting trajectory down — and scored multiple television offers during her teens — the journey wasn't always smooth-sailing. That her transition into a public figure drew the press into the conversation about her weight didn't make things any easier. 

As a teen star, Winslet developed body image issues that affected her mental health and relationship with food. "It's the only thing in my life I really regret," she said on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs programming. "Long-term not eating properly, or eating and panicking about what you'd eaten." 

For all the fanfare that surrounds her today, Jennifer Aniston was hardly popular during her pre-acting years. As a girl who had some weight on her, she was picked on by her classmates all through middle school, with little explanation as to why. "I was one of the kids who the others would decide to make fun of," she told InStyle (via People). "Childhood is such a vulnerable time, and I'm sure a part of me believed all that they teased me about." 

School, unfortunately, was just one of the frontiers of criticism Aniston had to face up to. Her domestic life wasn't much easier, with her mother, Nancy Dow — with whom Aniston shared a famously contentious relationship — frequently nitpicking about the way she looked. "I did not come out the model child she'd hoped for," Aniston said in an interview with The Sunday Telegraph (via The Independent), noting that her mother was big on physical appearances. 

The narrative that surrounded Aniston all through her childhood affected her self-image well into her adult years as a successful global icon — to the extent that Aniston confessed to feeling detached from her universal status as a beauty icon. 

One of the lesser-known details from Priyanka Chopra Jonas' life is that the India-born actor spent several years in the United States as a young girl, long before her career and marriage to Nick Jonas caused her to take up residence there. During that period in her teens, Jonas flew across the world to live with her relatives and attend school in a foreign country. It wasn't long before she was made to feel like an outsider. "Brownie, go back to your country!" and "Go back on the elephant you came on" were just some of the racist remarks thrown her way, Jonas wrote in her memoir "Unfinished."

"I took it very personally. Deep inside, it starts gnawing at you," she told People. The "Quantico" star has spoken endlessly about being made to feel like she wasn't good enough through her years of education in America and how her confidence eventually took a hit. A few years into her U.S. stint, Jonas, in her words, "broke up with America" and returned to India, where she could relax into a regular schooling experience that wasn't as stressful as the one she experienced abroad.  

Ed Sheeran's flaming ginger hair, which renders him unmistakably distinct in the music fraternity today, was once the cause of intense bullying during his youth. During an interview on "Love Music Hate Racism," the multi Grammy-winning singer revealed that his appearance made him the target of relentless teasing in his childhood, so much so that he hated going to school. 

"I was ginger, so that was like instantly ripped into from the day I started school," he said. "Ginger, had a stutter, wore huge glasses ... I hated primary school with a passion. Cried every single day." Much to his advantage, the "Shape of You" hitmaker was eventually able to turn his insecurities around and found a way to distinguish himself with the help of those very features that his schoolmates made fun of. 

As he got older, Sheeran began embracing his "quirky" appearance. "When I started playing music, every time I'd do a gig, everyone would be like, 'Oh, it's the ginger guy with the small guitar.' You get remembered for that ... I realized that and I was like, my differences actually add to my success." Sheeran, who is also distinguishable as one of Hollywood's most down-to-earth celebrities, added that he continues to pass on this wisdom of being different to kids around him. 

School can be a turbulent time for many, but for Charlize Theron, it was especially hard to navigate the social dynamics of fitting in with the other kids. To begin with, the "Mad Max: Fury Road" star's appearance — made especially distinct by a few missing teeth during her early years — was a major source of insecurity for her. "I wasn't particularly gorgeous when I was a kid," she told the now-defunct HFPA (via Golden Globes). "I had jaundice as a baby and the antibiotics really rotted my teeth so when my teeth came out they had to pull them." 

Theron was hardly a popular preteen in school and, as she recounted during promotions for her 2011 comedy film "Young Adult" — which deals with similar themes of bullying — often worked overtime to be liked by her peers. "I wore really nerdy glasses because I was blind as could be and the boys didn't like [me]," she said at a screening (via Los Angeles Times). "I was pretty much a mess in primary school." With age, and presumably the start she got in entertainment as a teen, Theron was able to eventually sort herself out and overcome her childhood experiences. 

Jennifer Lawrence can look back at her days of being bullied in school with a touch of humor as an adult but, considering how severe such experiences can sometimes get, it could hardly have been funny for the "Passengers" star in real time. She admitted to having switched schools multiple times during her youth to evade girls who were mean to her. And while things got better for the future Oscar winner in middle school, one sour memory, which she has repeated often in interviews, seemingly followed her into adulthood. 

"This one girl named Meredith handed me a stack of invitations to her birthday party, but I was not invited," Lawrence recalled for E! News during promotions for her film "No Hard Feelings." "She asked me to hand them out. Isn't that so mean?" Lawrence got even with her bully by apparently spitting on the invites and dumping them in the garbage. She went on to narrate how she later "accidentally" bullied a boy in her school by pantsing him at a football game. 

The entertainment world is full of nonconformists but none quite like Lady Gaga. Through her music, her changing appearances, and her outspokenness, the chameleonic performer has long toed the boundary of convention on her own terms; this courage can be traced back to her time in school. As a student, Lady Gaga had dreams bigger than her classmates could digest — something that became a source of bullying during her formative years. The "Poker Face" hitmaker recalled on "The Late Late Show" how her creative inclinations to sing and draw everywhere often got her into trouble in class. "Around junior year, my grades sort of tanked, and I was really bullied my whole life," she said.

Tough times persisted even as Lady Gaga went to college, with her peers creating pages on social media that dissed her. "Stefani Germanotta, you will never be famous," one Facebook group was titled. The bullying and discouragement did little to dampen Lady Gaga's spirit and, luckily for her (and us), she persisted in her music dreams. "I was dragging my keyboard around New York and I was pounding on doors. I really believed in myself," she told People. 

That Eminem endured a turbulent childhood is no secret. In fact, it's part of his lore as a no-holds-barred, brutally unfiltered rapper who laid bare many of his life's darkest details in his early lyrics. From growing up in an unstable household to sharing a strained relationship with his mother Debbie Nelson, there was a lot that plagued the young boy, then known as Marshall Mathers. But one of the heaviest burdens he carried came from being bullied at school. "I would change schools 2-3 times a year ... [I was] beat up in the bathrooms, beat up in the hallways, shoved into lockers — for the most part for just being the new kid," he said on "60 Minutes" (via YouTube). 

One such malicious instance of bullying left such a deep imprint on Eminem that it inspired his 1999 hit "Brain Damage." The song's lyrics spoke about one D'Angelo Bailey, who was apparently Eminem's arch nemesis during school and used to pick on him constantly; he once beat Eminem up so violently that it left him with a cerebral hemorrhage, his mom told Rolling Stone in 1999. Bailey, who confirmed having assaulted Eminem, later sued the rapper for making details about his life public; the case was eventually dismissed.  

"Pretty Little Liars" all but established Shay Mitchell as one of television's hottest bombshells. But Mitchell also knew a life before being uplifted by that status, and it was, to put it mildly, not very pretty. Back when she was still in school, the biracial star had to deal with bullying that coerced her to retreat into a shell as a young girl. "Instead of going to the cafeteria, I'd say, 'Why deal with this?' and I'd eat in a bathroom stall," she told Self magazine. 

Mitchell has also spoken about the prejudices that were directed at her family as they built a life in Canada, stemming majorly from her mother's Filipino heritage. She told Women's Health: "My mom would get derogatory remarks like, 'Are you the cleaning lady?'" — comments that were later passed down to Mitchell too when she attended school. "I'd get questions like, 'Are you going to go clean the bathrooms?'" Years later, when Mitchell became a mother to mixed-race children herself, her experiences were instrumental in the way she introduced inclusivity to them at a young age. 

Given his universal recognition as one of the world's most handsome men, it might seem impossible to believe that Henry Cavill was once bullied for his appearance. As a youngster, the English actor was far removed from the chiseled, superhero looks that define his image today. His peers used to call him "Fat Cavill," apparently for all the extra weight he carried as a child; the teasing only got worse during his coeducational years. "As soon as the girls arrived — and I was not popular — all the cool guys would tell them I was a knob. All the girls turned on me," he told The Rake. 

Traumatic as the experience may have been for Cavill, it gave him fuel to rise up to his acting dreams and prove himself to the world. "Yes, there is something to do with school, I definitely get a sense of vindication," he admitted on the subject of his pursuit of success. In fact, Cavill even went so far as to say that being bullied also played a great role in making him a better actor. He told People: "Someone who is on the outskirts of popularity is someone who gets to look in ... It helped me read people very well." 

Much as Zooey Deschanel's "adorkability" defines her public image today, her quirkiness did not bode well for her during her school years. The "New Girl" star wasn't exactly popular among her classmates, several of whom picked on her — often to concerning degrees. Speaking to Marie Claire, Deschanel recalled an instance from seventh grade when a girl spat at her. "I was talking to her, and she didn't want me to talk to her," the actor explained. "I honestly did nothing. I just remember walking over to my locker and wiping the spit off my face, so humiliated." 

Through the tears and shame, Deschanel learned the value of finding humor even in the darkest situations. "Having to fight your way through those years makes you ready for the future," she told InStyle (via ABC News), talking about the resilience her school years instilled in her. "I can snap back, I can make fun of myself before they do – I can do all of it." Those experiences also imbued in her first-hand wisdom about how to stand up to bullies and hang on to your self-esteem, which she imparts to her children. 

Jessie J's health issues have been a defining presence in her life since childhood and even shaped the way she navigated her school years. Born with a heart condition, the singer was in and out of hospitals a lot as a child, experiencing youth in ways that were far removed from her peers. And as kids often do, her classmates made those differences hard to ignore. During an appearance on BBC Radio 1, Jessie J recalled how she once became the target of bullying after a medication she was on gave her a greenish "alien tint." 

"I wasn't the pretty kid, I was the awkward one that didn't know who I fitted in with," she revealed, saying that her large teeth and haircut only added to the list of things for which she was picked on. It apparently got so bad that kids would throw stones at her as she walked back home from school. "I would enjoy going to sleep because I could dream about something that I wasn't living," the "Price Tag" hitmaker said. Music also tethered her and gave her an outlet of expression to prove her haters wrong. 

The transformation of Demi Lovato over the years has been striking, to put it mildly. But some of the most definitive moments in her life came about long before she rose to fame as a Disney darling and pop icon. During her school years, Lovato began gravitating toward the entertainment world and kick-started her screen career with "Barney & Friends" in the early 2000s, making her the target of incessant bullying among her peers. In fact, the situation escalated to degrees that were dangerous, even by middle school standards.

"There was a petition for me to hurt myself, take my own life, and people passed it around the school and signed it," Lovato said on "Podcrushed," recalling the tragic circumstances that urged her to leave public school at the age of 12. "I developed an eating disorder. Then I was really lonely and I didn't have any friends, really." It was also around this time that the "Camp Rock" star began using substances — a turning point that precipitated her slide into addiction. In the midst of her own ongoing healing journey, Lovato has remained strongly committed to anti-bullying advocacy and has spoken about the cause through multiple public campaigns.