Us Weekly may proclaim every week that “Stars — They’re Just Like Us,” but the truth is that celebrities are not, in fact, like us. No one else can head-butt like Orlando Bloom, or aggressively enjoy summer like Leo. But there is one thing that equalizes celebrities and mortals, and that’s waking up in the morning to a big, fat, juicy pimple.
Acne is an essential part of the human condition, and if you’ve watched any Proactiv commercials, you’ll know that even celebrities suffer from it, despite access to the world’s best dermatologists and makeup artists. Here is a roundup of famous people talking about popping their zits and canceling dates because of bad skin. Doesn’t that make you feel better?
1. “I’d appreciate it if y’all called my pimple by his first name … Walter. #WalterThePimp” —Kendall Jenner
2. “Why couldn’t my pimple be on the side of my head that has hair…?!!” —Demi Lovato
3. “I wear a hat, and if I have a pimple, I let it be. I’m like, ‘Yeah, look, I got a pimple. So?’ Everybody does.” —Selena Gomez
4. “When I was a teenager, I had pimples — oh, God, every time someone looked at my face I thought they were looking at my pimples. I put mud on my face to dry them out, and it worked.” —Gisele Bündchen
5. “And this acne was so bad it sent me into severe, severe depression. Like I couldn’t leave the house. The next stage with that sort of depression is food — too little or too much. Guess what I did?” —Salma Hayek
6. “in bed in paris with my acne cream on.” —Lorde
7. “I’ll be honest. As a teenager, I had horrible breakouts. I would hide from cameras, hide in my room. I was just ashamed of my acne … Today, even though I’m a celebrity, I’m no different than anyone else. Acne just shows up and causes trouble. And it can mess with your confidence.” —Adam Levine
8. “In Atlanta, I had acne so bad that I would cancel dates and plans and stay in the house. I would not go out. When I was a kid, I remember thinking, Well, I’m not going to be a model, so I better get real good on the guitar.” —John Mayer
9. “I mean, I had terrible, terrible, skin. It was embarrassing, and I did everything I could think of to make it go away. I tried to cover it with makeup. I tried to get rid of it with medication: oral, topical, even the harshest prescriptions. Nothing helped for very long.
“Looking back, I realize that I hadn’t needed those prescription drugs, those vials of potions and creams. [I] hadn’t needed to be angry at my skin or feel bad about myself. I had just needed to LISTEN TO MY BODY. … acne was my body’s alarm system, it was [my] way of telling me [to stop eating fast food].” —Cameron Diaz
10. “You try to tell yourself that you’re fine and it’s all good — and you really should be fine — but it definitely affects you. You want to do what you can to make you feel good.” —Julianne Hough
11. “I had a terrible bout of acne after I turned 30. I kept reading about my sodding dewy complexion and thinking, ‘Oh sh*t, look at me, I’m covered in bloody spots, proper cystic bumps, if only they knew.’” —Kate Winslet
12. “I didn’t know I was meeting [Karl Lagerfeld], and I was so jet-lagged I didn’t know what was going on. I was in jeans and had acne — you know the kind where nothing is going to cover it — so I put a hat on. I remember somebody making a (negative) comment about it and I just thought, ‘I’m wearing a hat because I’ve got acne.’” —Keira Knightley
13. “So now I’m flirting with death, hustling like a G / While victory wasn’t watching took chances repeatedly / As a teenage boy before acne / Before I got proactive I couldn’t face she.” —”History,” Jay Z
14. “I had bad hormonal acne when I was 17, and they put me on Accutane for it. Then, I had stress acne when I was 20, when I did Easy A, which they kindly video-airbrushed out of the movie. But I realized how debilitating and embarrassing it can be to have cystic acne.” —Emma Stone
15. “I went through a time where I was really depressed. Like, I locked myself in my room and my dad had to break my door down. I had really bad skin and I felt really bullied because of that. But I never was depressed because of the way someone else made me feel. I just was depressed.
“I had kind of bad skin when I was younger and that was always my insecurity, especially being on TV because [the camera was like] right here, and this was even before the HD situation. You think that’s the only thing people can see.” —Miley Cyrus
16. “When I see a pimple on my face I say, ‘Ughhh I hate this, I must cover this, I must pop it.’” —Bella Thorne
17. “That zit cream in your 30s life. At least I’m not going on The Tonight Show later today.” —Mindy Kaling
18. “I wear so much spot cream at night, I have more on than my mum.” —Harry Styles
19. “Bad skin really made me want to hide. I’d wear makeup to bed or stay in if I had a bad breakout.” —Katy Perry
20. “There are some things that just come with being a teenager. Your feet grow like crazy. I can’t stop that. Your hormones kick in. I don’t want to stop that. And then there’s zits. I can stop that.” —Justin Bieber
21. “highly recommend the new yayoi kusama they just installed on the upper west side of my face.” —Tavi Gevinson
22. “I have the same breakouts as everybody else.” —Scarlett Johansson
23. “I’ve been quite lucky because I don’t really get spots. At school and as a teenager I never had spots so I don’t really know how to deal with them.” —Alexa Chung
24. “I never had bad skin. But my sister [Kendall] had really, really bad skin growing up.” —Kylie Jenner
25. “I’ve always been told I have good skin.” —Gwyneth Paltrow
