When it comes to irrational fears, we are not alone. We take a look at some of the more unusual celebrity phobias.
Billy Bob Thornton
The Goliath actor has many fears, including Komodo dragons, plastic cutlery and, most importantly, antiques. He told the New York Times that his many phobias are “greatly exaggerated” but that he has a genuine dislike for antiques. However, his fear seems to stem more from the centuries-old filth he imagines embedded in it than from the object itself.
“It’s that French/English/Scottish old moldy stuff. Old, dusty, heavy curtains and large tables with carved lion heads. Things that kings had around them. This is the stuff I can’t be with. It was too big to be functional. It creeps me out.” On the set of Love Actually, Hugh Grant reportedly enjoyed pointing out ancient artifacts just to make his co-star flinch.
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Kylie Minogue arrives for the ABBA Voyage Concert at the ABBA Arena in London on Thursday 26th May 2022 wearing a feathered dress that has never seen a hanger. (` Photo/Alberto Pezzali)
Kylie Minogue
Kylie Minogue has always been known as a clothes horse. But ironically, she has a strange fear of the object most of us use to keep our closets organized – she’s repelled by hangers. “I don’t like how they sound when you put them in the closet,” said the singer-actor
Elle Magazine. Instead, Minogue lays out her clothes in what is sure to be a huge closet. Or maybe, like so many people, she throws them in a heap on her “floor robe.” Stars, they really are just like us.
Nicole Kidman
The Nine Perfect Strangers star is absolutely fearless when it comes to the most creepy crawlies. There’s even a video of her bravely rescuing a giant tarantula that was loitering by the pool while her daughters screeched in horror in the background. But as someone who suffers from lepidopterophobia — the fear of butterflies — seeing and feeling the winged insects evokes very different emotions for Kidman. “I jump out of airplanes, I could be covered in roaches, I do all sorts of things,” she says, “but I just don’t like the feel of butterfly bodies.”
Martin Freiman
Martin Freeman (The Responder) is afraid of choking on his dinner, and strangely enough, it’s the sight of an avocado that gets the actor’s heart beating. Freeman revealed on The Graham Norton Show that he’s terrified of the fleshy fruit, particularly the stone that’s lodged in his throat. “I must confess that every time I eat an avocado, I imagine the stone stuck in my windpipe. I don’t have that much avocado,” he told Norton.
Which really makes you wonder how exactly the Sherlock star consumes his avocados. Maybe someone needs to tell him that even though they’re a fruit, it’s best not to chew them like an apple.
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Matthew McConaughey reflects on the consequences of getting stuck in a revolving door.
Matthew McConaughey
Entering a revolving door is a bit like playing jump rope. With hands raised defensively, you really need to pick your moment before you commit. It’s all too easy to imagine getting stuck in that rotating vestibule and escaping a limb before the rest of your body can follow. Matthew McConaughey certainly imagined this scenario. The True Detective star told W magazine:
“I’m afraid they’ll cut me in half. Strangers will see me tense up and hold my hand as I walk through them. I keep worrying that I won’t make it through the door alive.”
Rita prays
The Voice judge, singer and alleged fiancee of Taika Waititi has a fear of toilets, or what lurks under the toilet in particular. It’s a phobia perhaps motivated by urban childhood myths of creatures emerging from the depths of the bowl.
“I always feel like something’s coming out the bottom when I go to the bathroom,” Ora said, before helpfully clarifying that the floor she was referring to was the toilet bowl. “I have this thing where I think this tunnel has to start somewhere, and sometimes I’m like, ‘What if something comes out of the toilet?’ ”
Christina Ricc
Houseplants are enjoying something of a renaissance as demand for green houseplants booms during lockdown. But an actor sees potted plants very differently.
Christina Ricci (Yellowjackets) is definitely not on board with the trend to fill your home with living, breathing greenery. She once told talk show host Conan O’Brien, “Ferns in particular – and other houseplants – have always been very malevolent to me. I think they have bad intentions.”
Sarah Michelle Gellar
Although Sarah Michelle Gellar has spent a lot of time filming Buffy The Vampire Slayer in fake cemeteries, she is afraid of cemeteries and of being buried alive. It’s a fear reportedly predating Buffy, so it seems exposure therapy didn’t work for the actor. “I have an irrational fear of cemeteries and being buried alive,” she says. “It’s really hard being a vampire hunter when you’re scared of cemeteries.” She’s in good company, though. Hans Christian Anderson and the composer Frederic Chopin are also said to have feared being buried alive.
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Tightly packed holes make Sarah Paulson deeply uncomfortable. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/`)
Sarah Paulson
If you get an odd feeling looking at something with tiny uniform holes, like a wasp’s nest or a honeycomb, you might share Sarah Paulson’s phobia. The American horror story actor suffers from trypophobia, a strong fear or disgust of tightly packed holes. “I think I saw a natural sponge in a store once,” Paulson told the LA Times. “It gave me – like, the hair on my arms stood up. I felt my throat tighten. And I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t like seeing all these gaping holes touching other gaping holes’.”
Eliot Page
Tennis balls are often used in Hollywood special effects productions so the actors know where to look. That was both a blessing and a curse for Elliot Page while filming X Men: Days Of Future Past. Page has a mysterious phobia of the spongy green spheres, and pretending to be afraid of the tennis balls that would later become computer-generated mutant-hunting robots required little acting. In an interview promoting the film, Page spoke of his “intense phobia around tennis balls. I couldn’t tell you what it is. Tennis is coming, I have to leave the room.”
Theo Wargo/Getty Images
Kristen Stewart: Not a fan of the ponies. (Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images)
Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson
Having things in common is important in a relationship, and for former co-stars and lovers Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, that was a crippling fear of horses. Stewart’s anxiety began when she fell off a horse as a child and broke her elbow. As an adult, she literally had to recite the phrase “get back on horseback” for her role in “Snow White and the Huntsman.”
“I just didn’t have to think about it,” Stewart said. “I wanted this so badly that I was like, ‘Okay, well, if I die with the horse, that’s all good.'”
Pattinson is also petrified of ponies and had to face his fears on a movie set as well. The actor told USA Today that filming a scene with a horse for Water For Elephants was “terrifying.” “It was just a split second, but (it was) a full-grown stallion – I’m pretty scared of horses too.”
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