Some stars have opened up about their friends and even parents selling them out, while Matthew Perry revealed his falling out with another actor after he landed Friends.
Finding fame can change a person — but it can also change everyone around them.
While wealth and success can cause a celebrity to stray from their humble roots, some stars say that it actually affected the friends and family they surrounded themselves with as well. Celebs like Gigi Hadid and Billie Eilish admit that they unfortunately lost friends on their rise to fame who didn’t know how to deal with their new celebrity status. Although it may have been hard to walk away from friendships, these stars know that it was definitely for the best.
Find out what happened to these celebrities’ relationships…
1. Gigi Hadid
Gigi Hadid says her rise to fame changed how many of her friends interacted with her. Looking back at her early career, she explained that she saw “a lot of interesting things in friends come out.” While it hurt to see people act differently, Gigi says it ended up being a good thing because she could figure out who her true friends were.
“You learn that it’s better to have a few really good friends than tons of friends you aren’t really sure about,” she told Harper’s Bazaar. “There are people who understand that I love them and who know that when I get back to town, I’m going to call them, but sometimes I can’t call every day because I’m in weird places. I’ve lost a lot of friends because I’ll get busy for a short period of time, and they’re not reaching out, but if I don’t reach out, then it’s like I’ve changed.”
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2. Billie Eilish
Billie Eilish says that despite becoming famous, a lot of her life has remained the same — except when it comes to her friends. During her rise to fame, she admits she lost a lot of friends and the people closest to her now are those that she works with.
“My life really, honestly feels the same as it did when I was a child, except that I don’t have any friends. I mean, besides the people that I work with, who are absolutely my friends — they’re actually my best friends,” she told V Magazine.
She continued, “My relationship with my home has not changed, just like with my parents and my brother. I think it’s a bit jarring for some people who grew up with me or haven’t seen me in a long time. [They] come over to see us and see that it’s exactly the same. It’s as if you walked in here, and it’s 2003.”
3. Ryan Reynolds
Ryan Reynolds was betrayed by one of his “closest friends” after he became famous. After 25 years of friendship, Ryan says he learned that the longtime pal was trying to sell a private photo that featured Ryan, his wife Blake Lively and their daughter James moments after the little girl was born. Looking back, Ryan says it was “devastating” to discover and cutting out the friend was “like a death.”
“I don’t think he thought he would ever be caught. But it’s a pretty narrow group of people that I would send photos like that to. They’re just, like, my closest family and my closest friends,” Ryan told GQ.
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4. Rihanna
When Rihanna became famous, it was one of the people closest to her that started acting completely differently — her father. Instead of protecting her, he began to sell her out to the media. Looking back, she says that after she was assaulted by Chris Brown, her dad didn’t check up on her and instead contacted the media and “told them a bunch of lies.”
“It really makes me question what I have become to my father. Like, what do I even mean to him? …It’s really strange. That’s the only word I can think of to describe it because you grow up with your father, you know him, you are a part of him, for goodness’ sakes! And then he does something so bizarre that I can’t begin to wrap my mind around it,” she told Vogue in 2011. “You hear the horror stories about people going behind people’s backs and doing strange things, but you always think, ‘Not my family. My father would never do that to me.’”
5. Rupert Grint
Rupert Grint got his start in Hollywood when he was just a kid so he says that it made finding friends a little tough. He says he used to be concerned if his friends were “genuine” and then struggled when he would leave for long periods on shoots, admitting things could get “weird” when he returned.
“’You’d always worry about whether it was a genuine thing — and I think that goes with any kind of relationship, even friendships. It took me a while to figure out whether someone was genuine or they had ulterior motives…I left school at quite a pivotal time…when you’re just making friends and stuff,” he told The Mirror.
He continued, “’So whenever I came back, bonds I had made before had all got a little bit weird. I did lose a few friends but on the whole it’s all been pretty good.’”
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6. Matthew McConaughey
Early in his career, Matthew McConaughey says he was betrayed by his mother, who started treating him completely differently. He says that when he called her, it began to feel like he was talking to a fan and not a family member. Soon after, she began speaking to the media and it ended up causing a major rift in their relationship. They didn’t speak for years.
“As soon as I got ‘famous’ after A Time to Kill, I started to have my weekly Sunday call home to call my mother. Mother wasn’t answering the phone. A fan of my fame was answering the phone. I was trying to find my own balance with fame and stuff. And I would share things with her…some of those things I would share might show up in the six o’clock news three days later,” he shared on Red Table Talk.
7. Justin Timberlake
Justin Timberlake has been in the entertainment industry almost his entire life, so he says he’s learned a lot about friendships in Hollywood. While some of these friends have accused him of changing since his early days of fame, he says it’s more that his world has changed around him.
“I found with friends, close friends that have come and gone in my life, they’re like, ‘Oh, you changed.’ Everything else around you changed; you’re still the same person. If you want to say that I didn’t have to worry about a paparazzi following me around in my car has made me change, then yeah, sorry, I’ve changed, but I didn’t know what that was like before. I was just a young person trying to express myself,” he told Rolling Stone.
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9. Perrie Edwards
When Perrie Edwards and Little Mix won The X Factor, she says her friends quickly began acting differently. Reflecting on the early days of her career, Perrie says people acted cruel and she lost a majority of her pals.
“I’ve lost a lot of friends. Which is s**t. I feel like as soon as I made it in the group, I lost everybody. A bit of betrayal, a bit of b***hiness,” she told Cosmopolitan.
She continued, “It’s harder when you’re in the [music] industry, because you don’t have the time anymore and a lot of people don’t understand that. It works both ways – I can’t make all the effort and have this mad career. The people who are in my life now are the ones who matter. It’s quality, not quantity.”
10. Matthew Perry
Matthew Perry became a household name thanks to his role on Friends — but his fame caused him to lose one of his closest IRL friends. Matthew explained that his pal Craig Bierko, who had turned down a role on Friends, didn’t talk to him for years because he was jealous of his success.
“Craig Bierko, after he didn’t get Friends — and Friends was on for two years and was a massive hit — Craig didn’t speak to me for those two years. I would call him. He wouldn’t return my calls, and he just didn’t want to be my friend anymore,” Matthew shared on Q with Tom Power.
He continued, “So, two years into it, he called me up on the phone and said, ‘Can we meet? I’d like to talk with you.’ I said, ‘Of course. Yes, great.’ So he came over to my apartment, and he said, ‘I’m sorry that I have not called you in two years. I could not handle that you got rich and famous on a show that I turned down. We were both good enough to get that role.’”
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11. Sharon Stone
Sharon Stone says that after she became famous, her friends began to treat her differently. She alluded to the fact that people would try and take advantage of her wealth, sharing that friends often expected her to pay for everything.
“It’s very expensive to be famous. You go out to dinner, and there’s 15 people at the table. And who gets the check? You get the $3,000 dinner check every single time,” Sharon shared with InStyle.
