“Once I realized it was all just a dirty trick, I declined to cooperate any further.”
Catfishing can happen to anyone — even celebrities! While it’s usually regular people who are tricked into thinking that they’re chatting with a celeb, it turns out that some major stars have also gotten duped online. These stars say that they’ve been fooled by imposters on social media, pretending to be their famous friends, as well as misled into believing they were talking to potential romantic partners. While it may be embarrassing to admit they got catfished, they hope their story can help others not fall for the same thing.
Here’s what happened to these stars online…
1. Charlize Theron
When Charlize Theron first joined Instagram, she got catfished by a person pretending to be Emily Blunt. She says she wasn’t aware of fake celebrity profiles and was sure she was talking to her friend Emily.
“I was following ‘Emily Blunt’… But I wasn’t really following Emily Blunt. And somebody was like, ‘I don’t think Emily…Emily’s not on social media.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, she is. I follow her.’ I was like, writing her. I was like, ‘Hey Em! What’s up Evil Sister?!'” she said on A Little Late with Lilly Singh. “[I was] writing to some crazy person who’s, like, obsessed, and probably stalking her in a dangerous way.”
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2. Drew Barrymore
Drew Barrymore says she once got catfished while using a dating app. While discussing the incident, Drew explained that the man told her he was a professional football player but it turned out he was a musician.
“This guy on my dating app said he was the quarterback for the Los Angeles Rams… He was not the quarterback for the LA Rams. He’s a musician that thought he was being cute,” she said on her talk show. “I was like, ‘I hate you. You pithy, deceiving, playful — you’ve made me feel stupid. I don’t know who you are. I feel so dumb. Why did we have to get off on this foot? I hate you!'”
3. Meri Brown
Sister Wives star Meri Brown was still married to her ex husband Cody when she engaged in an online relationship with a man who was catfishing her. At the time, she thought she was speaking to a businessman named Sam Cooper but it ended up actually being a woman named Jackie behind the screen.
“During an emotional and vulnerable time earlier this year, I began speaking with someone online who turned out to be not who they said they were. I never met this person, and I regret being drawn into this situation, but I hope because of it I can help others who find themselves in similar circumstances,” she later told People in 2015.
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4. Danielle Fishel
Back when Danielle Fishel was just a preteen, she began receiving letters from a fan she believed to be another girl her age. The pair started communicating about their shared love of gymnastics and even sent photos back and forth. The girl, who claimed her parents had died, even sent a photo of her “good looking” older brother that she lived with. When the girl included her phone number in a letter, Danielle’s mom gave her permission to call.
“My mom is participating in me writing back. She’s reading all these letters as well and she’s aware of what I’m writing and she’s reading what this girl is writing to me, and my mom is like: ‘[It seems like] you would be friends.’ So I call her and I get her voicemail, but it’s not her. It’s her brother’s voicemail because it’s his house. They live in an apartment together, but her name isn’t anywhere on the voicemail,” Danielle shared on Pod Meets World.
She continued, “The way it all came out is because I kept calling her, and I left my phone number, and she wouldn’t call me back. Then we got a letter from her brother saying that she had died, and my mom woke up in the middle of the night and was like: ‘She never existed, it’s always been him!'”
5. Iggy Azalea
Iggy Azalea admits she accidentally got catfished by her mom. She says that she started getting messages from someone she thought was a fan and ended up following her back. She enjoyed talking to them but later learned it was actually her mom she had been talking to the whole time.
“There was this one fan, and I was like, ‘Ooh, I like his fan. This fan’s cool. I’m gonna add them.’ And then [my mom] texts me and was like, ‘Um, you know I’m ‘Azalean For Life,’ right? That’s me,'” Iggy shared on The Cruz Show.
She continued, “And I was like, ‘Oh my god, I’m friends with my mother?! By accident?! This is so lame! So lame…’ And I felt so embarrassed. I was like, ‘I know that. Obviously, I can tell it’s you.’ But I didn’t. I didn’t know that it was her, so she was like, ‘Yeah, we were talking to each other back and forth.’ I was like, ‘This is so lame.’ So I guess I really do like my mother after all.”
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6. Brad Paisley
A woman named Hope Jackson once catfished Brad Paisley, telling him that her daughter was dying of neuroblastoma. She reached out to multiple celebrities, developing a relationship with them over email. Brad even called her at one point to sing a song to the little girl. It was Wipeout host John Henson who discovered the woman was a fake and shared the story on Nightline.
When the show spoke with Kevin Lovewell, the officer who arrested Hope, he said that she had been charged with theft of services for having Brad sing to her under false pretenses.
“[Brad] also told me that [Hope] had asked him if he would call her dying daughter and sing the song ‘Amazing Grace’ to her over the telephone, and he did. While conducting my investigation, I spoke with Hope Jackson, and she stated to me that she knowingly made up the story about her having a dying daughter and that she used photographs that she had found on various websites on the internet to commit this and other scams on unsuspecting people,” Kevin shared. “She also stated that there were other victims.”
7. Manti Te’o
Football player Manti Te’o was infamously catfished by a woman named Naya Tuiasosopo while he was playing for University of Notre Dame. The pair connected over X, formerly Twitter, and began exchanging messages — eventually leading to a long distance relationship. In 2012, Manti was told that the woman he believed was his girlfriend had died and he publicly dedicated his football season to her while grieving her passing.
Eventually the media discovered that Manti’s girlfriend wasn’t real and he was being catfished. Naya had used pictures stolen from a former classmate. In the documentary Untold: The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist, Naya explained that she was struggling with her gender identity at the time and felt “horrible” about it. Meanwhile, Manti shared that the whole thing was a “very difficult” experience.
“For the first three years, my life was extremely difficult, and I was desperate to find peace,” Manti shared in the doc. “The only thing that I could think of during that time was forgiveness, was to let it go. Once I did, I felt like I then regained the power over my life and that peace over my life.”
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8. Pat McAfee
Pat McAfee admits he was also catfished by a woman he met on social media. Looking back, he says he really wasn’t famous at the time but was contacted by a “smoking hot blonde.” Although he was unsure at first, he noticed that she was followed by other football players. After she sent him many messages, he finally decided to respond.
“I had my suspicions the whole time. I was like, ‘She should not be reaching out to me.’ I had a good awareness of where I was in the totem pole of life at this point. She sent me a DM. She was allegedly in Houston,” he shared on The Complex Sports Podcast, adding that she proceeded to message him every time she saw he was in Texas.
He continued, “Next year, we’re going to play Houston, another DM comes. It was at that moment I had an entire epiphany. I sent her a message and I told her, I said, ‘When you write the book of you catfishing people…I want you to have a chapter on me saying, ‘You’re a f–king fake!’ I never heard from her again.”
9. Ian McKellen
In 2022, Ian McKellen says he received a message that appeared to come from the Ukrainian Embassy in London, inquiring if he would take part in “a private discussion with President Zelensky.” After speaking with some contacts in Ukraine, he agreed to take the call but quickly discovered he was not speaking with the president but instead being catfished by a pair of comedians from Russia.
“As it soon turned out, it was not Zelensky or any Ukrainian official, but one of a pair of Russians who call themselves comedians. I understand they’re popular in Russia, which is surprising because their jokes aren’t funny,” he wrote on social media. “I played along with things they suggested but was frankly bewildered that they seemed to think I might be in a position to provide substantial aid to Ukraine. Once I realized it was all just a dirty trick, I declined to cooperate any further.”
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10. Thomas Gibson
Criminal Minds actor Thomas Gibson was once catfished by a woman he met on social media. According to TMZ, the woman reached out to Thomas on X and he responded. They continued to talk over the course of two years, even exchanging photos and videos. The woman used photos from pornographic websites — and Thomas eventually realized it was all fake. His lawyers reached out and demanded she cut contact. She later contacted TMZ about the situation and even provided video evidence that Thomas had been messaging her. She says she never heard from him again.
