15 Celebrities Who Are Living Well With Depression

Before she was Betty Cooper on CW’s hit series Riverdale, Lili Reinhart was an aspiring actress who’d struggled with depression since age 14, People reported. When she first moved to Los Angeles to pursue her acting career, Reinhart landed very few acting roles. That stress, plus the impact it had on her finances, took an even greater toll on her mental health.

“I remember looking at my bank account and seeing all of this money that I had saved acting over the course of many years just gone,” recalled Reinhart in an interview with W Magazine, published in September 2017. “I had so much anxiety booking work, and I spent almost five months holed up in this bedroom in this house just feeling anxious, waiting for my next audition, and not doing anything else. It was the most miserable time of my life.”

Reinhart credits her breakthrough role with pulling her out of that dark time. “Riverdale came into my life when I was going through the worst depression I had ever experienced,” Reinhart tweeted in May 2017. “And in the end it completely saved me.”

The 26-year-old actress has long been candid about her mental health on social media, sharing on Instagram in 2019 that she had restarted therapy, according to People. “Friendly reminder for anyone who needs to hear it: Therapy is never something to feel ashamed of,” wrote Reinhart.

Along with landing major movie roles, including 2019’s Hustlers and 2020’s Chemical Hearts, Reinhart published a poetry book in 2020 called Swimming Lessons, partly about living with anxiety and depression.

Miley Cyrus, now 30, became a household name around the country while playing the fictional main character in Hannah Montana on the Disney Channel from 2006 to 2011. Once the show wrapped and Cyrus left Disney, she struggled with depression, she told Elle in 2014.

“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,” Cyrus explained. “It was a lot to do with, like, 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.”

The “Party in the U.S.A.” singer told Elle that she took medication at one point to help with her depression, and she encourages others to seek help too — whether with talk therapy alone or with therapy and medication.

Something good that came from her depression, Cyrus added, was that it helped her connect with her fans. “They know that I’ve struggled with depression, and that helped them get over theirs,” she said. “That gives me a big purpose — a reason to wake up in the morning that’s bigger than to put on my f****** feathers and my little outfits.”

Best known for his role on the CW series Supernatural, 40-year-old actor Jared Padalecki was diagnosed with depression at age 25, after he had an anxiety attack on set, CNN reported in July 2015.

“A doctor came to set and talked to me for about 30 minutes or 45 minutes and said, ‘Jared, I think you’re clinically depressed,’” he said in an interview with Variety, published in March 2015.

Around the time he went public with his depression, the Gilmore Girls actor created a T-shirt campaign called “Always Keep Fighting” to raise awareness about mental health issues and to support the nonprofit To Write Love on Her Arms, which helps people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury, and suicide.

The inspiration behind Padalecki’s campaign: “There’s still a large portion of the population who just want to say, ‘Buck up. Put on a happy face and everything goes away.’ For some people, that works. There are certainly some personality types out there who can have a tough day and just brush it aside and carry on. For those of us who aren’t so blessed, the message ‘Always Keep Fighting’ is for us,” Padalecki said in a 2015 interview with E! News.

With her outrageous fashion-forward wardrobe, genre-busting voice, and success in acting on both TV and in films, Lady Gaga is the very definition of a superstar. But those achievements belie a lifelong struggle with depression, she revealed to Billboard in 2015.

“I’ve suffered through depression and anxiety my entire life,” she said. “I just want these kids to know that that depth that they feel as human beings is normal. We were born that way.”

In 2020, Lady Gaga told People that her depression influenced her album Chromatica, with its overarching theme of finding light in times of darkness. “I used to wake up in the morning, and I would realize I was ‘Lady Gaga.’ And then I became very depressed and sad, and I didn’t want to be myself,” she remarked. “I felt threatened by the things my career brought into my life and the pace of my life.”

The “Rain on Me” singer also explained to People how music brought her out of that dark time. “I spent a lot of time in a sort of catatonic state of just not wanting to do anything,” Lady Gaga said. “And then I finally, slowly started to make music and tell my story through my record.”

Her struggles with depression and feelings of isolation have given her a mission: to help young people facing similar emotional struggles through her Born This Way Foundation. Not only does it aim to empower youth and inspire bravery, but it also provides resources to help young people get the mental health help they need.

Actress, comedian, and writer Sarah Silverman’s role in the film I Smile Back — in which she plays a suburban mom whose life seems picture-perfect but who struggles with depression and self-medicates with pills and alcohol — hit close to home, she told Glamour in 2015.

In the interview, Silverman disclosed that she has struggled with depression since age 13. Years of seeing mental health professionals and, most recently, beginning treatment with the antidepressant sertraline (Zoloft), have helped her mind stay healthy.

Silverman is not alone: Nearly 16 percent of American adults took prescription mental health medications in 2019, the most recent year for which data is available, according to a report published in 2020 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Staying occupied also helps the Saturday Night Live alum cope, she told Glamour. “I’ve learned that keeping busy is a good thing for me. Like my mom always said, you just have to be brave enough to exist through it. That lesson, above anything, helped me get through filming I Smile Back, which, I’m not gonna lie, was not a great 20 days.”

“I wouldn’t wish depression on anyone,” Silverman continued. “But if you ever experience it, or are experiencing it right now, just know that on the other side, the little joys in life will be that much sweeter.”

Cara Delevingne became a highly sought-after supermodel in her teens and now, at 30, has added acting to her résumé, with the hit TV series Only Murders in the Building and multiple films under her belt.

Yet even as Delevingne rose to stardom, she was gripped by mental health challenges. At 15, she hit “a massive wave of depression, anxiety, and self-hatred,” she told Vogue in 2015. This led her to engage in harmful behavior, while also taking psychotropic medications and seeing therapists, none of which she found especially helpful.

In New York City, the London native would hit the party scene. “It rots your insides,” she said of a life in which using recreational drugs like cocaine was de rigueur. As Dr. Langenecker points out, many such drugs, which celebrities typically have easy access to, “can increase risk for depression by changing the way the brain functions, including higher highs and lower lows.”

Soon that unhealthy but trendy lifestyle had Delevingne contemplating suicide. “I was packing my bags, and suddenly I just wanted to end it. ... And I was like, I need to decide whether I love myself as much as I love the idea of death,” she told Vogue.

Mercifully, at that moment a familiar song, Outkast’s “SpottieOttieDopaliscious,” came on in her New York apartment. The song, which was played at the funeral of a friend who’d overdosed on drugs, “felt like a warning from him,” she explained to Vogue.

Another thing that helped Delevingne was coming out as pansexual in an interview with Variety, published in June 2020 for Pride Month. Later, in 2021, she revealed on an episode of the Goop podcast with Gwyneth Paltrow that a large part of her depression and suicidal thoughts had stemmed from grappling with her sexuality, People reported.

“I do correlate the massive depression and the suicidal moments of my life [to that] because I was so ashamed of ever being that,” Delevingne told Paltrow. “But actually, that was the part of me that I love so much and accept.”

Decades before the final episode of Mad Men aired, leading man Jon Hamm, who played 1960s’ adman Don Draper, divulged that he’d turned to antidepressants and therapy to relieve the chronic depression triggered by the death of his father. Hamm was just 20 then, and 10 years earlier, he’d lost his mother to stomach cancer, he told The Guardian in 2010.

“Therapy ... gives you another perspective when you are so lost in your own spiral. ... It helps,” noted Hamm, now 51, who credited antidepressants with helping him initially reverse that spiral.

Depression is a known risk factor for alcohol addiction, report experts at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota — something Hamm found to be true. In May 2015, TMZ reported that Hamm had completed a 30-day rehab program for alcohol addiction at a facility in Connecticut.

His loopy, lovable, surfer dude screen persona went a long way in hiding that Owen Wilson has been wracked with depression for years, a struggle that culminated in a suicide attempt in 2007. As People reported at the time, Wilson had been dealing with addiction issues and relationship problems, notably a then-recent breakup with actress Kate Hudson.

Though Wilson has since declined to talk publicly about trying to take his own life, in an interview with Esquire, published in August 2021, he revealed that the constant support of his family helped him recover from that crisis.

Depression and related mental health conditions are known risk factors for suicide, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

Listening to Demi Lovato’s 2015 hit single “Confident,” it might surprise you to learn that the former Disney star has dealt with depression for decades.

They’ve also struggled with suicidal thoughts, something they opened up about on Twitter on September 10, 2020. “Today is World Suicide Prevention Day,” Lovato wrote in one tweet, announcing a song they produced with American electronic music producer Marshmello called “It’s Okay to Not Be Okay.” “Since a young age I’ve dealt with suicidal thoughts and depression. I’ve been very vocal in raising the awareness of mental health because it is possible to see the light when you start the work on yourself.”

“I’m living proof that you never have to give into those thoughts,” they wrote in another tweet. “I’ve had many days where I’ve struggled but please let this song be an anthem to anyone who needs it right now. You can get through whatever it is you’re going through.”

The “Dancing With the Devil” singer, now 30, has been very candid about their mental health struggles, including being treated for addiction and eating disorders. They also spoke about being diagnosed with bipolar disorder, but later announced they had been misdiagnosed, InStyle reported in March 2021.

Funnyman Wayne Brady, 50, has received raves for his work in films, TV and theater. High points include improv acting on Whose Line Is It Anyway, playing a leading drag queen in Kinky Boots on Broadway, and competing against other celebrities for a chance to win the Mirror Ball trophy on the 31st season of Dancing With the Stars. But each of those challenging experiences paled in comparison to the most challenging experience Brady has faced in his personal life.

In a video exclusive on People, Brady, who had a breakdown on his 42nd birthday, talked about his persistent struggle with depression. One of the biggest problems in that struggle, he explained, is that it’s almost taboo for men to talk about being so deep in the dumps.

“We feel any of the negative emotions or that dark cloud settle on you, and you feel like you need to cry or speak to someone about it, and ‘Nope, I’m not gonna do that, because I’m a man,’” he told People. “What kind of man would I sound like if I told somebody, ‘Hey, I am so sad. I’m cripplingly sad. I can’t get out of bed. I just feel empty. Help me.’”

Brady praised his ex-wife, Mandie Taketa, for guiding him to therapy, according to an interview with Verywell Mind, published in November 2022. The suicide death of actor and comedian Robin Williams in August 2014 also helped Brady continue in treatment.

“Robin was someone that I respected greatly, [and I] was blessed to work with him,” Brady told Verywell Mind. “I was touched by him my entire life. And when you see someone who had the mind of Robin Williams, and the kindness of Robin Williams, and the talent of Robin Williams say, ‘I cannot talk to anybody about what is going on with me because it’s too great,’ I knew that I didn’t want that for myself.”

Long before starring in the ABC hit Scandal, Kerry Washington, 45, was turning heads in movies like Ray and I Think I Love My Wife. What few knew, however, was that on the road to those successes she’d faced many devastatingly dark days.

Recalling that time in an interview with Essence, originally published in 2009 and updated in 2020, Washington explained she had “found herself sinking into depression” caused by a combination of her increasing fame and her mother’s diagnosis with breast cancer.

At the same time, Washington was dealing with the aftermath of what she described as an abusive relationship with food and exercise during her college years, according to Essence.

“I used food as a way to cope — it was my best friend,” she recalled. Sometimes she’d eat until she passed out, then would head to the gym to exercise for hours. “Keeping my behavior secret was painful and isolating,” she told the interviewer. “There was a lot of guilt and shame.”

Fortunately, a caring dance teacher sensed what was happening and intervened to help Washington begin her road to recovery with therapy. In 2012, she joined forces with First Lady Michelle Obama and fellow actress Sarah Jessica Parker to call attention to issues affecting veterans, including PTSD. “I think it’s really important to take the stigma away from mental health,” Washington told Glamour in 2015.

Despite her extraordinary success, Sheryl Crow’s life has been riddled with jarring episodes of dissonance.

In 2006, at 44, her engagement to now-disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong ended. Just weeks later the nine-time Grammy winner learned she had breast cancer, for which she has since been successfully treated. But as Crow revealed to the Daily Mail two years later, those were not her first trials. She had experienced terrible times in her twenties when she was deeply depressed.

“At its worst, there was a six-month period ... when I couldn’t dress, days I couldn’t leave the house,” Crow told the interviewer. “Antidepressants helped and so did therapy, but depression is a ... thing that some people go through. It’s always been part of my life.”

In May 2022, Crow, now 60, released Sheryl, a documentary on Showtime about her career, in which she discussed her stretches with depression and breast cancer. In one scene, USA Today reported, Crow described her depression while she was working on the album C’mon, C’mon as so acute that she doesn’t remember writing the final track, “Weather Channel” — which Crow described tearfully as “just a little happy song about suicidal tendencies.”

Dwayne Johnson may be called “The Rock” for his appearance of physical strength and mental courage, but those qualities weren’t enough to shield him from experiencing deep depression, the megastar disclosed during a 2015 episode of Oprah’s Master Class.

“I found that with depression one of the most important things you could realize is that you’re not alone,” Johnson shared in a hopeful message to anyone who may be feeling depressed. “You’re not the first to go through it, you’re not going to be the last to go through it … I wish I had someone at that time who could just pull me aside and [say], ‘Hey, it’s gonna be okay. It’ll be okay.’ So, I wish I knew that.”

Johnson, 50, the son of retired Canadian professional wrestler Rocky Johnson, was hit with depression in his early twenties when his football career stalled. After graduating from the University of Miami, where Johnson played backup defensive tackle for the Hurricanes, he was passed over by the National Football League, according to Pro Football Network. He then played for a Canadian football team that cut him after just two months. Johnson called this time of his life — during which he was living in his parents’ basement — “a real low point,” Us Weekly reported.

Things began turning around when he abandoned his football dreams to focus on a new career: wrestling — and the rest is history. Today, Johnson, 50, has achieved greater success than most could ever imagine, not just in wrestling but as an action star in the popular movie franchise Fast & Furious, as a New York Times bestselling author, and as a family man.

If you find yourself facing mental health challenges, “hold on to that fundamental quality of faith,” he advised on Oprah’s Master Class. “Have faith that on the other side of your pain is something good.”

On a 2016 episode of The Daily Show, host Trevor Noah interviewed Chappelle’s Show writer and producer Neal Brennan, now 49, about his comedy act 3 Mics, in which Brennan uses humor to discuss many topics, including his disposition for melancholy.

“A lot of the time, comedians really don’t talk about the dark side of comedy and in your show, what really connects with me is you talk a lot about depression,” Noah remarked during the interview.

“I’m honest about it,” Brennan said. “I’m honest about how long I’ve had it — which is forever.”

After having tried many depression treatments, including ketamine and about five different medications, Brennan opted for transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), a noninvasive procedure that uses short magnetic pulses to stimulate nerve cells in the brain. So far, TMS has been the most effective treatment for him, he told Noah.

Kristen Bell has been very outspoken about living with depression, something that her mother, grandmother, and other family members also dealt with, she explained in an interview with photographer and director Sam Jones on Off Camera With Sam Jones.

Bell is equally outspoken in saying that no one should feel shame about seeking help, including taking medication, to treat a mental health condition. And she urges people not to let mental health symptoms go unchecked for too long.

“I don’t wait for those things to find me,” Bell told CNBC Make It in August 2021. “I have a preoperative list to combat them because I know they’re coming.” That list includes talking with others about her feelings and concerns as they arise, exercising a couple days each week, and taking quick “timeouts” if she feels stress rising. “I will go to my bedroom for 10 minutes, just to reset and regulate,” Bell explained.

If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

Additional reporting by Leona Vaughn and Christina Vogt.