Famously Anxious...

[jitters]

We all know Tony Soprano suffers with anxiety but what other famous sufferers are there:

This is a list of famous people who are reported to have suffered from anxiety.

* Nicole Kidman (actress)
* shoe (forum admin)
* Kim Basinger (actress)
* Delta Burke (actress)
* Donny Osmond (entertainer)
* Winston Churchill
* John Cougar Mellancamp (musician, actor)
* Ann Wilson (Singer - Rock Group 'Heart')
* Winona Ryder (actress)
* Marie Osmand (entertainer)
* Cher (singer, actress)
* Beverly Johnson (supermodel)
* Roseanne Barr (comedian - actress)
* Michael Jackson (singer)
* Naomi Judd (singer)
* Susan Powter (tv host)
* Nicholas Cage (actor)
* Sissy Spacek (actress)
* Johnny Depp (actor)
* Sally Field (actress)
* Alanis Morisette (singer)
* Burt Reynolds (actor)
* Courtney Love (singer - actress)
* Naomi Campbell (supermodel)
* David Bowie (singer)
* Carly Simon (singer)
* Aretha Franklin (singer)
* Lani O'Grady (actress)
* Michael English (singer)
* Sir Laurence Olivier (actor)
* Earl Campbell (football player)
* Al Kasha (songwriter)
* Emily Dickinson (poet)
* Marty Ingels (comedian)
* John Madden (sports announcer)
* Leila Kenzle (actress)
* Willard Scott (weatherman)
* Shecky Greene (comedian)
* Olivia Hussey (actress)
* Oprah Winfrey (host - claims she had just one attack)
* Tom Snyder (host)
* John Candy (comedian - actor)
* Sam Shepard (playwright)
* Isaac Asimov (author - educator)
* Charles Schultz (cartoonist)
* Dean Cain (actor)
* Barbra Streisand (singer - actress)
* Anne Tyler (author)
* James Garner (actor)
* Jim Eisenreich (baseball)
* Pete Harnisch (baseball)
* Nikola Tesla (inventor)
* Charlotte Bronte (author)
* Alfred Lord Tennyson (poet)
* Sigmund Freud (psychiatrist)
* John Steinbeck (author)
* W.B. Yeats (poet)
* Sir Isaac Newton (scientist)
* Abraham Lincoln (president)
* Barbara Gordon (filmmaker)
* Robert Burns (poet)
* Edvard Munch (artist)
* John Stuart Mill (philosopher)
* Calista Flockhart (Ally McBeal)
* Lucille Ball (actress, singer)
* Jordan and Jonathon Knight (new kids on the block)
* Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics (singer)

Got any others...

Duncan (oh and Alfred Lord Tennyson lived in my little town of louth)

[guivolution]

hey jitters..
I know many others.. and these names are only admitely researched..
Did u know Robin Williams, Jim Carrey, Oprah, not to talk about depressive, bipolars.. uh!! We are in good company, no doubts

[RumorHasIt]

Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails actually had depression and social anxiety for five years in between albums but got better

[Jeordie]

Trent should be bipolar, I heard. Therefore also socially phobic.

Robbie Williams, the english popstar not well welcomed in the US, walks and eats because he takes impressive amounts of meds for depression. I always tell this to girls so they'd stop obsessing about him. They also become rational and stop saying "he's got talent" (of course he doesn't).

The list of the simply "anxious" would be way too long, a lot of people is or has been. What's interesting are this cases of bipolar, suicidal, and socially phobic people who still became successful and even popular.

[jitters]

I believe the late great Kurt Kobain was Socially Phobic. They say he just couldn't take the fame. Maybe this fear of fame should have it's own name.

Duncan

[Jeordie]

Kurt is a story apart. He of course had a series of issues - but I think he's been taken too seriously. I like Nirvana's music, but that's it. I think making him a hero nurtures feelings of insecurity in some artists/people who easily identify with him.

What I'm saying is, he does not deserve any fuckin' poster hanged just because he killed himself.

[jitters]

I had his poster hanged before his death perhaps thats why I mention him on his own. He is an interesting example in death of what not to do when you have these kind of issues. And at the same time a glowing example in life of the creative insincts which so often accompany depression and anxiety.

Duncan

[guivolution]

exactly, we all know how irrational and emotionally distorted we can get, not that these could be taken as excuses to any behaviours like Cobain inflicted on himself through ALL his life and not just the end..
though, I don't think we can separate greatness from the rest in cases like these.. they go hand in hand, think about his music, the meaning of it, lirics.. and we shouldn't probably touch people who are dead, whatever our opinion is.. Kurt was the kind of person who wouldn't hurt, despeack, desrespect any living creature regardless of the offense, he would just go and follow his road untill the end..
I have great respect for this and for his great sensitivity..

[Jeordie]

My humble opinion is that his band's good, and sometimes iconic (not my itself but because of the social context) music should indeed be separed from the essence, the neurosis or madness, the overall life of the man - because we don't really know anything about it. We can just speculate.

[jitters]

As an artist do you not feel that your essence comes out through the creative process. I think that maybe it was Kurts Neurosis which made so many feel they connected with his music, that his troubled soul was the very thing which made him so special. Throughout history some of the most profound Genius comes tainted with what society it the past deemed to be madness. Maybe all creativity requires a degree of this emotional confusion.

Duncan

[myra]

So me and Johnny Depp have something in common? :wuv:

[Angel]

Syd Barrett was Schizophrenic. And bekame a rekluse.


HOWARD HUGHES had ocd.

Exactly...the list of anxious celebrities would be extremely long....maybe like 90% of them. Who wouldnt be..


You know when paranoids say EVERYONE is watching them?

Well in Celeb kases...EVERYONE REALLY is watching them...how the fuck would YOU feel?

[juliana]

Thanks for that list Jitters.

Carly Simon was actually my inspiration when I had agoraphobia. She's the reason I knew what agoraphobia was and it was inspiring to see that she had conquered it. It gave me hope.

I've been a huge Bowie fan since I was a little girl and have read lots of books about him. His half-brother was schizophrenic and spent time in mental institutions and eventually committed suicide. Bowie had a lot of anxiety and fear about ending up "mad" like his brother. Bowie was very paranoid too (probably at least partially due to his heavy drug-use in the 70s). He went through a period of such intense paranoia that he stored his urine in bottles so others couldn't use it in black magic against him.

[myra]

I didn't know that about Bowie, that's interesting!

Of course, we all know what Britney Spears is going through right now. She was caught at an aiport a few months ago with a prescription for Xanax.

There are a lot of musicians that have problems with anxiety, depression, etc that aren't on this list and you'll probably never hear about. There's a lot of pressure in the entertainment world and I imagine it gets to a lot of people.

[Ryobi]

whatever our opinion is.. Kurt was the kind of person who wouldn't hurt, despeack, desrespect any living creature regardless of the offense, he would just go and follow his road untill the end..
I have great respect for this and for his great sensitivity..

Which is one of the reasons I admire him, this place has a way of beating all the sensitivity out of you... For the most part, it has me...I've grown bitter, and even mean-Mean even when it was not in my nature to be so...

I don't know what the answers are...I feel confused-without hope.

Anger and bitternes are an easy and common path around here.

The lack of opportunities, and the seemingly constant desire of most, to destroy everything that's beautiful, or different.

The pressure to conform to past generations ideals. Ideals only achievable...when there were plenty of good jobs.

And then...the rain. On the edge of the largest rainforest in North America, but seemingly with little beauty-the a-hole of the Olympic Penninsula. For months at a time, it rains. In the winter, the rain rotts the Houses, covering the south sides of them in mold and moss...Everything is wet.......always.

But for me, growing up.....growing were he grew, the bands success had some other significance. It was hope.

As I was growing, after a few beers, or a joint, I heard a lot of different peoples dreams. I seem to be the type to hear such things... Even though I listened intently and respectfully, I always knew, and they probably too, although enthuisistic, they, as I, had little chance of achieving them...

Even just simple dreams, like the gold standard here, the every other dream-going to Alaska, making a ton of money, in a short time, fishing....

....and then, the every now and again dream, the big dream, like writing a screenplay...

But Nirvana had a dream, a big dream, an improbable dream.....the impossible dream, but they were different.......they achieved their dream.

It kind of made me feel as though it were worth it. My big dreams could happen...there was more... It was worth staying out of trouble-protecting myself, wearing a condom, sleeping in my car rather than driving....

If I worked hard, if I were single minded, I could have a better future than what had seemed pre-determined....

I don't know.....If that makes sense????

[Robbed]

Which is one of the reasons I admire him, this place has a way of beating all the sensitivity out of you... For the most part, it has me...I've grown bitter, and even mean-Mean even when it was not in my nature to be so...

Grown mean and bitter? Of course, I've never met you before. But the mere fact that you have come here and admitted to all of us that you have 'grown bitter, and even mean-Mean even when it was not in my nature to do so' means that these 'changes' are only on the surface. You have not changed for the worse to nearly the degree that you might think. Otherwise, you would not recognize that this isn't the way you want to be. So try being that person you want to be. It sounds to me like this is a BIG part of what will get you out of your current state of misery.