Celebrities Who Are Apparently Not As Nice As They Seem

We often tend to romanticize celebrities and to believe they are great people based on their on-screen personas. To be honest, who hasn’t dreamed about bumping into their favorite celebrity and starting a chat with them? But many fans who approached famous people were in for a rude awakening: the stars are often disengaged, grumpy, and sometimes downright rude.

Being in the public eye 24/7 can be exhausting, and nobody likes to be interrupted by strangers in the middle of their meal, but it seems like some of the superstars have forgotten how to control their bad temper. Here is a list of celebrities who, according to people who have worked with them or met them briefly, are real jerks to others.

Johnny Depp

Judging from the lawsuits that emerged from his turbulent relationship with Amber Heard, the Hollywood heartbreaker has a dark side to him. The 57-year-old actor is reluctant to abandon his reckless lifestyle, and too much partying often gets him in trouble.

The list of Depp’s wrongdoings is long, and it includes numerous lawsuits from his former bodyguards and from a member of the crew at the City of Lies who claims that Depp punched him in the face twice. Also, he once trashed a hotel room and blamed it on an armadillo.

Michael Jordan

The former Chicago Bulls legend apparently has little patience when it comes to taking pictures with fans and signing autographs. It doesn’t help if the person asking for a photo is also a celebrity, which is what the rapper Chamillionaire experienced firsthand.

According to Chamillionaire, he once met his childhood hero Jordan and asked for a photo. Not only did Jordan refuse while calling him a n-word, but he also proceeded to mock Chamillionaire by asking $15,000 for a jersey and a picture with him.

Ariana Grande

Ariana Grande has a reputation for not being so grand to work with. Numerous backstage photos prove the staff claims that Grande asks people to carry her around in their arms literally, but that’s not even the worst part.

Grande is infamous for her 2015 incident when she got caught on tape entering a donut shop and licking a bunch of pastries on the counter. She proclaimed that she hated America and Americans, then walked out without paying for the food she salivated on.

Chevy Chase

When you’ve got nice guys like Bill Murray and Will Ferrell hating on you, you must be doing something wrong. Chevy Chase made a lot of people at SNL furious with dismissive comments toward female writers and bad-mouthing, basically everyone on the set.

Ferrell admitted that Chase was the worst SNL host ever and said that he regrets not walking out of the set after hearing Chase make a sexually inappropriate comment to one of the female writers. Add the confession of his ex-wife, who said Chase was threatening her with violence, and it’s no wonder people dislike him so much.

Justin Bieber

One of the most classless celebrities on this list is, without question, Justin Bieber. He is well known for insulting his fans and yelling at them for talking during his concerts, and in 2013 he even took it a step further.

While staying in a hotel room in Toronto, Bieber was photographed spitting from his balcony, allegedly at a group of fans that were in front of the hotel. That’s not even the worst incident – in 2014, TMZ published videos of young Bieber using racial slurs.

Cuba Gooding Jr.

After a 2012 incident, Cuba Bading Jr. would be a more appropriate name for the famous actor. When a couple of people approached him in a New Orleans bar, Gooding Jr. wasn’t in the mood and started cursing at the unsuspecting fans. 

The bartender asked him to leave, but Gooding Jr. pushed her into a wall. The commotion continued outside the bar where the celeb shoved the bartender again, and the police had to get involved. Gooding Jr. later tried to cover up the incident claiming that it was a misunderstanding.

Mike Myers

The actor who portrays the goofy and lovable spy Austin Powers isn’t the kind of person you’d assume was mean and difficult to work with. As it turns out, many comedians have a dark streak that is very different from their hilarious on-screen personas.

Mike Myers is known for having outrageous demands on the set, including asking for a dedicated person to follow him around and feed him chocolates. His The Cat in the Hat co-star Amy Hill described working with Myers as “a horrible, nightmarish experience.”

Charlize Theron

According to the actress Tia Mowry, it looks like Charlize Theron has a serious case of Karenitis. She encountered her fellow actress in a SoulCycle spin class and greeted her, to which Theron responded by rolling her eyes and muttering, “oh my God.”

It turns out that the Oscar-winning actress was very rude and unfriendly to everyone in the class; she also takes entitlement to a new level. Theron would often approach people on bikes and ask them to get up so she could take their place.

Tom Cruise

Ever since the Top Gun star adopted Scientology, he has been under scrutiny for his behavior. Cruise doesn’t shy away from ranting about various topics, often saying thoughtless and insulting things. One of the victims of his rants was his fellow actress, Brooke Shields.

Cruise didn’t like that Shields admitted to taking prescribed medication to treat her postpartum depression, and he was very vocal about it, calling her irresponsible. He went as far as blaming the medication for Shields’ lack of big roles in the past years, which was a really insensitive move on his part.

Bob Dylan

Dylan is notorious for treating the people working on his shows really, really badly. They aren’t even allowed to look him in the eye and risk getting fired if they dare to glance at the grumpy Nobel Prize winner. 

Even though these people are responsible for making the show great, they aren’t even allowed to listen to Dylan playing since they “didn’t pay for the tickets”. What a way to treat those who help you with your performance!

Adam Levine

According to the Maroon 5 singer, “She Will Be Loved” unless she isn’t meeting the singer’s beauty standards. Levine is well-known for his heartbreaker reputation, but he isn’t much of a gentleman in real life when it comes to treating his fans with respect. 

In one incident, a female fan approached Levine, asking for an autograph. He reportedly said that he doesn’t give autographs to “ugly chicks” and walked away. More proof that it means nothing to be pretty on the outside if you’re ugly on the inside.

Spike Lee

The famous director has a reputation for being short-tempered, which he showed on several occasions. During the 2019 Oscars ceremony, Lee was so enraged that his movie BlacKkKlansman didn’t win the Best Picture award that he got up mid-ceremony and walked away angrily.

The students of a small Southern college were looking forward to seeing Lee come and give a speech, but they were shocked by his behavior. The controversial director cut his speech short by 40 minutes, called the audience “racists” and “rednecks” and was rude to anyone who asked him a question.

James Corden

The witty host of The Late Late Show with James Corden and Carpool Karaoke seems like a fun person to be around, but since you’re midway through this list, you know better. A post on Reddit revealed that Corden abuses his clout to get what he wants.

Several Redditors claim that Corden has the audacity to use the “do you know who I am” line if he doesn’t get his way and that he is exceptionally entitled and arrogant. An anonymous poster who allegedly worked with Corden says that the actor told people he would buy them if they disobeyed him.

Rihanna

The Barbadian singer has an album titled Good Girl Gone Bad, and she seems to get carried away with the whole bad girl attitude. RiRi has been caught being rude to her fans on several occasions, telling them to f*** off. 

She even got violent during her 2013 concert in England when a fan tried to grab her hand. Rihanna hit the girl on the head with her microphone and later admitted that it was on purpose. Instead of apologizing, Rihanna called her fan a b-word.

Mel Gibson

The celebrity actor and director is known both for his amazing work and his horrific drunken rants. In 2006, he was caught for a DUI in Malibu and wasn’t happy about it. Gibson started an anti-Semitic rant about “Jews causing all the wars in the world.”

To make matters worse, one of the officers was female, and Gibson proceeded to insult her with sexually inappropriate remarks and to talk about her breasts. This isn’t his first misogynistic incident – back in 1995, Gibson said that men and women weren’t equal and that he disliked feminists.

Jennifer Lopez

Even though Lopez tries hard to maintain her “Jenny from the block” image, according to people who met her, she is everything but humble and down to earth. Not only does she often completely ignore her fans, but Lopez has a terrible attitude towards the service industry workers.

The fame has made the famous singer/actress act so above everyone else that she refuses to acknowledge their presence. A United Airlines flight attendant said that when asked what she wanted to drink, Lopez ignored them and told her assistant to “please tell him I’d like a Diet Coke and lime.”

Liv Tyler

Being the daughter of the Aerosmith lead Steven Tyler, Liv Tyler spent her whole life treated like a celebrity. When she made a name for herself as an actress, Tyler started acting very rude and entitled to people around her.

A Redditor has shared their story of an encounter with Tyler in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. There was a big line to get inside and the people were waiting for around five hours to get in. Tyler waltzed up to the security and demanded to skip the line, pulling her “do you know who I am” trick.

Ben Stiller

It looks like Ben Stiller got the inspiration for his egotistical character of the supermodel Derek Zoolander from within. According to people who have worked with Stiller, he is infamous for throwing temper tantrums on the set if things don’t go his way.

During the shooting of Meet the Fockers 2, Stiller was nicknamed “little Focker” by the crew who got tired of his behavior. He got into a fight with the assistant director over a minor issue, then demanded that she be fired and refused to go back on the set while she was still there.

Christian Bale

There have been stories of Christian Bale being extremely rude to people on the set, but it looks like his behavior is even worse when he’s not shooting a movie. When approached by several little girls who spotted their favorite actor in a restaurant, Bale was so mean to them he made them cry.

He lectured the little girls about being intrusive until they started crying and their parents came to the rescue. Bringing little girls to tears is one of the worst moves we’ve got on this list, despite the competition being tough.

Guy Fieri

Fieri is a celebrity chef who gained popularity as a host of the show Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. Those who have watched the show know that Fieri isn’t exactly soft-spoken, but unfortunately, this isn’t just his TV persona.

David Page, the producer of Fieri’s show, has confirmed that the famous chef has acted very unprofessionally. On one occasion, Fieri left a restaurant when he discovered that two men ran it. After storming out, Fieri said to the producer not to have him “talk to gay people without warning” because “those people weird me out.”

Jennifer Aniston

Lovely Rachel from Friends couldn’t be mean in real life, could she? According to the actor Jay Mohr, yes, she absolutely can. Mohr and Aniston were shooting a romantic comedy Picture Perfect, and Aniston was very vocal about her opinion on Mohr.

She allegedly said, “you’ve got to be kidding me! Six guys they screen-test! Six! The one guy I hate, that’s the guy they hire. Him!” in front of Mohr. Aniston’s comments so hurt him that he would frequently cry after the shooting.

Gordon Ramsay

If you have watched a single episode of Boiling Point, Hell’s Kitchen, or Kitchen Nightmares, you know how much Ramsay enjoys yelling at people. In fact, there are even memes about it. Some may think that this is just part of the show, but it seems like Ramsay isn’t much different in real life. 

People like Tash Pericic, who had a chance to work with Ramsay, have confessed to the celebrity chef being a nightmare. Ramsay is prone to explosive bouts of anger over small details. Pericic, a former assistant manager in Ramsay’s London restaurant, recalls Ramsay yelling over chairs ordered for a Christmas dinner, saying they were so terrible he wouldn’t throw them on a bonfire.

Ellen DeGeneres

As of late, there has been a lot of talk about Ellen DeGeneres not being as lovely as she tries to act on her show. In fact, when podcast producer Kevin T. Porter asked his Twitter followers to share their DeGeneres horror stories, there were many.

It’s hard to pick the meanest of all confessions, but this one stuck with us. After serving the TV show host her brunch, a waitress almost got fired because of having chipped nail polish. DeGeneres went as far as writing a letter complaining to the restaurant owner and nearly got the server fired.

Christina Aguilera

She may have the voice of an angel, but Christina Aguilera sure has a devilish side to her. The renowned singer was a judge on The Voice, and she would often make comments that didn’t sit well with the contestants or would scold them for not paying more attention to her.

The Wanted, a boy band that participated on The Voice, gave their opinion on Aguilera as a judge. Tom Parker said, “She was a total b****. She might not be a b**** in real life, but to us, she was a b**** to us. She just sat there and didn’t speak to us.”

Gwyneth Paltrow

Known for her Oscar-winning acting talent and her newly-founded wellness company Goop, Paltrow is also notorious for having over the top demands wherever she goes. During a visit to London, Paltrow sat in a Michelin-starred restaurant. She glanced at the menu, then loudly said, “I can’t eat this s***” and left.

According to Life & Style magazine, Paltrow insists that the shower she uses at the gym be cleaned and dried off by the staff before her arrival, because she “can’t touch somebody else’s shower water.” It looks like we have another Karen over here!

Jared Leto

Besides being a famous actor, Jared Leto is also known as the lead vocalist of the band Thirty Seconds to Mars. Leto actively tours with his band, but according to the concertgoers, he can be really mean to his front-row fans.

During a concert in Atlanta in 2011, Leto flipped off two fangirls for not jumping to his music, which was caught on video. He reportedly told them “You’re going to have fun whether you like it or not motherf*@kers” afterward.

Reese Witherspoon

Witherspoon is another celebrity who seems sweet until you cross paths with her. She is known for never taking her sunglasses off, so she doesn’t have to make eye contact with the staff on the set. But that’s not even the worst part.

In a 2013 incident, Witherspoon and her husband were arrested in Atlanta, and the whole thing was caught on tape. She threatened the police officer with “Do you know my name? You’re about to find out who I am. You’re about to be on national news” and tried to get away on account of being famous.

Cameron Diaz

If you’re a fan of Cameron Diaz, you should probably never ask her for an autograph if you ever meet her. Steve Cyrkin, the publisher of Autograph Collector magazine, says that Diaz is one of the worst A-list celebrities when it comes to signing her name on a piece of paper.

Cyrkin reports that not only Diaz refuses to give autographs, but she goes a step further. If you dare to ask for one, she will give you a lecture on why that is dumb. Better not to risk it.

Julia Roberts

Julia Roberts’ big smile may fool you, but this Pretty Woman has a pretty bad temperament. People who had the opportunity to work with her describe her as very rude and entitled. During the shooting of the 1991 movie Hook, Roberts was cast as Tinkerbell.

As Steven Spielberg wrote in his book Steven Spielberg: A Biography, Roberts was acting so bad on the set, people nicknamed her Tinkerhell. She was always late to the set and would lock herself in her trailer and refuse to go out for hours on end.

Zooey Deschanel

Cast members who have worked alongside Zooey Deschanel claim that she isn’t as lovable and bubbly as the quirky characters she portrays. She allegedly likes to have control over the set and throws temper tantrums when things don’t go as she planned.

Some go as far as claiming that the reason you couldn’t see the famous actress in anything after her role in New Girl is because she is hard to work with. Also, according to a Redditor who got to meet Deschanel, she was very rude and dismissive to them.

Russell Crowe

Crowe revealed his unpleasant side in 2015 when he was a guest on the Late Late Show. The Oscar-winning actor joined the show’s band on stage to flaunt his singing and guitar playing skills, but things quickly went south.

Crowe interrupted his performance because he wasn’t happy with the way the audience was clapping. He angrily lectured them by saying, “If you’re going to clap, clap in time. If you can’t clap in time, just shut up.” 

Jonah Hill

Even though Jonah Hill is famous for roles in comedy movies, he doesn’t seem to like joking around when it comes to interviews. In a 2013 interview for Rolling Stone, Hill didn’t appreciate the interviewer jokingly addressing him as Seth. 

Hill retorted, “No, I’m Jonah. That’s a great way to start,” and this set the tone for the rest of the interview. He wasn’t happy with the questions he was asked, and flat out called them “dumb” and “of little relevance.”

Tobey Maguire

While many celebrities ended up on this list for their horrible attitude towards waitstaff, Tobey Maguire takes the cake when it comes to being abhorrent to other human beings. In 2014, a poker hostess Molly Bloom released a memoir where she described her encounters with Maguire.

Besides being a bad tipper, Maguire once ordered Bloom to “bark like a seal who wants a fish” for a thousand-dollar chip. When Bloom politely refused, Maguire held a chip over her head saying, “I’m not kidding. What’s wrong? You’re too rich now? You won’t bark for a thousand dollars? Bark!”

Mariah Carey

The well-known singer is famous for her outrageous demands on her riders (lists of requests), including all-white roses, stuffed lamb toys, eight tall leafy plants, four Joe Malone vanilla candles, 12 bottles of melon flavor Gatorade, and 12 small bottles of water at room temperature.

When Carey stays in a hotel, the room temperature has to be precisely 75 degrees. She’ll go as far as demanding that electric fans in a venue be moved around because they “blow too much air in her face” during a European tour.

Kristen Stewart

While filming the horror Underwater in 2017, Steward got a lot of bad reputation from the crew. According to a Redditor, she was “constantly getting into verbal and physical confrontations” on the set and was a nightmare to work with.

She allegedly caused so many problems on the set that the whole production was late by a month. One Reddit commenter went as far as calling Stewart “an absolutely emotionally off-kilter maniac”. Doesn’t seem like the kind of person you’d want to work with.

Charlie Sheen

Sheen is famous for his bad-boy image and is no stranger to passionate rants that often borderline on bizarre. The excess of drugs, booze, and partying often has a bad effect on Sheen and on his behavior in real life.

As you may recall, Sheen was the star of Two and a Half Men but got replaced by Ashton Kutcher in 2011. This happened after Sheen called the show’s producer Chuck Lorre a “turd” and a “contaminated little maggot,” saying that he wished him “nothing but pain.”

Amy Schumer

In 2018, Amy Schumer committed a faux pas in the comedy world when she interrupted the performance of a fellow standup comedian. Brendan Sagalow was in the middle of his performance when Schumer cut him off to rehearse some of her SNL material.

Ruining someone’s performance to be in the spotlight is pretty rude, which is what Sagalow thought of Schumer’s interruption. He proceeded to describe the incident as a “pretty shi**y thing to do,” disappointed by the way his first headlining set went.

Sean Penn

Sean Penn’s bad reputation goes a long way back to his marriage to Madonna and claims of domestic violence. The short-tempered actor has been caught being rude to fans on several occasions, but the most extreme incident took place in 2013.

Penn was walking down the lobby of St. Regis Hotel in San Francisco when a fan snapped a picture of him. Penn responded by yelling, “do we look like f**king zoo animals?” at him, taking the fan’s phone and smashing it into the floor. 

Steven Seagal

There is a long list of celebrities who openly dislike Seagal because of his bad behavior on set. The actor John Leguizamo was working with Seagal on a movie called Executive Decision in 1996 and he has some terrible memories.

When Seagal declared “I’m in command. What I say is law” on the set,  Leguizamo couldn’t help but chuckle. Seagal didn’t take it well and got physical with him. “I started laughing, and he slammed me with an aikido elbow against a brick wall and knocked all the air out of me,” said Leguizamo about the incident.

Kevin James

We know Kevin James for his lovable characters in popular sitcoms like The King of Queens, but he’s not that lovable in real life. As people who have worked with him have testified, James treats everyone who is not an A-list actor with disrespect.

A security guard who worked on a movie set testified that once James realized that he wasn’t an actor, he scoffed and told him to “stay the hell away” from him. James also disrespects his fans – he once swatted a fan’s hand in Shakeys Pizza when they wanted to shake his hand.

Sandra Bullock

Here’s another actress who tries hard to keep her sweet “the girl next door” image but fails to act accordingly in real life. Bullock is guilty of having zero patience for her fans and for being utterly disrespectful to them.

When a disabled veteran asked Bullock for an autograph in Boston in 2012, her response was horrible. According to the man’s wife, Denise Kodes, the Hollywood star covered her face with her hands and started yelling at him for wanting an autograph.

Bruce Willis

The star of the Die Hard franchise can be really hard on his fans, even if they’re just a bunch of kids happy to see their favorite actor in person. In 1996, Willis was in Atlanta with his then-wife Demi Moore.

The couple was having lunch at California Pizza Kitchen when Willis noticed two boys smiling at him and pointing at the actor from a distance. He got up to yell at the kids for daring to interrupt him while he was having lunch.

John Galliano

The British designer John Galliano got fired from Christian Dior after a video of Galliano having an anti-Semitic tirade emerged on the internet. In the video, that takes place in a bar in Paris, Galliano is heard saying that he loved Hitler and telling bar patrons that “people like you would be dead,” proposing that “‘your mothers, your forefathers would all be gassed.”

He insulted another bar patron by calling them an “f-ing Asian bastard” during the same incident. The French court found Galliano guilty of racist and antisemitic abuse. He tried to defend himself by saying that he was under the influence of alcohol and prescription drugs and doesn’t remember what happened.

Jennifer Lawrence

Here’s another name you probably wouldn’t expect to find on this list. At least Jennifer Lawrence is self-aware of her attitude and wasn’t afraid to admit that she is deliberately rude to her fans in a 2017 interview.

While interviewing for Variety magazine, Lawrence was talking about the challenges of being a Hollywood star and drawing a lot of attention wherever she goes. She confessed to being “incredibly rude” to people who approach her, refusing to take pictures, wagging her finger and making a face at anyone who comes near.