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Do you ever wonder about celebrities who quit smoking? Celebrities are people who we think we know, want to know, and want to learn more about. We feel their pain, celebrate their successes, and (violently) protect their honor if someone says something bad about our heroes. We learned the hard way not to mess with the Beyhive.
We also find comfort in their mistakes, knowing that they make them a little more like us regular people, who may be fighting the same problems. We’ll say, “If they can do it, so can I!” because their stories of willpower, resilience, and drive have given us hope. Celebrities have a lot of power and even more impact. So, if you want to quit smoking, who better to inspire you than these great people who have struggled, fought, and beaten their own addictions?
In this post, we will take a look at some of the most prominent celebrities who quit smoking and learn from their journey toward a healthier lifestyle. From Hollywood actors to pop stars, we’ll explore how these icons broke free from the chains of smoking and embraced a smoke-free life. So, let’s dive into the inspiring stories of celebrities who kicked the habit and conquered their addiction.
Why do Celebrities Smoke?
Celebrities can get hooked on smoking because of their fame. Hanging out with other famous users can make the act of smoking seem appealing and desirable. That’s right, being famous doesn’t make you immune to group pressure.
Living in the spotlight adds to the stress, which can make stars smoke to calm down. But, no matter what the reason, when celebrities smoke, it can hurt their fans.
What are the Dangers of Celebrities Smoking?
When celebrities smoke or post pictures of themselves smoking, it affects their fans. Teens who look up to them are told to do the same things they do. There’s nothing wrong with living the YOLO way of life, but when it comes to smoking, the risks and bad things are rarely talked about.
And when fans start to copy, they risk becoming hooked. Nicotine is one of the most addictive drugs. It has been compared to heroin and cocaine.
The high from nicotine is strong, but it doesn’t last long. If you do this with your next cigarette, you can quickly become addicted. Once someone gets into a habit, it’s hard to break.
Risks of Smoking: Inspiring Celebrities to Quit
Smoking is one of the leading causes of preventable death worldwide. It significantly increases the risk of developing several health conditions such as cancer, heart disease, stroke, lung disease, diabetes, and more. These risks have inspired several celebrities to quit smoking and adopt a healthier lifestyle.
Despite the difficulty of breaking the habit, these inspiring celebrity individuals were able to successfully quit, serving as role models for others who wish to do the same. By quitting smoking, these celebrities were able to reduce their risk of developing health problems and increase their chances of living a longer and healthier life.
20 Celebrities Who Quit Smoking Successfully
If you want to stop smoking and use a throwaway vape, we’d like to introduce you to celebrities who have been in your shoes. This could be the push you need. Good luck!
1. Jennifer Aniston
Jennifer Aniston, who plays one of our favorite on-screen friends, is said to have quit smoking six years ago, after almost 20 years of smoking. She is well-known for saying that doing yoga every day keeps her from wanting to smoke. People often think that it is the cigarette itself that makes them feel better. This is not true.
The cigarette is just a way to get you to breathe more deeply, which makes you feel calmer. Yoga is like smoking in that it makes you breathe deeply, but it doesn’t hurt your lungs like smoking does. It also helps you relax without hurting your lungs.
2. Paul Rudd
Everyone’s favorite actor who doesn’t seem to get older, Paul Rudd, quit smoking after 13 years in a less harsh way than “cold turkey.”
Rudd has said that the Kerry Gaynor hypnotherapy method is “the closest thing to a magic pill” for helping people stop smoking. He also says that Gaynor helped him quit smoking for good. “It has been easy,” Rudd said in a YouTube ad for the program.
But, “I tell people who smoke to stop looking for a quick fix or a magic pill… Utley warns, “They don’t exist.” “It’s an addiction that lasts a lifetime and has both behavioral and physical parts.”
3. Lady Gaga
Back in 2020, the singer and star of the movie A Star is Born said she had finally quit smoking, but it wasn’t easy.
“I completely quit—I quit cold turkey,” Lady Gaga said in an interview with Apple Music, which People reported. “But it was really tough. If you don’t smoke, don’t smoke! Since giving up is worse. It’s so terrible. I won’t smoke ever again because I think I saw Jesus for a whole week. It was terrible.”
How many cigarettes did she smoke before she quit for good? “I’d smoke 40 cigarettes all day long,” the fashion star said.
Want to try a less difficult way to quit? Utley says, “Using nicotine replacement therapy (gum, patch, lozenge) along with a behavioral support program (coaching, community, stress management) can double your chances of quitting successfully.”
4. Keith Richards
The experienced Rolling Stones guitarist said in February 2020 that he had finally given up smoking at the end of 2019.
Richards told iHeart Radio, “I haven’t smoked since October.” “Been there, done that.”
Even though he has a long history with drugs and drinking, Richards says that rock and roll and a glass of pinot grigio are the only things that make him weak.
But it wasn’t easy at all to kick butts. In 2019, Richards agreed with the late Lou Reed that “nicotine was harder to quit than heroin.” But he told Mojo that he overcame his addiction by “cutting down by a substantial amount every day.”
5. Barack Obama
Even the President of the United States can become addicted to smoking. Everyday Health says that Barack Obama started smoking when he was a teenager and that he kept smoking during his campaign for president and at the start of his first time as president. But by 2011, he had promised not to smoke again, as his doctor wrote in his yearly report.
Like Diaz, he seems to have quit smoking because of pressure from his family. NBC News says that he joked, “I’m afraid of my wife.” Everyday Health says that wasn’t all he did. He also chewed nicotine gum to ease his needs.
6. Christy Turlington
Most people start to smoke or drink when they are in their teens. Christy’s smoking habit also goes back to when she was a teen. But she didn’t know at the time that this one-time thing had turned into an addiction. When Christy turned 18, she understood that this bad habit was making her sick.
Even though it took her more than one try to stop smoking for good. After all these years of being a junkie, she finally feels free and calls it “the biggest thing she’s ever done.”
7. Michael Douglas
Michael Douglas, too, was a chain smoker who had a hard time giving up the habit. Reports say that in 2011, a cancerous tumor was found in Douglas’s throat. This was probably caused by the fact that he drank and smoked a lot. After this, the star made up his mind to stop smoking.
8. Catherine Zeta-Jones
In 2003, photos were taken of Catherine Zeta-Jones smoking while she was in the last stages of her pregnancy. She smoked a lot up until the time she gave birth to her child. When a woman is pregnant and smokes, it can hurt both her health and the health of her child in many ways.
Experts say that it can cause babies to be born early, stillborn, or even cause the pregnancy to end. In 2005, the star said she would stop smoking for her children, but she has had trouble and has relapsed many times.
9. Brad Pitt
Brad Pitt just joined the list of famous people who have stopped smoking. In an interview for GQ magazine, the 58-year-old actor who stars in the new movie Bullet Train said that he stopped smoking during the COVID-19 crisis. His plan? Straight up. The star said that he wouldn’t have been able to stop smoking gradually, so he did something very different and stopped smoking for good.
He told GQ, “I don’t have the ability to do just one or two a day.” Even though it’s great that Brad Pitt quit smoking, keep in mind that quitting all at once is not for everyone; it takes a lot of self-strength and drive. The most important thing is to find a way to reach your goal that works for you.
10. Cameron Diaz
In 2014, the Charlie’s Angels star famously told Chelsea Handler that “one cigarette every once in a while won’t kill you.” However, the actor did stop smoking in 2003, and he said it was the weight of parental guilt that made him do it.
Cameron Diaz told Glamour, “I quit because my parents were upset that I smoked so much and I was setting a bad example.” “It made me feel bad about myself.”
The star used to smoke a pack a day, but he doesn’t smoke anymore. “I was into roll-your-own, and I was killing myself,” she said.
11. Kelly Ripa
In an interview with David Letterman, the actress who used to be on soap operas and who used to host morning shows for a long time told him about a secret hobby. “I smoked in secret,” she said. “I only did it when I was out with my friends or sometimes in my dressing room.” Ripa stopped smoking when she had kids, but she told Letterman that she started smoking again when she was filming the ABC show, Hope and Faith.
Ripa knew she wanted to be around to watch her kids grow up, so she got a trainer and started “religiously” working out. She also told Letterman that she stopped smoking after taking the drug bupropion (Wellbutrin) for three weeks.
12. Prince Harry
Prince Harry, who used to be a royal and stir up trouble, is said to have quit smoking before he got married to Meghan Markle, and sources say that she helped him do it. A source who didn’t want to be named told People in 2018 that Harry has lost weight, started eating better, and even quit smoking. “In the days before the wedding, they both felt great. He wouldn’t have been able to do it without her help.”
No one knows for sure how Harry quit smoking, but Markle is known to like yoga, and both she and Harry are big fans of therapy, so we can only imagine that these practices helped.
“Mindfulness, yoga, and other ways to get your mind off of things have their place… “But not as a magic pill or as a stand-alone method,” says Utley. “Chewing on a Twizzler or a carrot, for example, is a good way to stop a craving.”
13. Jon Hamm
In an interview with People in 2007, the star of “Mad Men” admitted that smoking has some appeal, but he also said that it has some bad things about it. “It looks glamorous on film, but waking up smelling like an ashtray is not glamorous,” he said, adding, “I quit smoking when I was 24.”
Hamm told the source that, since the show is set in the 1960s, “everyone smokes everywhere.” But the players didn’t really smoke tobacco. “There’s no nicotine in what we’re smoking,” he said. “It’s a plant. It tastes like a mix of grass clippings, mint, and pot.
14. Gisele Bündchen
Gisele Bündchen told Harper’s Bazaar in 2009 that she used to smoke “a pack and a half of cigarettes a day,” even though she is now known as a model for healthy living.
She didn’t say much about how she quit, but she did say that she gained 15 pounds during the process, even though when she smoked she “drank a lot of red wine and ate cheeseburgers all day.” “I was treating my body, which is my temple and my best friend, like my worst enemy,” she said, adding that she had no regrets about gaining weight.
15. Jon Stewart
The former host of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show began smoking when he was 15 and couldn’t stop until 2000. In 2011, Stewart talked about why he had smoked for so long on Primetime Glick.
He said, “I used cigarettes to fill an emotional hole in me.” “It was something I did to help me feel better.” Entertainment Weekly said in a 2015 article that Stewart kept a gumball machine near his desk and said on 60 Minutes in 2001 that he chews gum as a “cigarette substitute.”
16. Anthony Hopkins
Even after the Silence of the Lambs star who won an Oscar for the movie stopped smoking for good, he would still sometimes want a cigarette or cigar. The Easy Way to Stop Smoking, a book by the late anti-smoking activist Allen Carr, was suggested to Hopkins by his friends as a way to break the habit for good.
The book “immediately” helped him stop smoking. Hopkins said that Carr’s method, which is based on the idea that people can’t stop because of a cycle of fear, is “not only easy but unbelievably enjoyable.”
17. Rumer Willis
The daughter of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, Rumer Willis is an actor and singer in her own right. She told SheKnows that she and her friends started smoking when they were teenagers. “We thought we were just so cool,” she told the site. After stopping for a few years in her early twenties, Willis said she started again “for a year or two” before trying to become a “casual smoker, which never works for anyone.”
Utley agrees: “Tobacco use and nicotine addiction create a slippery slope,” he says. “There is no safe amount of smoking. Like other habits, smoking in social situations often leads to smoking more often.”
Willis finally quit smoking during the pandemic. She did this in part by using nicotine gum and in part by taking a hard look at why she was smoking.
She said, “There’s such an emotional part to it.” “I think it’s important to stop and think, ‘Okay, why do I really want a cigarette?’ in that moment. What am I trying to stay away from?’… Tell yourself, “I’ll give it five minutes, and if I still want it then, I’ll think about it again.” Then, after those five minutes, I’ll just try again for five minutes at a time.”
18. Whoopi Goldberg
Whoopi Goldberg is an ex-celebrity smoker who does not take respiration for granted. The Hollywood actress-turned-daytime talk show hostess quit smoking after viewing a video of two young children with cystic fibrosis (CF), a genetic disorder that causes a buildup of mucus in the body’s organs – particularly the lungs – making it extremely difficult to breathe.
Whoopi, moved by their stories and unwilling to continue harming her own airways, decided it was time to give up her voice and take charge of a situation in which many, such as those with cystic fibrosis, have no choice.
19. Gwyneth Paltrow
Academy award winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow is among the celebrities who quit smoking. Before she started Goop, Gwyneth Paltrow supposedly smoked two packs of cigarettes a day. When she got pregnant with her first daughter, she quit smoking. She has since said that she sometimes sneaks a smoke off-screen, which she calls her “guilty pleasure.” We’re glad to see that she lives the kind of clean life she tells everyone else to live.
20. Adele
Adele is known for her string of hit tunes, but the ‘Hello’ singer quit smoking cigarettes four years ago. It was said that one reason she wanted to stop smoking was that she was afraid of getting sick from smoking and dying. And since smoking is the cause of over 100,000 deaths in the UK alone, it is still one of the main reasons for death that can be stopped.
Adele, who lives in London, is said to have used hypnosis to help her stop smoking, but there isn’t much evidence that this method works in the long run. If you want to stop smoking and are looking for the best way to do it, try one of these.
Wrapping Up
Smoking is a dangerous habit that can lead to various health conditions, including cancer, heart disease, and lung diseases. Despite the risks, quitting smoking can be challenging. However, several celebrities who quit smoking successfully remained tobacco-free for years. Mick Jagger, for instance, tackled his addiction by reducing his cigarette consumption gradually.
On the other hand, Prince Harry quit smoking before his wedding to Meghan Markle, with the help of a nutritional advisor. Other celebrities, such as Adele, Lady Gaga, and Jennifer Aniston, turned to alternative methods such as yoga, hypnotherapy, and cold turkey, to quit smoking for good.
