8 celebs who don’t like being approached by fans: from Justin Bieber and Kanye West to Jennifer Lawrence, Doja Cat and Cillian Murphy – but which Hollywood actor allegedly made little girls cry?
But not everyone feels the same, preferring to protect their privacy in public, or to prevent fans from getting the wrong idea about how much they’re willing to interact.
Here are eight celebs who really would rather you didn’t approach them. Don’t say you haven’t been warned …
1. Jennifer Lawrence
In 2016, JLaw told the UK’s Telegraph newspaper that she had grown reluctant to fulfil fans’ selfie requests. “I have just started becoming really rude and drawn into myself,” she admitted. “I think that people think that we already are friends because I am famous and they feel like they already know me – but I don’t know them.”
2. Cillian Murphy
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“I just think it’s better to say hello and have a little conversation,” he told People magazine. “I tell that to a lot of people, you know, actor friends of mine, and they’re just like, ‘I feel so bad.’ But you don’t need a photo record of everywhere you’ve been in a day.”
3. Tommy Lee
God forbid a fan try to take a photo with the Mötley Crüe drummer at the height of his fame. Lee posted on the band’s Facebook page in 2012 that he “hates” being guilt-tripped into taking photos with strangers: “Irritates the f*** out of me when people say … ‘You owe it to your fans, they put you where you are, etc etc!’ I certainly don’t owe anybody anything.”
4. Christian Bale
Christian Bale’s former publicist Harrison Cheung claimed in his book about the actor that Bale was so mean to fans that he’d make them cry. According to Cheung, the Batman star “would lecture little girls about being rude and intrusive until tears streamed down their faces and their parents tugged them away from [his] table”.
5. Doja Cat
Her recent Coachella performance may have gone down well with critics, but Doja Cat’s fans know not to get too close to the “Agora Hills” singer. Of all the celebrities on this list, Doja Cat has been most vocal about the skewed relationship between fans and artists, encouraging her most ardent followers to “get off your phone and get a job”, per Vogue.
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Upon being encouraged to tell her fans she loved them, she duly responded, “I don’t though because I don’t even know y’all,” per NBC.
6. Emma Watson
In 2017, the Harry Potter actress told Vanity Fair she felt her personal safety was at risk when fans came up to her to ask for a selfie, because when the photos appeared online, it allowed people to know exactly where she was and when.
She wouldn’t dismiss them entirely, however. Per the same source, “I’ll say, ‘I will sit here and answer every single Harry Potter fandom question you have, but I just can’t do a picture.’”
7. Justin Bieber
Bieber may have mellowed in recent years, but his reputation for being a brat has been hard to shake off. In 2016, he straight up told fans he’d had enough. “I’m going to be cancelling my meet and greets,” he wrote on Snapchat.
“I always leave feeling mentally and emotionally exhausted to the point of depression. The pressure of meeting people’s expectations of what I’m supposed to be is so much for me to handle,” he added.
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8. Kanye West
- Taylor Swift is so good to her fans that it’s no surprise she sells out stadiums around the world – but not all famous people are quite so accommodating, with Ye being extra protective of his wives
- Justin Bieber said meeting fans made him emotionally exhausted, while Doja Cat famously told them to ‘get off your phone and get a job’ – but Emma Watson is fine with it as long as no photos are taken