Phobias of spiders, heights, or snakes are hardly rare—but who runs scared of things like gum, water, and antique furniture? From Kristen Stewart’s fear of horses (which she conquered to film the upcoming fantasy flick, Snow White and the Huntsman) to Nicole Kidman’s horror of butterflies, see the weirdest things celebrities fear.
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In the upcoming Snow White and the Huntsman, Kristen Stewart plays a badass warrior version of the title princess, fighting for her life rather than waiting around in a coma to be kissed. But how did she pull it off while harboring a fear of one of man’s favorite animals? Stewart admitted last week at WonderCon that the film’s many horse-riding scenes were especially excruciating since she’s not exactly the world’s biggest equine fan. (“I hate ‘em,” she said flatly.) The fear apparently dates to a young age, when she suffered a terrible fall during a horse-riding accident. “I broke and dislocated my elbow when I was, like, 9,” she explained. To get through the terror of playing with horses however, Stewart channeled a bit of Snow White bravery and powered through: “I just had to not think about it,” the actress said. "I wanted so badly to do this that it was just like, ‘All right, well, if I perish by horse, that's all good.’”
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Billy Bob Thornton’s supposed to be a tough guy. He was, after all, the guy who wore Angelina Jolie’s blood in a vial around his neck, talked openly about their padded sex rooms and bought her a grave plot as a gift—all just when he was feeling romantic. Considering his skewed sense of what’s creepy and what’s not, his fear of antique furniture is more than a little puzzling. So are his phobias of komodo dragons, plastic cutlery, flying and Benjamin Disraeli’s hair. But there’s a rationale to his madness, he has explained. “Let’s start with Komodo dragons,” he once told The Independent. “They have horribly toxic bacteria in their mouths. When they bite you, you instantly go blind. Who would like that?” He also clarified that it’s only French antiques that give him chills. “I don’t have a phobia about American antiques, it’s mostly French,” he has said. “You know, like the big, old, gold-carved chairs with the velvet cushions. The Louis XIV type. That's what creeps me out. I can spot the imitation antiques a mile off. They have a different vibe. Not as much dust.”
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With her bodacious curves and platinum blonde locks, former Baywatch actress Pamela Anderson was once the woman nearly every man wanted to stare at. But Pam herself apparently didn’t share their enthusiasm. The actress reportedly suffers from eisoptrophobia, or the fear of mirrors, and is reported to have admitted, “I have this phobia—I don’t like mirrors. And I don’t watch myself on television. If anything comes on, I make them shut it off or I leave the room.”
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In The Lord of the Rings film series, Orlando Bloom played a lithe, fearless elf who could turn a battle against monstrous Orcs into a sort of game. But Legolas the elf and Orlando Bloom the actor are apparently two very different people. Whereas Legolas could probably look straight into the eye of Sauron without batting a lash, Orlando reportedly turns tail and flees at the sight of pigs. During the filming of his medieval epic, Kingdom of Heaven, Bloom allegedly ran off set when one of the swine got loose.
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However weird Orlando Bloom’s fear of pigs seems, however, it looks downright normal next to Nicole Kidman’s butterfly phobia. The Moulin Rouge actress has feared the dainty insects since she was a child. “Sometimes when I would come home from school the biggest butterfly or moth you’d ever seen would just be sitting on our front gate,” Kidman has said. “I would climb over the fence, crawl around to the side of the house—anything to avoid having to go through the front gate. I have tried to get over it … I walked into the big butterfly cage at the American Museum of Natural History and had the butterflies on me … but that didn’t work. I jump out of planes, I could be covered in cockroaches, I do all sorts of things, but I just don’t like the feel of butterflies’ bodies.”
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Christina Ricci’s not afraid of ghosts but she’s got a problem with indoor plants. The actress allegedly finds plants “dirty” and will “freak out” around them. Besides her fear of plants, called botanophobia, Ricci also reportedly fears swimming pools and sharks.
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The cutthroat competition of the fashion world sounds scarier than former supermodel Tyra Banks’s actual fear: dolphins. On a 2006 episode of her eponymous talk show, Tyra decided to resolve her guests’ (and her own) biggest phobias. While one of her guests had a giant bird fly at her and another was forced to eat ketchup, Tyra took a trip to Sea World to try and “conquer her fear.” “You think a dolphin is sweet, is cuddly—but to me, they’re not,” she confessed on the show. “I feel anxiety and I feel panic whenever I’m confronting or even thinking about or talking about a dolphin—it’s happening right now.” However, after heading down to the marine theme park in San Diego and splashing around, cuddling and even kissing dolphins, Tyra declared that she had found a way to “control” the fear. “I think now, when I snorkel if I do ever see a dolphin, I won’t hyperventilate and swallow water and drown,” she said.
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From a young age, talk-show maven Oprah Winfrey has suffered from chiclephobia—the fear of chewing gum. The phobia apparently stems from a nasty habit her grandmother had: “My grandmother used to save [gum] in little rows in the cabinet,” Winfrey has said. “I’d be scared to touch it because it was so gross, so I have a thing about gum.” Winfrey’s “thing about gum” reportedly goes so far as her having the stuff banned from her studios—and her home, too. “One guest in my home sat at the dinner table, took some gum from her mouth and put it on her plate—after she left, I threw the plate out,” Winfrey said of the harrowing incident.
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Aquaphobic Carmen Electra is afraid of water—but perhaps not afraid enough to stay away from the beach that made her famous on Baywatch. “I get terrified anywhere near it and have a panic attack,” Electra has insisted. We’re guessing the panic attacks were edited out of the final reels.
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For a man who has the ability to play parts as clownish as Willy Wonka and Jack Sparrow, Johnny Depp has a somewhat puzzling case of coulrophobia—the fear of clowns. But he’s working on it: “I have clown posters, clown paintings, because clowns scare me,” the actor has said. “I have this fear of clowns, so I think that if I surround myself with them it will ward off all evil.” He also assures the world that his other major fear—John Davidson—is also now under control: “And I have a fear of people like … John Davidson has always scared me. So I took one entire day and I watched John Davidson videotapes, him singing all these horrible songs and singing Christmas songs in polyester pants, and I watched that to overcome my fears.”
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There are weird celebrity phobias—and then there’s Woody Allen. The actor and director dreams up some of the most neurotic characters on film, but even the nuttiest of his creations can look pretty sane next to the real-life Allen. His phobias range from the understandable (insects, heights, cancer, crowds) to the baffling (sunshine, bright colors, children, deer). His reluctance to live anywhere outside Manhattan is famously portrayed in characters such as Alvy in Annie Hall. Similar characters’ obsessions with death also stem from a real-life Allen fear (“I have memories of being very young, probably 6 or 8, and being put to sleep at night and lying in the black, thinking, ‘Someday I will be dead,’” Allen has said). He’s picky about transportation as well. (“I don’t go into elevators. I don’t go through tunnels.”) And his bathtubs too. (“I like the drain in the shower to be in the corner and not in the middle.”) And don’t get us started on how he feels about peanut butter sticking to the roof of his mouth.
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