11 Celebrities With Lyme Disease

In her Netflix documentary Not Just a Girl, country music legend Shania Twain opened up about her frightening bout with Lyme disease, which happened while she was touring in the early 2000s and impacted her vocal cords and ability to sing.

“I was horseback riding, and I was bit by a tick. The tick was infected with Lyme disease,” Twain said. “My symptoms were quite scary, because before I was diagnosed, I was on stage very dizzy, I was losing my balance, I was afraid I was going to fall off the stage. I was having these very, very millisecond blackouts, but regularly — every minute or every 30 seconds,” said Twain, according to Today.

In a 2020 interview on the British talk show Loose Women, Twain said it took seven years for doctors to realize that the changes to her voice were due to nerve damage to her vocal cords that was caused by Lyme disease.

“Our voices are such a huge part of our self-expression, and for a vocalist it’s devastating in so many ways,” she shared. “Until I got to the bottom of why I was having a problem with my voice, there wasn’t much I could do about it, and it took a long time. Thankfully I persevered, and I am making records again and putting on concerts.”

The runway model and reality star Bella Hadid (as well as her mother, Yolanda, and her brother, Anwar) has also battled Lyme disease. In a speech at the 2016 Global Lyme Alliance, Hadid shared how her life was negatively impacted by her condition.

“I know what it feels like to not want to get out of bed from bone pains and exhaustion and days on end of not wanting to socialize or be around people because the anxiety and brain fog just isn’t worth it. … After years of this, you begin to get used to living with the sickness, instead of getting cured and moving on with life.”

In August 2023, Hadid said in an Instagram post that she was “finally healthy,” after “100+ days of Lyme, chronic disease, coinfection treatment, [and] almost 15 years of invisible suffering.”

“The universe works in the most painful and beautiful ways, but I need to say that if you are struggling — it will get better. I promise,” she added.

Stand-up comedian and Trainwreck and Life and Beth actress Amy Schumer unsurprisingly took a lighthearted approach to announcing she had Lyme disease on her Instagram account in September 2020. “Anyone get LYME this summer? I got it and I’m on doxycycline,” she wrote. “I have maybe had it for years. Any advice? Can you have a glass of wine or 2 on it?”

She encouraged her followers to comment with their own experiences with the tick-borne disease and said she was managing her own symptoms well. “I want to say that I feel good and am excited to get rid of it.”

The 30 Rock and SNL star was bitten by a tick more than 20 years ago, and for five summers after that, he was bedridden with sweats and high fever. Speaking to People about his experience with Lyme disease, Baldwin said, “I really thought this is it, I’m not going to live. I was alone, I wasn’t married at the time, I was divorced from my first wife. I was lying in bed saying, ‘I’m going to die of Lyme disease’ in my bed and ‘I hope someone finds me and I’m not here for too long.’”

After mostly avoiding the topic publicly, he agreed to speak at a fundraising dinner in 2017 for the Bay Area Lyme Foundation. He has since talked about his family’s vigilance in avoiding the tick-borne illness. “I want my kids to grow up riding horses and bikes and enjoying themselves every day and not have to spend every day with us going over them with a magnifying glass to make sure they don’t have any ticks on their body or their dogs, but that is part of the lifestyle,” he said.

The singer, former teenage heartthrob, and husband to model Hailey came forward on Instagram (with a since-removed post) about his Lyme disease diagnosis in 2020 after fans started bullying him about his appearance. “While a lot of people kept saying Justin Bieber looks like s***, on meth etc. they failed to realize I've been recently diagnosed with Lyme disease,” he wrote. “It’s been a rough couple years but getting the right treatment will help … and I will be back and better than ever.”

The following year, he called out the media, Insider reported, for continuing to run unflattering photos of him from when he was feeling unwell, even though his condition had improved. “There have been countless photo shoots and opportunities for media to pick up other photos but they still run with this one to make me look sick and unwell. …This was a time where I was really unhealthy. I was battling Lyme disease, right?”

RELATED: How Ticks Can Make You Sick

Speaking to People for a 2015 cover story, the Canadian singer-songwriter told readers that she had been battling Lyme disease for a year. “I had no idea a bug bite could do this,” said Lavigne, who traces her disease to a tick bite she must have received sometime in 2014. “I was bedridden for five months.”

In an interview with Billboard three years later, the punk princess revealed that debilitating aches and fatigue wound up keeping her in bed even longer than that. “I was in bed for f****** two years.” During that time, she saw doctors who prescribed antibiotics to help her rebound from a disease that doesn’t follow one standard treatment protocol. And in her case, as in so many others, she struggled to get a Lyme disease diagnosis in the first place.

Her 2018 album Head Above Water was inspired by her battle with Lyme. And her Avril Lavigne Foundation now works with Lyme disease organizations to help raise funds and visibility for the cause. “When you go through something like that, you realize how fulfilling simple things are — things I couldn’t do anymore, like being able to get up in the morning and go to the kitchen and grab a cup of coffee,” she told People in 2019. “It taught me patience; it taught me being more present. That was a beautiful lesson.”

The funnyman and Zoolander star was diagnosed with Lyme disease in 2010. He told The Hollywood Reporter, “I got it in Nantucket, Mass., a couple of years ago. My knee became inflamed and they couldn’t figure out what it was, then they found out it was Lyme.”

Stiller is one of the fortunate ones who may have benefitted from early detection and treatment. “I’m symptom-free now, but … it’s a really tough thing.”

At dad Ozzy’s surprise outdoor birthday party in 2004, talk show host and reality star Kelly Osbourne was bitten by a tick, which resulted in symptoms such as a sore throat, abdominal pain, and seizures for a decade before she got a proper Lyme disease diagnosis. “I've learned to advocate for myself when it comes to my health, and I trust my intuition,” she wrote in her 2016 memoir, There Is No F*cking Secret: Letters From a Badass Bitch. “If I think something is wrong, I refuse to let anyone dismiss it.”

Osbourne’s extensive drug regimen led to a cycle of depression, anxiety, and ultimately treatment for those symptoms, too. According to her book excerpt in Us Weekly, “The doctors kept changing my prescription, trying to get the dosage right, and it turned me into a zombie. You know in movies where a mental patient sits in a rocking chair in a cardigan and nightgown and stares at a wall all day? That was me.”

The legendary singer, songwriter, and actor was struggling with memory problems in recent years, and Kristofferson — as well as his friends and family — were told that he had Alzheimer’s disease. But eventually that proved to be a misdiagnosis, and what he actually was experiencing was Lyme.

Kristofferson and his wife, Lisa, told Rolling Stone that for years doctors had been telling him that his progressive and debilitating memory loss was due to either Alzheimer’s or dementia brought on by blows to the head from boxing and playing football and rugby in his younger years.

“He was taking all these medications for things he doesn’t have, and they all have side effects,” Lisa said. After the Lyme diagnosis, he stopped taking those meds and went through three weeks of treatment for Lyme. “It’s like Lazarus coming out of the grave and being born again,” said singer-songwriter and close friend Chris Gantry in Closer Weekly.

Lyme disease advocate and daughter of famed American designer Tommy, Ally Hilfiger was first diagnosed at 7 years old after being bit by a tick in 1992. “I was convinced that bugs were crawling in my body. I could feel them eating at my organs, my stomach, and especially my brain,” Hilfiger wrote in her 2016 memoir Bite Me: How Lyme Disease Stole My Childhood, Made Me Crazy, and Almost Killed Me.

According to a profile in Goop, after years of struggling, she’s finally hitting her stride. “Shifting my mental attitude was a great part of my recovery. Thinking positively and telling my body that it was constantly healing and progressing — instead of that it was constantly sick and deteriorating — made me feel better emotionally. Any form of spirituality might help — mine was spending time in nature and meditating.”

Hilfiger also works with Project Lyme, an advocacy organization focused on prevention and early detection of the disease.

After dealing with an undiagnosed illness for months during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, former Bachelorette winner Ryan Sutter told People in May 2021 that he had Lyme disease that had been made even more severe due to mold exposure.

After doing extensive testing and blood work, doctors figured out that his body is susceptible to taking in mold toxins, which he is frequently exposed to as a firefighter.

“It seems to be that what happened is that my immune system was weakened through exposures to toxins and especially to mold,” he said on wife Trista Sutter’s podcast, Better Etc. “There are other people in the fire academy that probably had the same exposures who aren’t dealing with these exposures because their genetics are stronger, they’re able to get rid of the toxins easier.”

In June 2022, the couple sat down with People again for an update on Sutter’s health — and had good news to share. “For so long, I was only thinking about how to survive the day,” he said. “But I feel like my life is coming back. And that’s been really encouraging.”