Not all celebrities are the same. Not all secretly adore the public’s obsession with them. Some really do want to be able to create or contribute to cinema or music without the looming threat of media harassment. When that threat becomes a stark reality, many retreat into the safety of their homes and barely ever leave. These are called recluses, and Hollywood has seen plenty of them over the years, from Greta Garbo to Gene Hackman. You may be surprised to find out how many recluses are living today. Well, at least as far as we know…
David Letterman
After retiring from The Late Show with David Letterman in 2015 after some 33 years on television, Letterman decided to withdraw from the public eye for several years. He grew a beard and moved to the suburbs, having lived in Tribeca, New York, for decades.
Fans were worried when they saw pictures emerge of Letterman looking bedraggled (not wearing a suit and sporting a beard) but then he returned to our screens with his Netflix talk show and all was forgiven. Even so, he remains a very private figure.
Johnny Depp
When you have Johnny Depp’s level of fame, you have no choice but to become reclusive and the actor has proven that time and time again by simply not… appearing. You never see pictures of Depp shopping or strolling the beach, and that’s all tactical.
Depp actually moved to France in the 2000s, during his relationship with Vanessa Paradis, to avoid the obsessive LA press and protect his children from the constant shutter of cameras. He has gone on record as saying he hates attention and can’t even watch his own films.
Adele
Adele is one of those celebrities who you can imagine hanging out with in a casual setting. There don’t seem to be any airs or graces about Adele. She’s clearly hostile to media training and elocution lessons, preferring to remain true to herself.
Outside of the occasional red carpet, Adele is never seen doing promotion. She doesn’t put her name on books, clothes, toys, or apps. Rumour has it that the singer is notoriously difficult to contact and likes to keep it that way so she can live a normal life.
Bill Watterson
Don’t worry about not knowing who Bill Watterson is – that’s the way he likes it. In the States, Watterson is an illustration veteran, famous for creating the beloved comic strip Calvin and Hobbes which has won the Reuben Award three times.
Despite his fervent and far-reaching fanbase, Watterson decided to walk away from the game in 1995. He claimed to be frustrated with the pressure of daily deadlines and small panels. Since then, he has become a recluse, barely ever talking to the press.
Axl Rose
Does Axl Rose know where he is? He’s in the jungle, baby. Well, he may as well be. When the Guns N Roses singer isn’t on stage, he is nowhere to be seen, and that’s impressive for someone as famous as him. Fans cite his mother’s death in the 90s to his reclusive arc.
Rose and the band spent years on a de facto hiatus as they worked on the hotly anticipated Chinese Democracy. The album took so long to record that public interest in Guns N Roses waned. When it was finally released, sales were shocking, meaning Axl could go back to obscurity.
Tobey Maguire
You only have to browse TikTok or Reels to know that Tobey Maguire has a fierce hatred of fame. One of the more famous clips of him is at airport security. Maguire can be seen spotting the lens of the paparazzi, and he is not a happy bunny.
After completing his Spider-Man trilogy in 2007, Maguire stepped away from the limelight on purpose. Today, he focuses more on producing movies than starring in them, though he reprised his signature role in 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home and appeared in Babylon.
Cate Blanchett
Cate Blanchett is a two-time Academy Award-winning actress. Everybody knows who she is. But do they know who her husband is? How many children she has? No. This is Blanchett’s style. Keep the work on set. Don’t bring it home with you.
The Australian actress moved to the town of Crowborough in East Sussex, England to get away from it all, mostly the paparazzi, who were keen to keep tabs on the Oscar winner, her husband and their three children. Despite this reclusive movie, she continues to act in Hollywood.
Julia Roberts
Julia Roberts is just a girl, standing in front of a photographer, asking him not to leaf through her trash cans for personal or possibly incriminating information. It’s no surprise that Roberts prefers a reclusive life given her monumental rise to fame in the 1990s.
In 2002, the Pretty Woman star and Erin Brokovich Oscar-winner married cameraman Danny Moder in New Mexico and they had three children together. She averages about one movie a year but steers clear of junkets and promotion for the most part.
Daniel Craig
How much do you know about Daniel Craig’s personal life, besides the fact he’s married to Rachel Weisz? Hardly anything, right? How is it that the highest-paid James Bond actor of all time manages to live a life of relative seclusion and peace?
Craig just doesn’t play the fame game. It’s as simple as that. If you don’t give them (the media) anything, they’ll lose interest. He and Rachel live in New York’s trendy East Village and can be seen wearing a hoodie and sneakers on the days he leaves the house.
Dave Chappelle
After lighting up the comedy world with his own sketch show in the early 2000s, Dave Chapelle vanished from the public eye for almost eight years as he cooped up in his South Africa and Ohio homes. In 2013, he made a comeback.
Chappelle is a far more common presence on our screens these days, either appearing in other people’s comedy shows or hosting his own Netflix specials. All the same, he continues to live a low-key life in Ohio, far away from the prying media.
Eminem
There are two Eminems. First is the puffy, platinum blonde-haired Eminem of 1999, brash and in your face, and also hooked on some naughty substances. This era lasted til around 2005 when his close friend died and he went to rehab.
The second is the sober, brunette, bearded Eminem. Still rapping but less in your face. Slim is a lot shadier these days, choosing to stay away from controversy. He stays in his house most days, which is probably big enough to not get bored.
Joaquin Phoenix
Joaquin Phoenix has also been suspicious of the media, never giving away any information about himself. His role in the 2000 epic Gladiator turned him into a Hollywood star overnight, and he wasn’t too thrilled. By 2005, Phoenix had checked into rehab.
In 2009, he played up to his reclusive reputation by appearing on David Letterman to say that he had quit acting to become a musician. The whole bit was later revealed to have been performance art. In 2010, I’m Still Here was released, documenting his career move.
Terrence Malick
Terrence Malick may well be the best director you’ve probably never heard of. Breaking through in the 70s with Badlands and Days of Heaven, he then took a two decade hiatus before returning with The Thin Red Line. He remains intensely private and never promotes his films, leaving that to his cast and crew.
Malick’s reclusive nature was confirmed when he failed to turn up to the Cannes Film Festival when he was awarded the Palme d’Or for The Tree of Life in 2011. He lives with his wife Alexandra Wallace, whom he’s been married to since 1998. Little else is known about his private life.
Sandra Bullock
Sandra Bullock doesn’t have social media, doesn’t grant many interviews, and largely stays out of the limelight unless she’s in a big movie. Having suffered troubles with personal relationships, you can hardly blame the actress for living the life she does.
From 2015 to 2023, Bullock was in a relationship with Brayn Randall until his death from ALS. The two began dating after meeting at her son Louis’ birthday party, Randall having been the photographer hired to capture the event.
Lauryn Hill
Lauryn Hill made a name for herself in the 1990s with the Fugees, known for their songs Killing Me Softly and Ready or Not. After the Fugees split, Hill went solo recording her one and only album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.
Since then she has become a recluse and has yet to release a follow-up album. Hill continues to perform but rarely releases new music or appears in interviews. Even so, she remains an inspiration to countless up-and-comers on the R&B scene.
Anita Baker
The 1980s were rife with new talent itching to make their voices heard both on and off the stage. Not Anita Baker. She was happy enough to let her singing do the talking, refusing most publicity when it came to promoting her albums.
In 2021, she asked her fans to stop listening to her music as Elektra Records, who produced her 1986 album Rapture, were trying to hold onto the rights after 35 years (the timespan which artists have to wait to own music not written by them).
Daniel Day-Lewis
Daniel Day-Lewis is one of the most famous and acclaimed actors on the planet, and the only man to win the Best Actor Oscar three times. Yet here we all are, none the wiser. How does he do it? By living in a small town in the south of Dublin, that’s how.
Daniel Day-Lewis has been very picky with his films, choosing only roles he felt connected to. After the release of The Phantom Thread, Lewis retired from acting to focus on a quiet life with his family – and to give other actors a chance of winning some Academy Awards.
Sia
Sia isn’t just reclusive; she was, for a while, downright anonymous. The singer-songwriter never showed her face when she first burst onto the scene in the 2010s, having it obscured by bangs. Of course, this only added to the intrigue surrounding her.
After a stint in rehab, Sia returned to the industry as a songwriter for other artists before going back to solo work. By the time she had revealed her face, the public had lost interest, meaning Sia had the privilege of living a regular life without much scrutiny.
Daft Punk
Sure, Daft Punk may have split up but both members, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel, are still alive and kicking – wherever they are. The electronic duo became famous in the 1990s for their space-age aesthetics, never revealing the faces behind their masks.
Was it even them? Did Bangalter and Manuel write the songs and then hire two men to perform as them around the world? It wouldn’t be a surprise. Both continue to work in music and keep a low profile as they do it. Masters of the reclusive game.
Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Pynchon is a huge name in the literary world having written bestsellers like The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity’s Rainbow and latterly Inherent Vice – but he’s virtually unknown to the mainstream. Unlike other such famous writers as JK Rowling and Stephen King, Pynchon never grants interviews.
In fact, Pynchon is so reclusive that nobody is really sure what he even looks like now. He lent his voice for an episode of The Simpsons where even the character was drawn with a paper bag over his face. As far as we can tell, Pynchon (now in his late 80s) continues to write.
Matt LeBlanc
Unlike his co-stars on Friends, Matt LeBlanc has no desire to remain relevant or continue acting outside of the sitcom. After the cancellation of Joey in 2006, the actor has only ever returned to film Episodes and Man With a Plan.
“I would like to retire earlier than later because I think I would like to do not a f***ing thing,” he told Conan O’Brien. “That’s what I would like to do. Just nothing. Nothing! Zero!” He hasn’t made a filmed appearance since 2021’s Friends: The Reunion and an episode of BBC car show Top Gear, which he co-hosted for a time.
Meg White
Even when Meg White was the female half of The White Stripes, she was infamously shy. The band had to cancel a 2007 tour White’s social anxiety was so bad. After they split, Meg married and divorced Jackson Smith in the space of four years. She’s since disappeared completely from the public eye.
Her former bandmate and ex-husband Jack White told Rolling Stone in 2014, “I don’t think anyone talks to Meg. She’s always been a hermit. When we lived in Detroit, I’d have to drive over to her house if I wanted to talk to her, so now it’s almost never.”
Gene Hackman
Gene Hackman is a Hollywood legend, having appeared in classics such as Bonnie and Clyde and The French Connection. Since the 1990s, however, he has laid low. Really low. It’s been a long time since any of us saw him on the screen or on a red carpet.
In May 2017, it was reported that Hackman had quit the movies and moved to Sante Fe to focus on painting, riding his bike, and writing novels. To be fair, if anyone deserves to hang up their boots and live a life of leisure and seclusion, it’s Hackman.
Enya
Irish singer Enya has sold 75 million records and is viewed as “the wealthiest woman in British and Irish music.” But since her heyday, Enya has preferred to hole up in her Dublin castle. “She’s not exactly a barrel of laughs,” one friend said of her.
Enya gets dolled up for the occasional red carpet and sometimes performs on stage but she mostly prefers her own company. We wonder if that friend who called her a bore is still around. Surely not. Mind you, word probably never got back to the castle.
Sly Stone
Funk icon Sly Stone was hard to pin down at the peak of his powers let alone now. After his 1987 arrest on drugs charges, he retreated from the public eye, only re-emerging for his induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1993 and a performance at the 2006 Grammy’s.
Having lived in a camper van for years, Stone is now back in a house with his children having been awarded $5 million in damages after suing his former manager and lawyer back in 2016. He came back into the public eye in 2023 with the release of a memoir.
John Deacon
Queen bass player John Deacon contributed to some of the most popular songs in music history including Another One Bites the Dust and I Want to Break Free, but anyone below the age of 40 has probably never heard of him. After a 1997 gig with Elton John, Deacon stepped away from performing.
His old bandmates Brian May and Roger Taylor have continued playing as Queen with vocalists Paul Rogers and Adam Lambert in place of the late Freddie Mercury, but Deacon has not participated. He was portrayed by Joseph Mazzello in the 2018 Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody.
Frank Ocean
Frank Ocean is proof that you don’t have to plaster yourself all over social media these days in order to cause a stir or gain a following. Quite the opposite. The more reclusive Ocean gets, the more invested his fans become in his music.
In 2012, he released one of the most critically acclaimed albums of the year, Channel Orange, before effectively vanishing off the face of the earth for four years. Not a single interview or social media post. Then in 2016, he dropped Endless and Blonde out of nowhere.
Björk
Björk: Icelandic vocalist, bit kooky, dressed like a bird at the Oscars once. That’s probably the common person’s description of the distinctive singer-songwriter, who still commands a huge cult following even though she’s become something of a recluse since her 1990s heyday.
Björk has continued to produce new music over the years, 2022’s Fossora marking her tenth release. However, these days she rarely does a great deal to promote her new recordings, and prefers to keep her private life as private as possible.
FKA Twigs
British singer-songwriter FKA Twigs has built a huge fanbase without having to break too much of a sweat on social media. She remains pretty reclusive, and for good reason, as she has had to endure a lot of abuse online thanks to her past relationships.
From 2014 to 2017 she dated actor Robert Pattinson which she said invited a lot of racist abuse aimed at her from Twilight fans. In December 2020, she filed a lawsuit against her ex Shia LaBeouf, accusing him of sexual battery, assault and emotional distress.
Fiona Apple
Fiona Apple has gained a reputation as a recluse since she first made a splash in music in the 1990s, taking significant breaks between albums and tours without any notice. But she’s learned to embrace the lifestyle as something that isn’t negative.
“At a certain point,” she told NPR, “you start to feel like, well maybe this isn’t really who I am. Maybe I’m not really a recluse. Maybe I’m not a hermit. Maybe I just decided that this is the most comfortable place for me to be because I’m too afraid to go out anywhere else.”
Joni Mitchell
In 1971, folk legend Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded one of the greatest albums ever, Blue. She could have retired then and there but, thankfully, Mitchell carried on for another decade or two before retreating further and further back into the safety of her own home.
Mitchell cites mental health concerns and general contempt for the music industry for her notorious reputation for isolation. When she makes the news these days, it’s for simply existing rather than doing something productive such as writing music or painting.
Emma Watson
When your entire childhood and adolescence are taken up by the demanding production of eight Harry Potter films, it would make sense to spend the next ten years trying to avoid the media glare, and that’s what Emma Watson tries to do.
Watson appeared in ten further movies since her time as Hermione Granger (most notably the live-action Beauty and the Beast remake), but hasn’t acted at all since 2019’s Little Women. When she appears in the public eye at all, it’s generally due to her environmental and feminist activism.
Bob Dylan
How many roads must a man walk down before he bumps into Bob Dylan? A trillion, probably. Bob was never one for the red carpet even at the height of his powers, but now he really isn’t. The counter-culture folk veteran still releases music and grants the odd interview.
Generally speaking, though, the legendary singer-songwriter checked out of the media rat race long ago, likely because he wasn’t getting anywhere with them. Dylan has a lot of things to say, about a variety of different topics, none of which are related to who he’s wearing.
Frances McDormand
Frances McDormand is an acclaimed actress, the winner of a landmark three Best Actress Oscars for Fargo, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and Nomadland. However, she doesn’t play the celebrity game. It’s a decision she made after soaring to fame in 1996.
“I made a very conscious effort not to do press and publicity for 10 years in what other people would think would be a very dangerous moment in a female actor’s career, but it paid off for exactly the reasons I wanted it to,” the actress told the New York Times.
Woody Allen
It should come as no shock that cinema’s greatest neurotic is also one of its greatest recluses. Woody Allen, on the brink of his nineties, has become more reclusive with each passing decade, having started out as a very vibrant stand-up comedian in the 1950s.
A string of personal controversies and public shaming may, just may, have played a part in Allen’s decision to grant fewer and fewer interviews when promoting a new film. He can occasionally be seen walking the streets of Manhattan with his wife.
Kate Bush
The fame game wasn’t for Kate Bush. She just wanted to write music, record it, and leave it at that. And today that’s what she does. The one-of-a-kind English singer-songwriter decided early on in her career that she didn’t enjoy being on stage.
Bush lives quietly in Kent with her husband and children, and her only concert since the 1980s was a surprise performance in London back in 2014. However, she gained a new generation of fans after her song Running Up That Hill was memorably featured in season four of hit Netflix series Stranger Things.
Aphex Twin
Ever heard of Richard D. James? Of course you haven’t. It’s a rubbish name. But you’ve heard of Aphex Twin. He’s one of the most talented and successful electronic musicians in the world. He’s also one of the most publicity-shy musicians in the world.
Not a lot is known about James, besides the fact he’s listened to five or six Radiohead songs and found them “really, really cheesy” and that he lives in a remote Scottish village with a population of 300. What kind of paparazzi photographer is going to hang around there all day?
Brian Wilson
Brian Wilson is a genius, but his personal demons have prevented a lot of younger audiences from appreciating this. The bass player and original band leader of 60s icons The Beach Boys, Wilson is responsible for some of the greatest songs ever written by anyone, anywhere.
Drug abuse and mental illness have sadly chipped away at Wilson’s confidence over the years. He quit playing live early, and from the 1980s onwards, he has gained a reputation as a recluse. Wilson is sober today and has been for years. Long may he reign.
Brigitte Bardot
A huge movie star and sex symbol in the 1960s, French actress and singer Brigitte Bardot surprised many by retiring in 1973 aged just 39. The move was inspired by both a desire to preserve a youthful image in audiences’ minds and to devote her whole career to the welfare of animals.”
“My selective disposition prevents me from receiving any more than a few people to my home at La Madrague,” Bardot wrote in her memoir. “The majority of my exchanges with my peers are done through letters. Physical distance suits me quite well these days, even in the context of a great friendship.”
Jack Nicholson
Jack Nicholson hasn’t made a film since 2010 rom-com How Do You Know. At the age of 86, the film legend completely retreated from public life of any sort. You’re unlikely to even catch him at a Lakers game these days, let alone on a film set working his magic.
If Nicholson makes headlines today it’s for stepping out of his house and getting some fresh air rather than anything to do with acting. Some friends have admitted fearing he will die a lonely recluse like his friend and former Hollywood legend Marlon Brando did in 2004.
