8 Celebrities Who've Openly Struggled with Quitting Smoking

Everyone knows that smoking is bad for your health—but quitting is easier said than done—even if you're a celeb. Plenty of them have been candid about the difficulties they’ve faced when trying to give up the habit. Here's a look at who's spoken openly about their struggles with quitting smoking.

Cameron reportedly used to smoke up to 20 cigarettes a day, per In Touch Weekly. And although she quit in 2000 while training for the Charlie’s Angels movie, she took up the habit again after filming wrapped. She finally stopped for good in 2003 because of how it was affecting her mom and dad. According to Glamour, Cameron had this to say: "I gave up because my parents were upset that I was smoking so much and I was setting a bad example. It preyed on my conscience. I was into roll-your-own, and I was killing myself."

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Drew struggled with drug addiction since she was a young kid—and she actually smoked her first cigarette before her tenth birthday, reports People. She stopped puffing back in 2001, when she was 26, crediting a hypnotist called the Mad Russian for helping her quit. "It's so cool,” she told USA Today. “Whatever it is that he does—it works."

Courtney and then-husband David Arquette visited the same hypnotist as Drew to help curb their nicotine addiction in the late ‘90s. "They never tried to quit before, because Courtney really liked to smoke but knew it was bad for her," their assistant, Whitney Smith, told USA Today in 2001. "They knew they'd both have to do it together because it is hard for one person in a relationship to quit.”

“I smoked for a long time, and then when I got pregnant with Michael [her first child], I quit for six years,” Ripa told David Letterman in 2007. “But when I started doing Hope and Faith, the reviews were horrible. …So I picked up a cigarette and I took a puff. And before I knew it, I was a closet smoker.” To quit for good, she hired a trainer, started exercising religiously, and took Welbutrin, an anti-depressant, for three weeks. “I was desperate and I really didn’t want to die of lung cancer,” she said.

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In 2008, the star of 27 Dresses told the Washington Post that she had tried everything—including Welbutrin, the nicotine patch, and nicotine gum—to quit, but that it didn’t work. "It's so stupid,” she the Washington Post. “I started when I was like 22 or 23, and I had my first cigarette at a bar one night...I was like mmm." In 2010, she told Parade magazine that she was using an electronic cigarette. “I know it’s ridiculous, but it’s helping me not to actually smoke real cigarettes," she said. "You feel like you are smoking, and you get to exhale but it’s just water vapor and not nicotine."

Charlize told Vogue in 2011 that she was "highly addicted" to cigarettes. "I thought, ‘I don't smoke like normal people. ‘I smoke to die,’" she told the mag. According to the Santa Monica Mirror, the stunning actress visited Kerry Gaynor, a certified hypnotist, to finally curb her addiction. “In the first session, I don’t take them off cigarettes,” Gaynor explains in the Santa Monica Mirror. “We set up their quitting for the second session. In the second session, I teach them how to quit smoking, how to break the addiction. In the third session, I reinforce everything and deal with issues so that they don’t go back and start smoking again.”

"Even though I knew all about the dangers of smoking, I didn't really believe anything would happen to me, certainly not while in my thirties,” the Will and Grace star said in a press release for the American Cancer Society's 23rd annual Great American Smokeout in 1999. “Reality hit when I got a bad case of bronchitis and couldn't go to the studio for two weeks." According to Parade magazine, Debra reportedly quit after this by visiting a hypnotist and using nicotine patches.

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Christy opened up to Oprah magazine about her struggle to quit smoking. "I had tried many times but always went back to it,” she said. “Finally I just got fed up for not keeping my promise to myself, and I quit cold turkey."