Famous People And Celebrities With Phobias

1. Howie Mandel: Mysophobia

Howie Mandel has admitted to having OCD and Mysophobia. He won’t shake hands with anyone unless he’s wearing rubber gloves. He has been famous for fleeing germs at any cost. When NFL tailback Marshall Faulk gripped Howie’s hand and wanted to shake it in 2007, Howie screamed and fled off stage, washing his hands many times. While he was a juror on America’s Got Talent, this happened a couple of times more; once when a competitor tried to cough too closely to him, and another time when a participant dropped a piece of used dental floss very close to Howie.

2. Emily Dickinson: Agoraphobia

Emily Dickinson’s poetry seems to obsessively focus on death, immortality and illness may have been linked to agoraphobia, and also her unusually reclusive disposition. She was born into a famous family in 1830 and spent the majority of her life as a lonesome spinster.

During her career, Dickinson wrote over 2,000 poems, many of which defied the standards of verse at the time by employing unusual short lines and rhymes. Her inventiveness was only equaled by her deep sense of loneliness. Her strict father prohibited her from having a social life, and she rarely had to leave her parents’ house in Amherst.

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Dickinson became increasingly reclusive in her final years, frequently conversing with visitors from behind closed doors instead of face-to-face. In 1864 and 1865, her only forays into the outer world were to see a doctor for eye problems. She never left her parents’ property again after the late 1860s.

3. Whoopie Goldberg: Aviophobia

Whoopie Goldberg was not always afraid of taking to the air. However, in 1978, while resting on a hotel balcony in San Diego, she witnessed a horrifying mid-air crash that paralyzed her for the next 30 years. Her trips from New York to Los Angeles would involve a luxury bus, 2 shifts of drivers, and 24 hours of continuous travel. When she was faced with the idea of staging Sister Act outside of the United States in 2009, she had no choice but to face her concerns. Virgin Airlines CEO Richard Branson persuaded Whoopie to take his company’s one-day “Flying Without Fear” course—on live television! Flight simulators could help her spot fear patterns, while Thought Field Therapy, a feely-touchy treatment that involves unpleasant taps on the upper torso and hands, would reduce negativity. Finally, a short test flight, replete with sedative-wielding doctors, would “update” the flying experience.

Goldberg later admitted to having aviophobia, saying, “No, I haven’t gotten over it.” She made it over the Atlantic, but she still desires wheels and roads. She told CNN, “I feel like I shouldn’t be flying.”

4. Martin Scorsese: Kinemortophobia

Not only did the iconic zombie film Isle of the Dead deliver shivers down Martin Scorsese’s spine as a 10-year-old, but a scene near the end of the film—in which a woman who has been laid to rest alive emerges from her grave, wearing a white shroud and pinned on personal revenge—scared the director-to-be so badly that he ended up running out of the theater screaming. He had nightmares about it for the rest of his life.

When he filmed the scary 2010 thriller Shutter Island, a rather uncharacteristic entry from the Goodfellas maestro, Scorsese claims he was at last able to face this long-festering anxiety. It’s a film in which invisible and awful traumas seem to lurk around in every nook, a tribute to Scorsese’s childhood horror films as much as an exorcism of fears and anxieties of childhood.

5. Donny Osmond: Agoraphobia

Perhaps it was only a matter of time until Donnie Osmond developed a crippling fear of yet another treasured American institution: the shopping mall. While performing in the musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Osmond suffered a panic attack so intense that he really feared he was dying, as he later wrote. It was part of a long-term pattern of social anxiety that had plagued him. One focus point became an intense phobia of shopping malls, where he believed everyone was mocking him.

Osmond met with a cognitive-behavioral therapist, who convinced him that many of his fears were unfounded. Buying a blouse at a shopping center and returning it the next day without disaster was one of his psychological workouts. “I survived,” Osmond once recalled.