Celebrities Who Have Opened Up About Celibacy

Mike Posner

The "I Took a Pill in Ibiza" singer revealed to PEOPLE in 2024 that he had decided to be celibate after a previous relationship ended, because he realized he was using sex and porn, along with drugs and alcohol in the past, to distract him from "pain." He wanted to focus on healing from the pain so he could be in healthy relationships going forward.

"I was celibate last year for four or five months because I had just got out of my last relationship, and I felt a lot of grief come up and there was all this pain. When I feel pain, there's a lesson there, and I want to learn the lesson," he said.

"Life [was] telling me to look here. My body didn't want to feel the pain, so I [would] masturbate to porn or hook up with random women," he continued. "And I said, 'I'm not going to do that this time. That's not going to serve me. It's not going to serve my community. It's not going to serve my family.' So that was that decision to be celibate and to not masturbate — it wasn't out of any morality. It was just to not distract myself from what I needed to do."

Cheryl Burke

The Dancing with the Stars alum told Us Weekly in 2024 she has been celibate for the past three years, since her separation and divorce from Matthew Lawrence.

Calling herself a onetime "serial dater," she said that her desire to date "with intention" has led to her putting the brakes on her sex life, which has given her more "self-love and self-respect and self-worth."

But she said others still judge her choices, despite how happy she's been. "They’re just like, ‘What?’ As if I’m speaking a different language completely," she said. "Which is so interesting."

Mýa

During a July 2024 appearance on the Way Up with Angela Yee show, singer Mýa, 44, revealed that she practiced abstinence for seven years while learning to put herself first.

"Just doing without, it shifted my mindset," Mýa explained. "It was no longer a focus. The rush to be in a relationship, the rush to be married, the rush to ... have kids or procreate ... I have to start with self [love] always, versus expecting from other sources."

For her, she said, celibacy was "a very spiritual thing. And you must be very selective if you want better results. That self-accountability started with me by shutting that part of my life off."

Lenny Kravitz

In a May 2024 interview with The Guardian, rocker Lenny Kravitz confirmed that he had been celibate for the nine years since he'd last been in a serious relationship.

"It’s a spiritual thing,” he said, adding that he was waiting to find someone who was compatible with his lifestyle before committing. “I have become very set in my ways, in the way I live."

Tiffany Haddish

Actress Tiffany Haddish appeared on Jay Shetty's podcast in May 2024, where she confirmed that she had been practicing celibacy since the previous October — and true to form, made it funny.

"Does kissing count?" Haddish responded. "I'm not being penetrated, that's for sure. No penetration ... I just feel like, dang, I am the prize and these dudes gotta qualify. When I think about my track record of like who I lay down with it, it takes like a year or so for me to even warm up ... I'll go on free dinner dates, I mean, not free dinner dates, but like, yeah, it's free for me. But it do cost me money to get, you know, cute and stuff and the gas in the car."

On a serious note, though, she added, "I think when you lay down with somebody, you are sharing your soul. You are sharing a piece of yourself, you're giving a little piece of yourself up. I only got so much soul left and I don't wanna necessarily just give it over to anybody."

Kendra Wilkinson

In an exclusive interview with PEOPLE in January 2024, former Girls Next Door star Kendra Wilkinson revealed that she had been celibate since divorcing Hank Baskett in 2018, both to focus on self-care and to "rewire" her image from her Playboy days.

“It's been so long since I've had sex — it's been so long that I've had any,” Wilkinson said. “Because I shamed myself on my sexuality too. Everyone sees me as a sex icon, so I shamed myself. I shamed myself, and I stayed away from anything sex. I almost became celibate."

Demi Burnett

Bachelor in Paradise's Demi Burnett, who appeared on Colton Underwood's season in 2019, received an autism diagnosis, quit drinking and stopped having sex all within the past couple years, she told Ben Higgins and Ashley Iaconetti on the Almost Famous podcast in March 2024.

“I’ve been celibate for two years. I’m not having sex," she said. "Since I stopped drinking, I really — I went back to my old high school ways of being a prude."

“The act of it is disgusting, our bodily fluids touching each other. Have they washed their hands? Am I going to have to ask them, like, brush your teeth?” she continued. “All of these things that I’m just like, it’s not worth it to me. Whereas when I was younger, I didn’t really care about all that stuff. Now that I’m not, I am very weird about all of that, and I can get turned off so easily because of the smell.”

50 Cent

In January 2024, 50 Cent declared his intention to focus only on his career success at the expense of all other areas of his life, including romantic ones.

"My new idea is so big, I don’t have time to be distracted I’m practicing abstinence," he wrote on Instagram. "I have been meditating and focusing on my goals."

James Brolin

She was worth the wait! James Brolin revealed in November 2023 that, until he met his future wife Barbra Streisand at a dinner party, he hadn't had sex for three years prior.

While accompanying his wife to promote her memoir on CBS Mornings, Brolin recalled their first meeting, and said, "I had been — literally, this is a wild word — but I had been celibate for three years, saying, ‘Who needs this?’ "

After Streisand playfully chastised him for getting so personal, he added, "I had not had any interest in getting involved in a lousy situation."

(As for his and Streisand's first night together? "Wild," he jokingly told host Gayle King.)

GloRilla

One star practicing celibacy who was less than thrilled about it? GloRilla, who in January 2024 declared she was abstaining for a New Year's reset — but it wasn't going great.

"Started my 90 day celibacy lil s--- for new year’s or wtv," she wrote on X. "I’m on da 9th day & my vision blurry af !!!!! Send help."

Kristin Cavallari

Before meeting her boyfriend Mark Estes, the Hills alumna says she tried out the Nashville dating scene following her divorce from Jay Cutler in 2020 and decided she'd prefer to sit it out.

"I would consider myself to be a monk at this point," she said during an interview with Entertainment Tonight. "You can throw anything at me at me, and I'm like, 'OK.'"

Rihanna

In 2016, Rihanna told Ellen DeGeneres that her dry spell wasn’t by choice — but her busy schedule left little time to “entertain a steady relationship or anything serious, or even a text.” “I’m single right now, and it’s not that I’m like, ‘Pro-single, yes, I hate men,’” the Fenty mogul said. “I just think that I just have so much on my plate.” 

Andrew Garfield

Andrew Garfield has no regrets about his six-month stint without sex. For his role in Martin Scorsese's Silence, the award-winning actor went method and spent a year studying Catholicism and shadowing a real-life Jesuit priest in New York.

"I had an incredibly spiritual experience. I did a bunch of spiritual practices every day, I created new rituals for myself. I was celibate for six months," he recalled while on the WTF with Marc Maron podcast.

"It was very cool, man," said Garfield, adding that there was also plenty of praying and meditating. "I had some pretty wild, trippy experiences from starving myself of sex and food for that period of time. ... It gives you some gifts, for sure."

Drew Barrymore

After learning that Garfield was celibate for six months to prepare for Silence, Barrymore revealed on her show that she could go “years” without doing the deed. 

Later, she wrote on her blog that she hadn’t had an intimate relationship since becoming a single mom (after her split from Will Kopelman in 2016). “For the record, I do not hate sex!” the actress said, adding that she’s learned that “love and sex are simply not the same thing.”

Julia Fox

Sex is something Fox “could go without.” In fact, the Uncut Gems star said on Emily Ratajkowski’s High Low podcast that she’d rather “take ayahuasca and see God.”

Orlando Bloom

Before dating Katy Perry, Bloom took a friend’s advice on how to get “serious about a relationship” and became celibate for six months. “I was going to do three months, but I was really enjoying the way I was relating to women, and to the feminine within myself,” he told The Sunday Times in March 2020.

Amber Rose

 Although Rose, who identifies as bisexual, knows that sex is “so accessible,” it’s not something she’s interested in. "I, like, don't have sex," she said on High Low. "I hate sex." Rose added that abstaining helps her avoid run-ins with “toxic” people.