Pop stars' lives may seem like constant parties, in between shows for throngs of adoring fans.
But behind the superstardom lies a real, human being, and all the messiness that comes with
living.
Here's why Lady Gaga's life is even more tragic than you realized.
"I find inspiration in all sorts of places, and the minute that I see it I grab it and
run for my piano or I run for my typewriter."
Potential health crisis
Gaga revealed in 2010 that she had a family history of lupus and that tests pegged her
as "borderline positive" for the disease, despite the fact that she wasn't showing any
active symptoms at the time.
Gaga explained to Larry King,
"Lupus is in my family, and it is genetic...My mother told me the other day that my fans
were quite worried about me because they did talk about the fact that I was tested for
lupus."
But she assured fans she has no symptoms, adding,
"As of right now I do not have it.
But I have to take good care of myself."
Symptoms of the autoimmune disease can include fatigue, a low fever, joint pain, swelling,
rashes, hair loss, and inflammation, but the illness can lie dormant for years with no
symptoms at all.
Experts told CNN that Gaga's test results are common for those who have a relative with
lupus, but that it's possible, and hopeful, that she may never actually develop the disease.
Hiding her assault for years
Gaga revealed to Howard Stern in 2014 that she had been assaulted by a music producer
when she was a teenager.
A year later, she expounded on the trauma she'd suffered, telling the press, via Us
Weekly,
"I didn't tell anyone for, I think, seven years.
I didn't know how to think about it.
I didn't know how to accept it.
I didn't know how not to blame myself, or think it was my fault.
It was something that really changed my life.
It changed who I was completely."
Gaga channeled her trauma for her track "Til It Happens To You," a song about surviving
assault, for 2015's The Hunting Ground.
She explained to the LA Times that the song's acclaim was bittersweet for her, admitting,
"Every time I listen to it, I cry.
Every time I get a text about it, I always feel sick.
It's like this thing you don't want to face."
A collab with a dark side
Gaga collaborated with R. Kelly for 2013's "Do What U Want (With My Body)," and the disturbing
music video for the track, which was directed by Terry Richardson, who was accused of misconduct
himself, was scrapped before its release.
"She asked me to do a song that she had and she wanted me to get on it."
At the time, Kelly had famously been accused for years of misconduct and assault.
After the Surviving R. Kelly docuseries aired on Lifetime in early 2019, many called for
Gaga to address working with the alleged predator while being an advocate for survivors.
She finally revealed the real story, tweeting:
"I stand behind these women 1,000 percent, believe them, know they are suffering and
in pain, and feel strongly that their voices should be heard and taken seriously.
What I'm hearing about the allegations against R. Kelly is absolutely horrifying and indefensible."
She then added,
"As a victim of…assault myself, I made both the song and video at a dark time in my life,
my intention was to create something extremely defiant and provocative because I was angry
and still hadn't processed the trauma that had occurred in my own life…I think it's
clear how explicitly twisted my thinking was at the time."
She then removed the song from streaming services.
Suffering from PTSD
"I suffer from PTSD."
Gaga first revealed her struggle with PTSD, stemming from her assault, on the Today show
in 2016, but opened up about it further in 2018 in a speech at the SAG-AFTRA Foundation's
Patron of the Artists Awards.
She said,
"I began to notice that I would stare off into space and blackout for seconds or minutes.
I would see flashes of things I was tormented by, experiences that were filed away in my
brain with 'I'll deal with you later' for many years because my brain was protecting
me, as science teaches us.
These were also symptoms of [dissociation] and PTSD and I did not have a team that included
mental health support."
"My own trauma in my life has helped me to understand the trauma of others."
Gaga's struggles led her to launch her Born This Way Foundation.
She also spoke out about mental health awareness at the 2019 Grammys.
Living with chronic pain
A big takeaway from the 2017 documentary Lady Gaga: Five Foot Two was the singer's very
real struggle with chronic pain due to fibromyalgia.
According to CNN, complications from the condition led Gaga to either postpone or cancel tour
dates in 2017 and 2018.
Fibromyalgia is a chronic condition with symptoms including nerve and muscle pain, trouble sleeping,
headaches, face and jaw pain, digestive issues and fatigue, according to the Center for Disease
Control and Prevention, as well as mental distress, trouble concentrating, and memory
problems.
While its causes aren't known, the condition has been loosely linked to PTSD, and is said
to often "co-occur" with lupus, both of which Gaga has publicly battled.
Gaga opened up further about her situation, telling Vogue in 2018,
"I get so irritated with people who don't believe fibromyalgia is real…It's really
a cyclone of anxiety, depression, PTSD, trauma, and panic disorder, all of which sends the
nervous system into overdrive, and then you have nerve pain as a result…Chronic pain
is no joke.
And it's every day waking up not knowing how you're going to feel."
Gaga and the real Joanne
Gaga's traumas from her early life, from her health struggles to her assault, bear an uncanny
parallel to those suffered by her late aunt, Joanne Germanotta, who inspired her 2016 album
Joanne.
Gaga revealed at the Producers Guild Awards in 2016 when she performed "Til It Happens
To You,"
"[Assault is] not only an important issue to me, but it's an important issue to my family
because when my father's sister was in college, she was…assaulted.
Then it tormented her so emotionally that it caused the lupus that she had to get so
bad that she died.
My father was 16, and it affected my family really tremendously my whole life."
The cost of her success
Referring to her exes Matthew Michael Williams and Luc Carl, and ex-fiance Taylor Kinney,
in her documentary, Gaga lamented the toll her career took on her love life, saying,
For his part, Carl confessed in a 2012 interview with Blackbook,
"I'm not the type of guy who can sit on someone else's yacht sipping champagne.
Unfortunately, to date someone who is never in the same country, let alone zip code, you
had better be rich or be willing to live off of their money.
I was neither."
As for Kinney, Gaga's career was often cited as the main obstacle in their broken engagement.
Gaga was somewhat vague when asked about the split, telling CBS This Morning,
"I think women love very hard…Sometimes I don't know that that love is met with the
type of dignity that we wish it would be met with.
You know, we're not trying to make you less of a man.
We just want you to love us as deeply and as wholesomely and as fully as we love you."
Gaga suffered yet another romantic defeat when her seemingly happy engagement to Christian
Carino fell apart in February 2019.
Battling drug addiction
"One of the hardest things that I ever had to give up was drugs and alcohol."
In an attempt to curb her demons, Gaga turned to self-medication.
And in 2013, she admitted that she was addicted to marijuana, telling Elvis Duran,
"I was smoking up to 15, 20 marijuana cigarettes a day with no tobacco."
"That's a lot."
"I was living on a totally other psychedelic plane."
She also told the show how she then bounced, quote, "from substance to substance," experimenting
"heavily [for] seven years."
"What do you do?
What do you do to unwind?
What do you do to have fun?"
"Um, well, I drink a lot."
Her addiction was especially bad during her Born This Way Ball tour, during which she
suffered a debilitating hip injury that forced her to scrap most of the dates.
She confessed,
"I was just in a lot of pain and really depressed all the time and not really sure why…I did
a lot of drugs and took a lot of pills."
She also admitted to Howard Stern in 2011 that she suffered from cocaine addiction before
she hit it big, saying,
"I did it all alone in my apartment while I wrote music.
And you know what?
I regret every line I ever did…Don't touch it.
It's the devil."
Feeling alone
Despite having millions of adoring Little Monsters all over the world, Gaga struggles
with crippling loneliness exacerbated by her fame.
Ahead of the release of her doc in 2017, Gaga penned an open letter, describing her conflicting
emotional state over her feelings of isolation.
She wrote,
"For me, it feels very unnatural, but complicated because I know it is my destiny to be a performer."
Gaga echoed the sentiment a year later while promoting A Star Is Born, revealing to The
L.A. Times that substance abuse can be an all-too-easy remedy for entertainers who also
feel the same void.
She said,
"It's very lonely being a performer.
There's a certain loneliness that I feel, anyway, that I'm the only one that does what
I do.
So, it feels like no one understands.
And the urge to use is because you're searching for a way to quell the pain."
Battling bulimia
Gaga revealed in 2012 that she had been battling bulimia and anorexia since she was 15 years
old, revealing to Page Six,
"I used to throw up all the time in high school…I wanted to be a skinny little ballerina but
I was a voluptuous little Italian girl whose dad had meatballs on the table every night.
It's really hard, but…you've got to talk to somebody about it."
Gaga admitted that her bulimia was so severe that it even damaged her voice.
She said,
"The [stomach] acid [from vomiting] on your vocal cords, it's very bad.
But for those of you who don't sing, you maybe don't have that excuse until it's too late.
It's very dangerous."
Later, in 2012, Gaga launched the "Body Revolution" page on her Little Monsters site, according
to The Hollywood Reporter.
In an effort to quote, "inspire bravery," she posted un-Photoshopped photos of herself,
along with a message to her fans.
After her followers then posted images of themselves, detailing their own struggles
with body image, Gaga thanked them for sharing in that "safe space."
In a note to fans, via Rolling Stone, she wrote,
"My weight/loss/gain since I was child has tormented me.
No amount of help has ever healed my pain about it.
But YOU have."
Art imitating life
Gaga's emotional performance as Ally in A Star Is Born was partially inspired by a devastating
real-life tragedy.
"It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay."
One of Gaga's best friends, Sonja Durham, died after a long battle with cancer, while
Gaga was on set in 2017, shooting the movie.
She told Zane Lowe that the final scene of the film was particularly difficult to shoot
due to the heartbreaking timing.
She said,
"On that day...her friend called me and I could hear her moaning in the background."
Gaga then immediately left the set without telling co-star and director Bradley Cooper,
but she missed seeing her friend alive by just 10 minutes.
After spending time with Durham's family, Gaga recalled Sonja's husband telling her,
"'You've gotta do what Sonja would want you to do.'
She loved being a performer, and she loved working in music."
Gaga claims her friend gave her that gift to take back to set.
And when she returned,
"I sang that song for Jackson…on that very same day within an hour."
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