7 Stars Who Were Bullied as Children

Justin Timberlake called a 'sissy,' Kate Middleton was 'meek'
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted May 4, 2014 9:12 AM CDT
7 Stars Who Were Bullied as Children
Jennifer Lawrence arrives at the Oscars on Sunday, March 2, 2014, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.   (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

They're now the coolest kids in school, but the dozen celebrities rounded up by The Stir were bullied when they were younger. A sampling:

  • Justin Timberlake: "I got picked on all the time. I had terrible acne, weird hair," he has said. "I grew up in Tennessee, and if you didn't play football, you were a sissy. I got slurs all the time because I was in music and art."
  • Kate Middleton: Rumor has it she was the target of mean girls back in her school days; they reportedly tormented her for being "skinny" and "meek" and ultimately drove her to a different school.
  • Jennifer Lawrence: She also struggled with mean girls, and says that in middle school, "this one girl gave me invitations to hand out to her birthday party that I wasn't invited to."

  • Tyra Banks: "When I was 11 years old, I grew three inches and lost 30 pounds in three months. So I went from being a ... cute little chubby little girl to shooting up, [weighing] 98 pounds, and just looking sick and frail," she has said. "I was the brunt of every joke, every bad thing."
  • Sandra Bullock: She had a tough time in junior high thanks to her lisp and the fact that she'd just moved back to the states from Europe: "I was very, er, Germanic, so you could say," she once said.
  • Jackie Chan: "I allowed myself to be bullied because I was scared and didn’t know how to defend myself," he once explained. "I was bullied until I prevented a new student from being bullied. By standing up for him, I learned to stand up for myself."
  • Rihanna: Growing up in Barbados, she was teased for her fair skin. People called her "white," she once said, adding, "They would look at me and would curse me out. I didn’t understand."
Click for the complete list, including one gorgeous celeb whose nickname was "Blubber." (More Justin Timberlake stories.)

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