Celebrities with Endometriosis

The creator and star of the HBO series Girls has been dealing with endometriosis pain for more than a decade. She’s had eight surgeries and tried many other treatments, including acupuncture and pelvic floor therapy, before making a controversial choice. In early 2018, at the age of 31, Dunham had a hysterectomy. She wrote a deeply personal essay for Vogue about her decision.

It took 23 years for doctors to take this food writer, actress, and model seriously and diagnose her with endometriosis. She said at a fundraiser this year that she had “so much heavy bleeding, cramps, nausea, backaches and digestive issues that I was stuck in bed one week out of every month when my period came.”

In 2009, she founded the Endometriosis Foundation of America, an advocacy group. The next year, she gave birth to a daughter.

This actress was given what she calls an incomplete diagnosis after dealing with fainting and bleeding for years. Her doctors put her on birth control pills and painkillers. She went on to have three children and says she’s “one of the lucky ones.”

Sarandon tells women to listen to their bodies and act on what they feel.

“This isn’t part of being a woman,” she said at an Endometriosis Foundation event in 2016. “Something can be done.”

This actress and television host had endometriosis about 40 years ago but was lucky enough to have good doctors who caught it early and cleared up her symptoms. Partly as a result of her experience, she created Whoopi & Maya, a line of cannabis products designed to relieve menstrual pain.

Michaels, a personal trainer and television personality best known for her role on The Biggest Loser, learned early on that she had endometriosis and polycystic ovaries, and that having a child could be a problem for her.

Michaels adopted a daughter in 2012, and her then-fiancée Heidi Rhoades gave birth to their son the same year.

A singer-songwriter and member of the Spice Girls (she’s “Baby Spice”), Bunton was diagnosed with endometriosis at the age of 25.

“I remember the doctor saying at the time, ‘Fifty percent of women with endometriosis go on to have children.’ I thought, ‘Only 50 percent?’ It scared the life out of me,” she told the Daily Mail. She went on to give birth to two sons.

This Grammy-winning recording artist had endometriosis in her 30s. “I would do an album and go to hospital, then do another album and go to hospital,” she told The Independent. She struggled with infertility as a result. After seeing a fertility doctor who gave her acupuncture, Lauper gave birth to her son Declyn at age 44.

This Dancing with the Stars champ ignored her pain for years. Then in 2008, she doubled over from abdominal pain that, she told People, “felt like a knife was being stabbed in me.” So she agreed to go to the hospital. She had surgery to remove an ovary her appendix, and scar tissue on her bladder and fallopian tubes.

She has had some of her eggs frozen in hopes of having a family one day.

Best known for her starring role on the ’90s sitcom Sister, Sister, Mowry has had two surgeries and follows an anti-inflammatory diet to control her endometriosis. She has struggled with fertility issues but went on to have a son, Cree, in 2011, and a daughter, Cairo, in 2018.

In June 2017, this R&B singer revealed to her Instagram followers that she had an 8-hour surgery to remove cysts, fibroids, and a hernia caused by endometriosis. She didn’t know she had the condition until a couple of weeks before the surgery. Follow-up surgery in 2021 left her hospitalized for several days.

Monica told People that her doctors diagnosed her after she sought treatment for migraine. She is a mother of three.

Halsey, a singer, has been open about her endometriosis on social media, using the hashtag #endowarrior. She has endured multiple surgeries and had a miscarriage at 20 years old.

“It can feel like a direct attack on your womanhood,” Halsey said at a 2018 fundraiser for the Endometriosis Foundation of America. But, she adds, she now knows she can “overcome anything.” She had her first child, a son, in 2021.

King, a model and actress, keeps healthy with yoga and an anti-inflammatory diet. But life with endometriosis hasn’t been easy. She had five miscarriages before giving birth to her first son in 2013.

“It's detrimental that women don't talk about these things, because when you go through it, you feel like you're suffering in silence by yourself,” she told Fit Pregnancy.

King gave birth to her second son in 2015.

In an open letter on Facebook titled “Getting Real About My Health,” Real Housewives star and entrepreneur Frankel revealed her struggles with endometriosis, including heavy bleeding, trips to the hospital, second opinions, and scary surgeries.

Her daughter Bryn was born in 2010.