12 Celebrities With Endometriosis Share Their Stories and Life Lessons

While on tour in the United States and Canada in the ‘80s, the late country music star and cultural icon Dolly Parton was hospitalized for severe pain caused by endometriosis. Doctors had to remove half her uterus, leaving her unable to have children and battling with uncharacteristic depression.

At age 31, Girls creator and star Lena Dunham had a hysterectomy to relieve excruciating symptoms caused by endometriosis.

That encouragement, she said, made it clear that it was time to get help, “because this person who knows me and loves me said, ‘You can’t go on like this.’” Dunham, now 40, added: “It’s interesting because the framing is that you make a choice to do this, but if you’re in pain 24 hours a day, it really isn’t a choice because no one can live like that.”

That changed when she found a specialist, a Harvard-trained Black woman, who said Mowry had a “textbook case” of endo.

Years later, she still continues to advocate for Black women to receive better healthcare. In an Instagram post, she wrote: “To every woman who’s ever been told her pain is ‘just part of being a woman,’ I see you. My story with endometriosis is a reminder that we have to fight for our health … and for each other.”

From early adolescence, Padma Lakshmi, the Emmy-nominated actress and Top Chef host, suffered intense pain, cramping, nausea, backache, fatigue, and excessive blood flow that debilitated her for a week every single month.

It took more than 20 years for her to get a diagnosis, even though she had good health insurance and access to the best doctors.

Four months after having a miscarriage, Cravings cookbook author and entrepreneur Chrissy Teigen took to Twitter in 2021 to share that she was having surgery to treat endometriosis. And she did what any advocate does best: She asked fellow endo warriors for their recovery tips.

“I was immediately in this grotesque pain and was just leveled — just barreled over, like someone was squeezing me tight from the inside,” Schumer said. “I just thought, ‘It’s my turn.’”

It wasn’t until 2019, when she had a C-section delivering her son, Gene, that the surgeon found 33 endometriosis lesions inside her abdomen. “It felt really good to be there with my partner to say, ‘This isn’t me being lazy. This isn’t me being dramatic,’” Schumer says. “‘I have a real disease.’”

Moore explains that after trying for a baby for a while, she consulted with a fertility specialist who suspected that she may have endometriosis. The doctor recommended that she have surgery before carrying a child. “I was fully prepared to go have surgery and fix my uterus and hopefully get rid of the endometriosis, if it was there,” she said in the interview.

After being rushed to the hospital from the DWTS set for severe stomach pains, “I found out that I had endometriosis and that I needed to get surgery that week,” she says.

Halsey initially came forward about her condition on Instagram in January 2017, revealing she’d had “multiple terrifying surgeries.” Some of her fans have said her posts inspired them to seek out a diagnosis and treatment.

The actress, comedian, and talk show host Whoopi Goldberg was diagnosed with endometriosis four decades ago, and she considers herself very lucky to have found a doctor who diagnosed her and helped treat it. So she was surprised when she discovered how many women live with this disease for years before understanding what’s happening inside their bodies.

Speaking in a video for the Endometriosis Foundation of America, actress and activist Susan Sarandon said she spent years suffering with endo and “thinking of myself as someone who was weak and somewhat hysterical.” She imagined that the pain was just part of being a woman, and there was nothing to be done about it.