While some of the entertainment industry's biggest stars are actually part of Hollywood dynasties or come from wealthy families, others came from humble beginnings and worked their way to the top. Everyone's path is different, but we've had a hard time not noticing which stars seem to forget where they came from — or who has never had the experience of living the "normal" life that many of us do.
This has resulted in some stars making some offhanded comments that have led us to realize that they might be just a tad out of touch with the way non-celebrities live. Between the nepo baby controversy, finding out that some celebs don't have a full grasp on how much daily necessities actually cost, and the way that some of them believe that the rest of us live, it's more than clear that there are a lot of stars out there in serious need of a dose of reality.
Maybe one day, they'll get a grasp on what life is like for so many people outside of the Hollywood bubble who are living paycheck to paycheck, but after hearing comments like these, we're not too optimistic about that …
Oprah Winfrey's Gift Suggestions
It's not a secret that Oprah Winfrey didn't come from wealth — one of the reasons her career has been such an impressive one is the fact that she is self-made. But she's been on top of her game for such a long time that she has apparently forgotten the kind of budgets that many of us are working with, especially now.
In footage that went viral on TikTok in December 2022, a fan ran into Oprah in public and asked her for a gift idea for his mom. Oprah suggested a jewelry box that she'd mentioned on the "favorite things" episode of her talk show, but the fan told her it was too expensive — something that Oprah didn't seem to understand.
"It's really not, it's like 100-and-something dollars," she said in the video, adding with a smile, "Lower than $100?"
Jamie Lee Curtis on Nepo Babies
Toward the end of 2022, the "nepo baby" discourse was everywhere after a Vulture article was published, exploring the ways that celebrities who were born to other celebrities have benefited from their family's connections. Some stars handled the situation better than others, and even though Jamie Lee Curtis has always been known to be one of the more down-to-earth celebrities, the daughter of Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis didn't take it very well.
"There's not a day in my professional life that goes by without my being reminded that I am the daughter of movie stars," she wrote on Instagram. "The current conversation about nepo babies is just designed to try to diminish and denigrate and hurt."
Gina Rodriguez on Student Loan Debt
Although Jane the Virgin star Gina Rodriguez didn't pay off her own student loans until 2017 — three years after her hit series premiered — she wasn't exactly helpful when a fan tweeted her about struggling to pay their own college tuition. Gina offered a response that was so tone deaf that it has since become a meme.
"Have you looked into the Hispanic Scholarship Fund?" she wrote. "There are a few places to look for help mama let's research."
Kim Kardashian's Comments About Working
Over the years, Kim Kardashian has been the star of more than a few of her own out-of-touch moments (we'll discuss another one later on), but this was one of the most recent. During an interview she did with her sisters, talking to Variety to promote the family's Hulu series, The Kardashians, Kim dispensed some advice that people were not exactly impressed to hear, coming from her.
She said: "Get your f—ing ass up and work. It seems like no one wants to work these days."
Gwyneth Paltrow's Food Stamps Experiment
Being a nepo baby herself, it makes sense that Gwyneth Paltrow has never experienced poverty or food insecurity. What did not make sense is the way she tried to put herself into the shoes of those who have in an experiment she conducted in 2015. She took to Twitter to show off a grocery haul that cost $29, or what a week's worth of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, benefits would have purchased someone who financially qualifies for them.
People took a lot of issues with this experiment, from the actual items that Gwyneth purchased to the fact that she tried to relate to an experience she will never have in the first place.
Justin Bieber & Kendall Jenner's Instagram Live
The early weeks and months of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 gave celebrities many opportunities to share how they simply couldn't relate to what regular American families were experiencing at the time. And unfortunately, in trying to acknowledge their privilege while chatting on an Instagram livestream, Kendall Jenner and Justin Bieber really put their feet in their mouths.
"How blessed are we — a lot of people in this time have a crappy situation," Justin said during the stream, via BuzzFeed. "They look at us, and obviously we've worked hard for where we're at. We can't feel bad for the things we have, but us taking that time to acknowledge that there are people who are struggling is important."
Kendall agreed, adding, "Yeah, I think about it all the time."
The 'Imagine' Video
Speaking of the pandemic, the most out-of-touch celebrity moment of them all might just have been the now-infamous "Imagine" video. It features several different stars, including Gal Gadot, Jimmy Fallon, Natalie Portman, Zoë Kravitz, each singing a different line of the John Lennon song as a way to … reach out to people suffering during that time? Maybe? Anyway, it massively backfired.
Salma Hayek's Picky Eating Comments
Many parents out there have had to help their children through phases of picky eating, especially while trying to keep multiple kids happy and fed all at the same time, but the complaints Salma Hayek made about that part of parenting were out-of-touch, to say the least.
"You have to work very hard to please them all," she once told The Times magazine. "If you are making pizza, there is one who doesn't like cheese, and another who hates tomato. Our chef sometimes looks so downhearted. He's always saying, 'Madam, what are we going to do?'"
Vanessa Hudgens' Coronavirus Comments
The pandemic really proved that certain celebrities had way too much downtime to spend talking to fans on Instagram Live, including Vanessa Hudgens. In a video, she shared her real thoughts about isolating to avoid getting or spreading the virus, and received a whole lot of backlash afterwards.
"Even if everyone gets [COVID-19], like yeah people are going to die, which is terrible, but like … inevitable?" she said. "I don't know, maybe I shouldn't be doing this right now."
To be totally fair, she did say this in mid-March 2020, when none of us could have predicted what the pandemic would bring — and she later apologized on Twitter, writing, "I'm so sorry for the way I have offended anyone and everyone who has seen the clip from my Instagram live yesterday. I realize my words were insensitive and not at all appropriate for the situation our country and the world are in right now."
Chrissy Teigen's Mom's AirPods Issue
One of the reasons fans have always loved Chrissy Teigen is the off-the-cuff nature of her social media presence, but that has often gotten her into trouble, including this incident in November 2019.
"My mom treats her AirPods like they're disposable," she tweeted, only to receive a deluge of responses about how wasteful and expensive that is when many people can't afford one pair in the first place. "Buys a few a month. She says they would be easier to not lose if they had a cord."
Later, Chrissy returned to Twitter to admit she was wrong, writing, "It was meant as a joke (and exaggeration) about how my mom doesn't realize AirPods with a cord are headphones but it came across as super tone deaf and icky."
Orlando Bloom's Daily Routine
As non-celebrities, we get that our daily lives will never look like the one that Orlando Bloom is leading, but when it was his turn to be featured in The Sunday Times' "A Life in the Day" column in 2021, that fact was never clearer — and not in a good way.
He started off by describing what he learned about his sleep on his "smart ring sleep tracker," before checking on his baby daughter, Daisy — making no mention of diaper changes, feedings, or any of the normal tasks that parents of infants have to do in the morning.
Kelly Ripa's Son's Living Situation
Kelly Ripa landed herself in some hot water in 2019 when she talked about her son Michael on Jimmy Kimmel Live, claiming that he was living in "extreme poverty" after starting college and being out on his own.
"I think he loves the freedom, he hates paying his own rent, and he is chronically poor," she said. "I don't think he ever really experienced extreme poverty like now."
After receiving a lot of angry comments, Kelly called the backlash "fake outrage" and pointed out that she and husband Mark Consuelos expect their children to work for a living. Still, extreme poverty? Not likely something anyone in their family will ever experience.
Kim Kardashian's Pandemic Birthday Party
Like a lot of people, Kim Kardashian celebrated a milestone birthday party during the first year of the coronavirus pandemic when she turned 40 in 2020. Most of us simply had to cancel our plans and accept that the big get-together we'd hoped for would have to happen at a later date, but Kim not only went ahead with her plans, she shared them for the world to see on social media.
"After two weeks of multiple health screens and asking everyone to quarantine, I surprised my closest inner circle with a trip to a private island where we could pretend things were normal just for a brief moment in time," she wrote alongside the photos of her trip, listing off several things that simply were not accessible to most people — during the pandemic or ever.
Kendall Jenner's Cucumber Cutting Fiasco
If you guessed that Kim is not the only member of her famous family to have an out-of-touch moment, you'd be right. It was Kendall Jenner's turn when she got mocked for the way she sliced a cucumber on an episode of The Kardashians, attempting the task in a way that only someone who has never actually had to chop vegetables would.
Ellen DeGeneres & Oprah Winfrey's Grocery Shopping Trip
On a 2017 episode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show, cameras followed Oprah Winfrey and Ellen DeGeneres as they went grocery shopping for the first time in "years" — a chore most of us have to do weekly. It was even worse when they brought out giant Louis Vuitton bags to put their hauls in. Yikes!
