11 Celebrities Who Successfully Quit Smoking

In February 2020, the veteran Rolling Stones guitarist revealed that he finally quit cigarettes in late 2019.

“I’ve given up smoking ... since October,” Richards told iHeart radio. “Done that, been there.”

And despite his storied past with alcohol and drugs, Richards says his only remaining weaknesses are rock and roll and a glass of pinot grigio now and then.

However, kicking butts certainly wasn’t easy. In 2019, Richards agreed with another legendary rocker, the late Lou Reed, that “nicotine was harder to quit than heroin.” But he told Mojo that he tackled the addiction by “cutting down by a substantial amount every day.”

The Duke of Sussex started smoking as a teenager and continued the habit for years, according to the Daily Mail, even as Royal Household sites — including Buckingham Palace — were declared smoke-free zones in 2016. But according to People magazine, Harry quit smoking in the lead-up to his wedding to Meghan Markle, a yoga buff and healthy living devotee who’s said to have had a “beautiful influence” on her husband. A source told People that Harry worked with royal nutritional advisor Gabriela Peacock to improve his diet, lose weight, and give up cigarettes.

Having taken up smoking as a teenager, former President Barack Obama struggled to quit during his 2008 campaign and the early years of his presidency. However, by the time of his physical exam in 2011, White House physicians noted he was successfully tobacco-free. One factor that helped him stay off cigarettes? “I’m scared of my wife,” he joked in 2013, according to an NBC News report. (Former first lady Michelle Obama famously worked to promote healthier lifestyle choices during her time in the White House.) The president also used nicotine gum to help quell the occasional craving to smoke.

The actor, who won an Emmy for his role as the philandering, whiskey-drinking, chain-smoking ad exec Don Draper on the TV series Mad Men, quit smoking at the age of 24. “It’s glamorous on film, but it’s not glamorous waking up and smelling like an ashtray,” Hamm told People magazine in 2007. Although his role required his character to smoke through all seven seasons of Mad Men, he and the other actors opted for herbal — not tobacco — cigarettes on set.

The star of TV’s Friends and The Morning Show was a chain-smoker for years, before revealing in a 2012 interview with GQ that she had quit. What made the difference? According to the introduction she wrote for her yoga teacher Mandy Ingber’s Yogalosophy book, regular yoga helped her break her addiction to cigarettes and caffeine, Glamour reported in 2014.

RELATED: How Practicing Yoga Benefits Your Health

Actor Paul Rudd, known for his stint on TV’s Friends and roles in movies like Clueless, This Is 40, and Avengers: Endgame, managed to quit smoking via hypnotherapy. The star has praised the Kerry Gaynor method, a hypnotherapy-based smoking cessation program developed by Los Angeles hypnotherapist Kerry Gaynor. And Rudd is not the only celeb for whom this method has worked: Heather Locklear, Aaron Eckhart, Martin Sheen, and many others have all spoken about their experiences using this technique to quit smoking.

Speaking to People magazine in 2018, Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bündchen admitted that when she first began modeling, she was smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, drinking a bottle of wine a night, and relying on multiple cups of coffee to keep her going. But in 2003, Bündchen says, she decided to “choose life,” and began pursuing a more healthful lifestyle. She took up yoga, meditation, and running, all of which helped her combat the urge to smoke. She and ex-husband Tom Brady also started following a plant-based diet as part of their commitment to healthy living, reported Insider in 2018.

RELATED: 9 Benefits of Following a Plant-Based Diet

The former host of Comedy Central’s Daily Show started smoking when he was 15 — and wasn’t able to kick the habit until 2000. On Primetime Glick in 2011, Stewart explained why he had smoked for so long. “I used cigarettes to fill a hole in me — an emotional void,” he said. “It was an activity that I did to make myself feel better.” According to a 2015 story in Entertainment Weekly, Stewart reportedly kept a gumball machine near his desk and mentioned in a 2001 feature on 60 Minutes that he uses gum as a “cigarette substitute.”

The supermodel told The Cut in 2017 that she began smoking as a teen, noting that she “didn’t [used to] think of smoking as addictive.” But by the time she turned 18, Turlington realized that the habit was negatively impacting her health. “To walk up stairs and feel winded when you’re 18, that’s just stupid,” she said. Though it took her a number of attempts, Turlington wrote in O Magazine that she finally succeeded in quitting when she “got fed up for not keeping [her] promise to [herself],” and describes her achievement as “the biggest accomplishment of [her] life.”

The former soap opera actress and longtime morning show host revealed her hidden habit in an interview with David Letterman. “I was a closet smoker,” she said. “I only did it when I was out with friends or sometimes in my dressing room.” Although Ripa quit smoking when she started having children, she told Letterman that she picked up the habit again while shooting the ABC sitcom Hope and Faith. Ripa realized that she wanted to make sure she would be around to see her kids grow up, so she hired a trainer and started “exercising religiously.” She also told Letterman that she took the antidepressant bupropion (Wellbutrin) for three weeks, which broke her connection to cigarettes.

Years after the Academy Award–winning Silence of the Lambs actor officially quit smoking, he would still feel occasional cravings for a cigarette or a cigar. To break the habit once and for all, Hopkins turned to a book recommended by friends and written by the late anti-smoking advocate Allen Carr, The Easy Way to Stop Smoking, which “instantly” freed him from his addiction. Hopkins described Carr’s method, which centers on the belief that a cycle of fear is what prevents people from quitting successfully, as “not only easy but unbelievably enjoyable.”

Additional reporting by Jen Laskey and Laura McArdle.