What Scares the Stars? - Movie Star Phobias

Posted by Maggie Van Ostrand (maggie@filmschoolrejects.com) on April 13, 2008

Some people are scared of one thing (Freud was afraid of ferns), and some people are scared of everything.. Take Woody Allen. He suffers from many phobias, including Arachibutyrophobia — fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of his mouth.

Billy Bob Thornton has some weird phobias, too, like fear of antique furniture. He told Sky News, “I get creeped out and I can’t breathe and I can’t eat around it. I’ve had friends tell me that maybe I was beaten to death with an antique chair in a former life.” He’s also afraid of bold colors, water, and silver cutlery.
Uma Thurman is scared of confined spaces. About the scene in Kill Bill: Vol. 2 where she is buried alive in a coffin, she told reporters, “There was no acting required. Those were real screams. It was horrific. Nobody wants to live that experience.”

Johnny Depp, who loves to play characters wearing bizarre make-up, is afraid of clowns. “Something about the painted face, the fake smile,” Depp said in 1999 when he was promoting the film Sleepy Hollow. “There always seemed to be a darkness lurking just under the surface, a potential for real evil.”

Sarah Michelle Geller is terrified of graveyards. When filming Buffy the Vampire Slayer, she refused to go into a real one so a fake cemetery was built on set.

Things that scare other movie notables include:

Tobey “Spidey” Maguire: Heights
Matthew McConaughey: Revolving Doors
Orlando Bloom: Pigs
Oprah Winfrey: Chewing Gum
Nicole Kidman: Butterflies
Keanu Reeves: Darkness
Scarlett Johnsson: Cockroaches
Justin Timberlake: Spiders
Jennifer Love Hewitt: Monsters under the bed
Christina Ricci: Gerbils
Colin Farrell: Flying
Tyra Banks: Dolphins
Alfred Hitchcock: Eggs
Pamela Anderson: Mirrors
Roger “007″ Moore: Guns
Barbra Streisand: People
Walt Disney: Mice

There’s even a name for what bothers Woody Allen: Panophobia (fear of everything).

Read more articles by Maggie Van Ostrand