18 Celebrities You Might Not Know Have Diabetes

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  Diabetes doesn't discriminate — not even against some of the world's most well-known and beloved celebrities. From actors to athletes, there are more familiar faces than you might think on the long list of those affected by the chronic condition.

• Paula Deen

  
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  Despite being known for her fat- and sugar-filled Southern dishes, celebrity chef Paula Deen was stunned when she was given a type 2 diabetes diagnosis in 2002. Now at 69 years old, she's coping just fine with an adjustment to her diet."I ignored it the first couple years. I thought the doctor was wrong," she said during a segment on The View. "But I have rearranged my plate now. Do I still eat comfort food? Absolutely. But I don't do it as often."

• Nick Jonas

  
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  One of the younger celebrities to open up about his diabetes, musician Nick Jonas, now 24, has lived with type 1 since he was 13 years old."As I've grown into a young man and my body has changed, I'm definitely noticing changes in my diabetes," Jonas told Diabetes Forecast. "It's continually changing — it's not like I get in a good place and it stays there. Every day I have to watch, to look at it, to make sure that everything is cool and still intact, to make sure I'm doing the best I can to manage it. There are definitely times, though, that I feel like saying, 'I don't want to deal with this; I just want to have this Gatorade or slice of pizza and not have to deal,' but I have to take it one step at a time, and I do."

• Anthony Anderson

  
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  Black-ish star Anthony Anderson, 46, doesn't stay hush-hush about the type 2 diabetes he was diagnosed with 14 years ago. Not only does his character in the ABC sitcom share the same diagnosis, but he's a known activist off camera, too."One day you're not feeling well and the next thing you know, the doctor's telling you that you have this life-changing condition," he told Parade. "Nothing can prepare you for that, but I rolled through the punches, and I'm making the most of it."

• Tom Hanks

  
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  Tom Hanks' doctor diagnosed him with type 2 diabetes just a few years ago. Now, at 60, he wishes he would have made more of an effort to lower his blood sugar levels when he was younger."I'm part of the lazy American generation that has blindly kept dancing through the party and now finds ourselves with a malady," he told Radio Times. "I was heavy. You've seen me in movies, you know what I looked like. I was a total idiot. I thought I could avoid it by removing the buns from my cheeseburgers. Well, it takes a little bit more than that." Now, his doctor is urging him to lose weight in an attempt to potentially reverse his condition, Hanks said.

• Salma Hayek

  
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  Salma Hayek, 50, didn't have any issues with her blood sugar before becoming pregnant at 41. But during those nine months, the problems started."I got gestational diabetes, which I didn't realize at first. It occurs in women who have high blood sugar levels during pregnancy," she told Parents. "I didn't know whether I was feeling bad because I was pregnant or whether something was seriously wrong. I was nauseated for nine months, which can be one of the symptoms. If I had it to do over again, I wouldn't eat so much fruit at the beginning. I didn't know that eating fruit that is high in sugar is not recommended when you have gestational diabetes."Luckily, this type of diabetes usually goes away after giving birth.

• Bret Michaels

  
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  Rocker Bret Michaels was told he had type 1 diabetes when he was just a child. "I was 6 years old when I was diagnosed with diabetes," he told USA Today. "I remember I was in between kindergarten and first grade. I'll never forget how extremely sick and dehydrated I was. Everything I drank or ate immediately came out of me."Now with children of his own, Michaels says one of his own daughters, Raine, was told she has borderline diabetes herself. "We're battling it with diet right now, and we're hoping that eventually when she gets in her teen years, she doesn't develop type 1 diabetes," he told Parents.

• Patti LaBelle

  
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  Grammy winner Patti LaBelle found out she had diabetes in the most inopportune of ways: on stage during a performance. Although it was hard changing her diet and exercise habits, she's now 72 and feeling good as a result of those choices."There's no way I'm going to be a completely good girl. I have to cheat now and then," she told Diabetic Living. "Before, my body was just a body. I was always worried about my hair, my makeup, and my clothes. If you have all that going for you and the inside is breaking down, what good is that? Today, my body means the world to me — those other things are secondary. The most important thing now is my body on the inside, not the outside. My body is a temple, not an amusement park!"

• Drew Carey

  
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  Funny guy Drew Carey, 58, didn't let a diabetes diagnosis stop him from living his best life. In fact, after losing more than 80 pounds through working out and eating healthy, he no longer relies on daily meds."It sucks being fat, you know," he told People. "I was diabetic with type 2 diabetes. I'm not diabetic anymore. No medication needed."

• Halle Berry

  
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  Halle Berry is an incredibly healthy 50-year-old. So healthy, in fact, that you've probably never been able to tell the actress has had type 1 diabetes since 19."I try to do my part as a role model, by openly talking about it, what I've gone through, how I handle it in my life… I hope I'm getting the message out there — that it's nothing to be ashamed of," Berry told Inquirer. "I just have a healthy diet, and I always exercise. As I'm getting older, that kind of attention to my health is paying off. I only work out three times a week, 30 minutes a pop."

• Larry King

  
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  Famed talk show host Larry King, now 82, has battled diabetes — as well as cancer and heart conditions — in the past, but the lifestyle changes he's made have kept him in good health."I've had the heart attack and heart surgery, I defeated prostate cancer, have type 2 diabetes, but I remain in good health. I follow my doctor's wishes, I take my prescription drugs, I take a lot of vitamins," he told the Los Angeles Times. "When I had the heart attack that scared me to death, I was 53 years old. I never smoked a cigarette again. I changed a lot of my habits. I lost a lot of weight. I've kept the weight down."

• Sherri Shepherd

  
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  For some, diabetes can be a curse. But Sherri Shepherd, co-host of The View, thinks her type 2 diabetes was a blessing in disguise."If I didn't have diabetes, I would probably be at the International House of Pancakes eating a stack of pancakes with butter and syrup," Shepherd, 49, told USA Today. "I would probably be 250 pounds. I would not be going to the doctor."

• Mary Tyler Moore

  
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  Everyone knows Mary Tyler Moore's name, but one thing everyone might not know about is her struggle with diabetes. The now 79-year-old found out she had type 1 at 33 and has been managing it ever since."You've got to always plan," she said in a 2009 interview with USA Today. "It's a fact of life that if someone invites you out to dinner you have to think, 'What are they going to be doing when they serve you dinner? How quickly are they going to get it on the table from the time I arrive? When should I take my shot? What should I eat of what's available?'"Although her vision was already declining at the time of the above interview, her close friend and former co-star Betty White recently revealed Moore might be going blind as a result of her diabetes. "Her eyesight is what the big problem is right now," White told Closer in 2014.

• Max Domi

  
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  Max Domi, 21, is already making waves as a hockey player for the Arizona Coyotes, and there's no way he's going to let the diabetes diagnosis he received at 12 slow him down."Having that motivation and that person to relate to and look up to is something that goes a long way," Domi told SportsNet. "It's tough to make the NHL as it is, but when you have something like that it can set you back a little bit, but there's no reason it should ever get in your way. Because once you find a way to deal with it and manage it, you're just like everyone else."

• Randy Jackson

  
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  Grammy award-winning producer and former American Idol judge Randy Jackson, 60, made some huge changes after being diagnosed with diabetes."I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes [during my time on American Idol]. Even though it ran in my family and my dad had it, I never thought it would happen to me," he revealed in a segment on The Doctors. "I remember I thought I had a cold — I was tired and lethargic. I met him at the emergency room and my blood sugar was over 500."To get his life back on track, he focused on the one thing people had been telling him all along. "All my life you've heard your doctors say diet and exercise actually works, but as I look back on it, I was never really doing it," he continued. "I had to change my diet completely, and you combine that with the exercise. I like tennis, yoga, cardio — I had to find things that were interesting to me."

• Anne Rice

  
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  Even a career dedicated to vampire novels couldn't stop author Anne Rice from having issues with the red stuff in her own veins. Rice, now 75, who's known for her Vampire Chronicles series, almost died from type 1 diabetes before she even knew she had it."They ran the tests and they got a blood-sugar [level] of 800, which is pretty much, I think, fatal," Rice told ABC News. "What they told me later was that I was in a coma," she said, and it's possible that death could have followed.

• Aretha Franklin

  
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  Queen of R-E-S-P-E-C-T Aretha Franklin, 74, once had to cancel shows due to her type 2 diabetes. Now, after changing her lifestyle and dropping pounds, she's back to singing her heart out."I have diabetes, really, from years ago when I was really badly and grossly overweight. Now, I'm back to my natural size and thrilled about it," Franklin told Click On Detroit. "The weight that I am at now, I said, 'I am going to own this weight. I will never, ever, be the size that I was again.'"

• Jay Cutler

  
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  Chicago Bears quarterback Jay Cutler, 33, was diagnosed with diabetes in 2008. Since then, he's come out on top — but it wasn't easy."It's something you go to sleep with and you wake up with every day. It's not something that you can just be like, 'Hey, I'm going to take a day off here, and I'll catch back up with it tomorrow.' It's difficult to deal with," he said during an episode of The Jay Cutler Show on ESPN. "I think more than anything over the past three, four, five years is I've changed my diet a lot. I think that's made the biggest impact on me being able to control my numbers and being able to control diabetes."

• James Earl Jones

  
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  James Earl Jones, 85, who is best known as the voice of Darth Vader in Star Wars and Mufasa in The Lion King, kept his type 2 diabetes under wraps for 20 years. Now, he's speaking about his diagnosis freely in hopes of helping others going through the same thing."I didn't notice any symptoms," Jones said last March. "I had gone to a diet and exercise program hoping to lose some weight and ended up falling asleep sitting on a bench in the gymnasium. My doctor, who happened to be there, said that's not normal. He encouraged me to go get a test, and I did — and there it was: type 2 diabetes. It hit me like a thunderbolt."

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