While women have certainly paved the way to being more independent, there still remains a huge stigma around the conscious choice to be alone. Working to bring an end to the idea that women are not ‘complete’ or ‘whole’ without a partner are the many celebrity women who have gotten candid and refreshingly honest about their decision to not actively look for a relationship.
With some of the most successful careers in the biz, these women have proved time and time again that it can be liberating to celebrate yourself by being happily single.
In fact, the longest-living woman in history once credited being single (as well as eggs and cookies) for her longevity.
Below, 10 celebrity women who have embraced being single, and aren’t afraid to share their wisdom with the world.
Selena Gomez
Taking to TikTok, Selena Gomez poked fun at the fact that she’s still single, expressing that she’s “totally fine” without being in a relationship while sitting alone next to a couple sharing some PDA.
“No, I’m fine. I’m totally fine being single, it’s a real thing, it’s fine,” she said in the video, before moving the camera toward the loved-up couple.
In a 2020 interview with YouTuber Nikkie de Taber (@nikkietutorials), Gomez was asked if there was anything else she wanted to learn in life.
“Just getting more and more comfortable with myself,” she told de Taber. “I’ve definitely spent years and years faking that I had to be a certain way for sure.”
“The older I get the more that feeling goes away… I’ve been single for almost five years and I think this was so important to me. I wouldn’t take anything back.”
Halle Berry
Never afraid to clap back against trolls when necessary, Halle Berry’s most recent takedown is one to be admired.
The Academy Award-winning actress posted a graphic that read, “Women don’t owe you shit,” on Instagram, and one commenter responded, “Says the women who can’t keep a man.”
“Who says I wanna keep the wrong man? cuz….I don’t ❤️🙏,” Berry expertly responded.
It’s not the first time Berry has gotten candid about being single. Appearing on an Instagram Live session with her friend Lena Waithe, the Catwoman actress revealed she had remained happily single since her divorce from French actor Olivier Martinez in 2016, instead finding solace in her children.
“I’ve learned a lot being with my children. They are the best company for me right now, and when I divorced Maceo’s dad I’ve been pretty alone by myself going on three years now,” Berry said. “Decidedly so, for sure.”
She added, “I have decided to take time. I’m very much a relationship-oriented person, I always want to be with someone. But I decided, no I’m going to slow my roll, I’m going to take a minute and I’m going to spent time with me.”
In another interview, the actress also shared her thoughts on relationships being an addition to what she already loves about herself.
“A man for me is the cherry on the pie,” Berry said. “But I’m the pie and my pie is good all by itself. Even if I don’t have a cherry,” she said.
Tracee Ellis Ross
In a refreshing interview, Tracee Ellis Ross opened up about being “happily single” and finding self-love during lockdown.
Speaking to Shape, the Black-ish actress spoke about “joyful solitude,” enjoying her own company, and having “an experience with [her]self that is whole.”
“I am happily single, though that doesn’t mean I am not open to and don’t want a relationship,” she shared. “But in my wonderful and robust experience of being single, I have learned to have a productive relationship with loneliness and an intensely juicy relationship with my joyful solitude, I really enjoy my company.”
“One of the things that’s been lovely to discover is how I care for myself and how I actively love myself. And I believe that love is an action: You get back what you put in,” Ross added. “I realise that I hold the idea of wholeness with great reverence and respect because my goal is to have an experience with myself that is whole.”
Emma Watson
Celebrating her 30th birthday in 2019, Emma Watson celebrated being happily single with the now-iconic phrase, “self-partnered.”
The actress and activist opened up to British Vogue about the pressures society puts on women to have achieved certain milestones with age and how “stressed and anxious” the “influx of subliminal messaging” started to make her.
Speaking to the publication, Watson said: “If you have not built a home, if you do not have a husband, if you do not have a baby, and you are turning 30, and you’re not in some incredibly secure, stable place in your career, or you’re still figuring things out… There’s just this incredible amount of anxiety.”
Shutting down persistent rumours that she was dating her Harry Potter co-star Tom Felton, the actress went on to say she is happily single.
“It took me a long time, but I’m very happy [being single]. I call it being self-partnered,” she said.
Fran Drescher
After going through one of Hollywood’s most public divorces, splitting from her husband of 21 years, Peter Marc Jacobson in 1999—after which he publicly revealed he was gay—the star admitted to finding love “with herself.”
“I think that I’ve had to very consciously work on not being co-dependent, not being fearful of being by myself or doing things by myself,” Drescher told People in February 2020. “I really had to make a concerted effort to get past that. And I think that I am good with it now. But still, I’m not like, ‘I’d rather stay home by myself than go out and do things by myself.’ But then whenever I do things by myself, I enjoy it.”
She added, “I think that that’s been a big hurdle in my life that I needed to conquer. And getting really connected to myself has been a great journey, because now, I’m not even feeling like I have to be in a relationship, because I’m in a relationship with myself—and it’s going quite well.”
January Jones
For January Jones, being single is about finding the joy in being with someone who would contribute to her happiness, rather than take away from it.
“Do I want [a partner]? Maybe,” the actress said in a 2018 interview, speaking about life as a single parent. “But I don’t feel unhappy or lonely. It would have to be someone so amazing that I would want to make room. Someone who would contribute to my happiness and not take away from it.”
Jones gave birth to a son, Xander, in September 2011, and has never disclosed who the father is.
Diane Keaton
Diane Keaton has never let her relationship status define who she is.
“I remember when I was young I honestly believed in some ridiculous way that you would find someone who would be the person you lived with until you died,” she told Wenn. “I don’t think that because I’m not married it’s made my life any less. That old maid myth is garbage.”
Mindy Kaling
With one of the most successful careers in Hollywood—that includes award-winning series The Mindy Project and multiple books—Mindly Kaling has more than a relationship to celebrate.
“In my 20s, I was not only boy crazy, but marriage and relationship crazy,” she told Flare in 2014. “Now it’s almost the opposite. My work is so rewarding and I’m so self-centred about it that I’m kind of excited about not having to go home and ask someone about their day.”
The actress also recently welcomed her second child, a son Spencer. She also the proud mum of daughter Katherine.
Taylor Swift
Swift, who is single once more, has been open about the experience of singledom in the past. She chooses not to compare not being in a relationship to being lonely.
“Being alone is not the same as being lonely,” the singer said. “I like to do things that glorify being alone. I buy a candle that smells pretty, turn down the lights and make a playlist of low-key songs. If you don’t act like you’ve been hit by the plague when you’re alone on a Friday night and just see it as a chance to have fun by yourself, it’s not a bad day.”
Jennifer Aniston
Pressure from family and friends to find a relationship can be overwhelming for many, but for Jennifer Aniston, that pressure has been coming from the entire world since her public split from Brad Pitt in 2005.
In her widely shared essay for Huffington Post in 2016, the actress took aim at the paparazzi and tabloid speculation that has followed her for most of her career, admitting she’s happy exactly where she is (oh, and that we should stop worrying about her marital status).
“Women are realising it more and more knowing that they don’t have to settle with a man just to have that child,” the actress shared. “Times have changed and that is also what is amazing is that we do have so many options these days.”
“We get to determine our own ‘happily ever after’ for ourselves’,” she finished.
Stevie Nicks
Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks has been candid on her decision to be alone.
“Most women would not be happy being me,” Nicks told Vulture in 2013. “People say, ‘But you’re alone.’ But I don’t feel alone. I feel very un-alone. I feel very sparkly and excited about everything. I know women who are going, like, ‘I don’t want to grow old alone.’ And I’m like, ‘See, that doesn’t scare me.’ Because I’ll never be alone.
“I’ll always be surrounded by people. I’m like the crystal ball and these are all the rings of Saturn around me.… My generation fought very hard for feminism, and we fought very hard to not be labelled as you had to have a husband or you had to be in a relationship, or you were somehow not a cool chick.”
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