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Billie Eilish, Nat Wolff Make Red Carpet Debut at Her Movie Premiere
Billie Eilish isn’t going to let Tourette syndrome make all of her moments its own.
The “Happier Than Ever” singer recently shared insight into how she navigates the vocal and movement tics caused by the neurological disorder, especially when it comes to living in the public eye.
“I do have Tourette’s and I have vocal tics but luckily for me and for everyone else, they’re mostly just noises and I can keep them pretty quiet,” Billie explained during a May 5 appearance on Amy Poehler’s Good Hang podcast. “I go through phases of words becoming tics.”
Indeed, Tourette syndrome is an incurable disorder that can cause a variety of vocal and movement tics, typically forcing a person to blurt out an unusual sound or an offensive word. And the 24-year-old—who was diagnosed with Tourette syndrome when she was 11—noted she utilizes suppression when she’s doing an appearance or interview.
As she put it, “I’m doing everything in my power to suppress all of my tics constantly and then as soon as I leave the room I have to let them all out or whatever.”
And while Amy praised Billie for her openness with the condition, saying it helped her navigate her own intrusive thoughts, the Grammy winner shared insight into people’s general misunderstanding of Tourette’s.
“Imagine those intrusive thoughts but your mouth has to say them out loud—and that is Tourette syndrome,” Billie explained. “What’s troubling about the way that people do not understand what Tourette’s is, if I start having a tic attack or a lot of tics in a row, people are like, ‘Are you OK?’ It’s like this is very much normal.”
And Billie emphasized that people don’t notice how much effort it takes to suppress her tic.
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“If you didn’t notice today, you didn’t notice my knees which are ticing constantly under this table or my elbows—I’m clenching my arms the entire time,” she detailed. “It’s because I’m on camera, and I’m having a conversation and I’m trying not to be distracting. I’m really doing—this whole time, as much fun as I’m having—I’m doing everything I can to suppress every single tic that’s visible.”
As she put it “That’s how we as people with Tourette’s pretty much spend our days.”
Despite her own struggles, though, Billie noted she feels lucky to have some power over her tics.
“Some people don’t even have the privilege of getting to suppress them at all in any way,” she admitted. “And the not understanding of that is really frustrating as a person with Tourette’s.”
Billie has long been outspoken about living with Tourette's, previously telling David Letterman in a 2022 interview she was "very happy talking about it."
"I actually really love answering questions about it because it's very, very interesting," she said during an apperance on My Next Guest Needs Not Introduction, "and I am incredibly confused by it and I don't get it."
For more facts about the Oscar winner, keep reading...
(Photo by David Livingston/Getty Images)
1. Her full name is Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O’Connell. And she has older brother Finneas to thank for the unique middle name as she revealed in her book Billie Eilish: In Her Own Words that it was due to his love of pirates as a 4-year-old.
(Photo by Craig Barritt/Getty Images for Glamour)
2. Billie recorded her hit song “Ocean eyes” at only 13 years old. “I was really into this boy with this curly brown hair and these deep blue eyes,” she said during a 2017 interview with CBS’s Los Angeles Affiliate KCAL. “Whenever I looked at him I just, like, got lost in his ocean eyes.”
(Photo by FilmMagic/FilmMagic for Bonnaroo Arts And Music Festival)
3. Before musical fame, she recorded background dialogue for group scenes in movies. “I was in Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Ramona and Beezus, X-Men,” Billie told Rolling Stone in 2019. “It was fun—a bunch of random kids in a room yelling random things, and then we’d have a break and get snacks.”
(Photo by PG/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images)
4. As a child, she worked at a stable in exchange for free riding lessons. Since her meteoric rise to fame, she’s returned to the sport, telling the Rolling Stone that it’s “more for [her] mental health than like a hobby.”
Instagram / Billie Eilish
5. Billie used to have a severe case of bieber fever. When she announced her collaboration with Justin Bieber on “Bad Guy” in July 2019, she revealed her fandom by sharing a hilarious childhood photo of herself standing in her childhood bedroom surrounded by posters of the teen heartthrob on social media.
Netflix
6. She was diagnosed with Tourette's when she was 11. “I haven’t talked about it at all,” Billie said while speaking with David Letterman on Netflix’s My Next Guest Needs No Introduction. “The most common way people react is they laugh because they think I’m trying to be funny. They think I’m [ticking] as a funny move. And so they go, ‘Ha.’ And I’m always left incredibly offended by that.”
(Photo by Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images)
7. She’s the youngest two-time Oscar winner, with her and Finneas taking home the coveted award in 2022 for “No Time to Die” from the James Bond film and in 2024 for Barbie’s “What Was I Made For?”
(Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Live Nation)
8. She’s spoken publicly about her queer identity. “I’m physically attracted to [women],” Billie told Variety in 2023. “But I’m also intimidated by them and their beauty and their presence.”
(Photo by Paras Griffin/Getty Images)
9. She’s been vegan for more than a decade. “I learned about the dairy industry and the meat industry,” she told British Vogue in 2021. “Once you know about that kind of thing and you see it, it’s really hard to go back.”’
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