17 Former Mean Girls And Bullies Who Grew Up To Be Famous

Many famous people have used their platforms to speak out about their experiences with bullying or to call out the bullies who made their lives miserable. However, not all of them were the victims of bullies — some were actually bullies themselves.

Here are 17 celebs who admitted to being bullies at school and beyond:

1.Jennifer Lawrence was bullied, but she was also an "accidental bully" because she "pantsed this kid named Tyler" at a football game.

She told E! News, "We were pantsing people at a football game, and I accidentally grabbed his underwear. He got really embarrassed, and I feel really bad. I'm sorry."

She still feels remorse. She continued, "I, like, sometimes Google him just to be like, 'You alright?'"

2.Her No Hard Feelings costar Andrew Feldman was also "bullied and [he] was a bully in middle school."

He told E! News, "Middle schoolers are just so mean."

3.In middle school, Demi Lovato was bullied, but she also "didn't realize [she] was doing things that were also forms of bullying, like spreading rumors about people and gossiping."

She told Seventeen, "There were things that I did in middle school that probably contributed to why girls treated me so poorly...Gossip is essentially character assassination. When you spread rumors about someone, it's a way of demoralizing them."

4.Gabrielle Union "moved from being a mean, vindictive, hateful person who couldn't be happy for other people to embracing and truly being supportive" with the help of her friend AJ Johnson.

Gabrielle told Oprah, "Really, it came down to, we were in a room, we were at a party, and I was holding court...And I was trashing somebody, you know, just ripping them to shreds head to toe. And AJ pulls me aside, and she says, 'Okay, now how did your life change? Did you get the guy? Did you get the job? Is your house any bigger? Did money, you know, just magically get put in your pocket? What positive happened in your life after you just tore that woman down? ...You gained nothing.'"

5.Like the Plastics in Mean Girls, Tina Fey was a high school mean girl. She described her bully status as "a disease that had to be conquered."

She told Net-a-Porter's The Edit, "It's another coping mechanism. It's a bad coping mechanism, but when you feel less than...in your mind it's a way of leveling the playing field. Though of course, it's not. Saying something terrible about someone else does not actually level the playing field."

6.As a teenager, Lance Bass made fun of other kids for being gay to hide his own sexuality and to help him fit in.

On Larry King Live, he said, "When you're 13, 14, you just go along with what the other people are doing. You just want to fit in. You want to make sure that your friends like you. So yeah, you're going to crack jokes, you’re going to laugh along with it. And when you're a teenager, you're not really thinking, 'Oh, I'm being a bully by laughing along with it.'...But you're also a bully by condoning the behavior and making the jokes along with them."

7.Ricky Martin also used to "bully people who [he] knew were gay" because he had "internalized homophobia."

He told GQ Australia, "When you're told you're wrong by everyone, from society, from your faith — my self-esteem was crushed. I took my anger out on those around me...To realize that was confronting to me. I wanted to get away from that."

8.When Vanessa Hudgens was in a relationship with Zac Efron, she "went through a phase when [she] was really mean because [she] was so fed up [with his fans]."

She told the New York Times, "Girls were running after him, and I was giving them death stares. Then I realized that's not what that's about. 'Spread the love, be a good person, they support you, be nice.'"

9.As his YouTube channel grew, Jake Paul realized that the reality of being an influencer "is highly conducive to bully-like behavior of which [he's] witnessed, been subjected to, and been the instigator of." He had to "painfully come to grips with" the fact that he's "been the bully."

In an essay for the Daily Mail, he wrote, "That's something I struggle with and drives me to be better every day as a human, brother, son, partner, businessman, and a boxer...Frankly, being a bully and attacking others was easier than letting people see how much their words and opinions affected me. I justified my own actions as 'content;' however, sometimes it ventured into different territory I'm not proud of upon reflection. Simply put, I justified that it was OK to be negative — until I realized that it wasn't."

He decided to launch an anti-bullying foundation, Boxing Bullies, to help teach kids "to foster positivity, to never initiate, and to use [their] voice and platforms to speak up against bullying."

10.After Courtney Stodden called out Chrissy Teigen for cyberbullying them when they were a teenager, Chrissy publicly addressed her past behavior and apologized. On Twitter, she said, "I'm mortified and sad at who I used to be. I was an insecure, attention-seeking troll. I am ashamed and completely embarrassed at my behavior but that..is nothing compared to how I made Courtney feel."

Elaborating in a Medium post, she continued, "When I first started using social media, I had so much fun with it...And I used it to snark at some celebrities. In reality, I was insecure, immature and in a world where I thought I needed to impress strangers to be accepted. If there was a pop culture pile-on, I took to Twitter to try to gain attention and show off what I at the time believed was a crude, clever, harmless quip...I wasn't mean in my everyday life. More than once, someone would come up to me and say, 'You're so much nicer in person.' Why was that not a huge red flag?"

11.After being bullied from the age of five, Doctor Who actor Christopher Eccleston became a bully "for a very short period." He made "a very sensitive boy" give him some of his chips during break. He "did it a few times, and [he's] very, very ashamed of it."

On Good Morning Britain, he said, "And I did stop it myself, thank God, but it's a shame that I carry to this day."

As an adult, he used his platform to counteract bullying by working with the Diana Award campaign Stand Up To Bullying.

12.Gabourey Sidibe also opened up about being both bullied and being the bully in her childhood.

She told Essence, " I grew up in tougher neighborhoods, and I was bullied, but there have been times when I was a bully in order to defend myself. I might have been a little overzealous sometimes, and I’ve been a bully. I think those two people — the bullied and the bully — live in all of us."

13.After rapper Fat Joe's best friend turned against him and joined the school bullies who beat him up every day, he "turned into the worst bully in the world." He admittedly "did some horrible things to good and bad people that [he's] not proud of."

He told NPR, "I regret a lot growing up, and so I pray all the time. And so, I give back to my community all the time."

14.13 Reasons Why actor Christian Navarro "learned pretty quickly that if you bully, you don't get bullied, so [he] was a bully in middle school."

He told PopSugar, "But then I got to high school and kinda cut all that nonsense out...People didn't like me. I mean, if you're a jerk, people don't like you. We all want to belong to a community, and so I figured the best way to do that was to stop being a jerk...'

15.Growing up, Brandi Carlile moved around a lot, and she was both a victim of bullies as well as a bully herself at times.

She often felt out of place, and as an adult, she carried "a kind of a constant imposter syndrome."

She told NPR, "Like, when people find out, you know, that I'm just a totally normal, weird girl, they're going to, you know, move on with all of their grandiosity and their beauty and their exceptionalism and leave me in Maple Valley. And it's kind of a beautiful thing. But as I'm sitting here and I'm looking at 40, and I got my kids and I got my wife, and I have some of the affirmation that I always wanted around my music and now I've written [my memoir], I think I'm starting to really feel sort of solid and loved in my world. Like, maybe I've finally — like, maybe I've kind of finally found my place."

16.Patrick Stewart admittedly "was a bully." As a kid, he was part of a group that would pick on and hurt a boy with a limb difference.

At the The Kid Who Would Be King press conference, he said, "I felt that in some way I had to make myself feel important and the only way that I could do that was to control other children."

When he grew up, he was "ashamed" of his past behavior, and he began working with Stonewall's #NoBystanders initiative.

17.And finally, Tyra Banks was both a victim of bullying and a "mean girl" herself. She was a bully from ages 7–10 because "[her] brother used to say [she] was stupid" and make fun of her at home.

She told CNN, "People bully because they want their power back. People bully because they feel powerless, and to get the power, you have to take it from somebody else...Here I am at home, getting bullied. So what do I do at school? I got my power back."

StopBullying.gov is an organization that provides resources to prevent harassment and bullying against children. Stomp Out Bullying offers a free and confidential chat line here.