18 Celebs Who Hightailed It Out Of The US And Moved Abroad (And Why)

Buzz Feed

17-03-2025

Plenty of people dream of moving to the US, but plenty of people who live here also dream of leaving it.
Here are 18 celebs who moved out of the US and why:
1. Rosie O'Donnell relocated to Ireland. In a 2025 TikTok video, she said, "I'm here in Ireland, and it's beautiful and warm — not physically, it's actually quite cold. Moved here on January 15th, and it's been pretty wonderful, I have to say. The people are so loving and so kind, so welcoming, and I'm very grateful. I'm in the process of getting my Irish citizenship, as I have Irish grandparents, and that's what's going on...I was never someone who thought I would move to another country, that's what I decided would be the best for myself and my 12-year-old child. And here we are..."
"You know, I'm happy. Clay is happy. I miss my other kids. I miss my friends. I miss many things about life there at home, and I'm trying to find a home here in this beautiful country. And when, you know, it is safe for all citizens to have equal rights there in America, that's when we will consider coming back. It's been heartbreaking to see what's happening politically and hard for me personally as well. The personal is political, as we all know," she said.
2. In 2025, Richard Gere and his family moved to Spain, which is where his wife, Alejandra Gere, is from. He told Elle España, "The truth is, you're seeing us in our moment. We're happier than ever. She's happy because she's at home, and I'm happy because if she's happy, I'm happy."
3. During her marriage to Joe Jonas, Sophie Turner lived in LA and Miami, but she was homesick for the UK. After their divorce, she returned to London. She told Harper's Bazaar UK, "The gun violence, Roe v. Wade being overturned... Everything just kind of piled on. After the Uvalde [school] shooting, I knew it was time to get the fuck out of there. I'm so happy to be back. I never feel like myself when I'm not in London."
4. In 2024, People reported that Ellen DeGeneres fell in love with a house in the Cotswolds in the UK and moved there with her wife, Portia de Rossi. Per sources that spoke to The Wrap and TMZ, the couple reportedly moved abroad following the results of the 2024 presidential election.
5. In 2024, Eva Longoria told Marie Claire that she and her family have been splitting their time between Spain [where she often works] and Mexico [where her husband, José Bastón, is from] for the last few years. She said, "I had my whole adult life here. But even before [the pandemic], it was changing. The vibe was different. And then COVID happened, and it pushed it over the edge. Whether it's the homelessness or the taxes, not that I want to shit on California — it just feels like this chapter in my life is done now...I'm privileged. I get to escape and go somewhere. Most Americans aren't so lucky. They're going to be stuck in this dystopian country, and my anxiety and sadness is for them."
Her comments led to online speculation that she'd moved out of the US because of the 2024 election. So, to set the record straight, Eva called into her friend Ana Navarro's podcast The View: Behind the Table. She asked Ana, "Will you please let them know I didn't move out of Spain, I mean the United States, because of Trump?"
Then, Eva added, "I've been in Europe working for almost three years. By the way, the article says that. People just grabbed some clickbait stuff to be divisive, which makes me so sad, you know. Everything you say is just meant to be divisive when we can't be that way right now...I didn't leave because of the political environment. I left because my work took me there."
6. In 2025, Gabriel Macht revealed that he and his family left the US sometime after Suits ended a few years prior. He told People, "I don't tell anybody where I live because I like to keep that under wraps. I got out of town, and we're exploring the world."
He later told E! News, "I want to see how the world looks in different people's eyes. I want to see different perspectives. I want to learn from others. I want to see history and culture and character in different places in the world. I feel like, why not? If you have the opportunity, it's a great way to raise kids." He also said he enjoys the "anonymity" and "slower pace" in his new locale, adding, "I love being able to take nice walks. It helps to wear a hat."
7. In 2025, actor Shaun Majumder left LA and moved back to Canada with his family. Rather than return home to Newfoundland, they settled in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He told CBC, "Have you been watching the news? Have you seen what's going on? I ran out of a burning building with my youngsters under my arm and my wife on my back. I'm like, get me out of here, this is crazy! You know, we've been kind of, like, mulling over a big change over the last six to eight months, to be honest. Having two young kids, living in Los Angeles, is a really different experience than moving down there as a super enthusiastic whippersnapper actor. But, you know, during COVID, we had two children, and that changed our lives forever. We actually went back to Newfoundland; it's kind of where we hunkered down. It just feels like the perfect storm."
He also said, "We also knew that the tides were turning on the political landscape in America. We knew an election was coming up, and I said to my wife, 'Shelby, if Trump wins, I don't know. I have a feeling that that's going to be the kicker to get me to go. I think I need to go.' We went through the election. We went to our family's place in Florida for Christmas. We came back to LA. The city was on fire. Trump was now president, whether you like him or not. The country was kind of becoming more chaotic. And we were just like, oh, yeah, if the universe wasn't screaming at us right now to get out of here, then this is definitely a kicker. And I do most of my work in Canada, so it just makes sense for us to be up here."
8. During her relationship with soccer player Adil Rami, Pamela Anderson moved to Provence, France because he played for Marseille. At the time, she told Net-A-Porter, "I fell in love with Saint-Tropez 20 years ago, when I did a photoshoot for Playboy. It was always my plan to come and live here when the kids were grown up. Everyone is so beautiful here. Maybe it's the light, very healthy and golden."
Then, in 2020, at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, Pamela returned home to Vancouver Island, British Columbia with her two adult sons, purchased and renovated her grandma's motel, and began working on her grandpa's garden. She told Better Homes & Gardens, "A few years back, I kind of gave up at some point and needed a change. I thought, 'Well, I guess that's just what people think of me.' I was not in a good space when I moved back to Canada. I don't know what happened over the last few decades, but I feel now so far removed from the image of who I was. I felt very sad and lonely."
"I didn't feel just misunderstood; I felt like I had really screwed up, that my whole life was a bundle of mistakes. I was hard on myself, and I thought I put my family through a lot and put my kids through so much. I came to a point where I decided to move home and disappear and get into my garden. And when I started building the garden, it was really like a metaphor of putting my life back together. I began planting seeds, and the smallest things became really profound," she said.
9. After living in Hollywood for 20 years, comedian Tom Green moved home to Ontario, Canada in 2021. He lives on a 150-acre farm. He told the New York Times, "I'm not really a Hollywood guy. I started to feel like I wasn't being true to my authentic self."
Slaven Vlasic / Getty Images
10. Janet Jackson has lived in London, UK since about 2016. According to the Guardian, she stayed in the city after her 2017 divorce from billionaire Wissam Al Mana, who is from Qatar but lives in London, because they co-parent their son, Eissa. She told the outlet, "The most important thing I've done, the biggest thing I've done, is become a mother, and it's had a beautiful impact on my life. I wanted to have three children but thought, 'I should stop there; that's probably all I can handle.' Because you have to give all of yourself, you have to spread the love, and I wouldn't want any of them to feel left out if I had three. Obviously, you have to work, but you don't come first anymore. Your life completely changes. And I wouldn't trade it for anything."
Dave Benett / Jed Cullen/for British GQ
11. Lily Collins and her husband, Charlie McDowell, relocated to Copenhagen, Denmark in 2023. The couple honeymooned in Denmark in 2021, and they co-own the media production and real estate company Case Study Copenhagen.
Jeff Spicer /Lily told Elle Denmark, "Life here is just so wonderful and so calm and bright. And what I love so much is that there's so much color and, yet, it's so calm. I love being able to bike everywhere. And it feels like a big city but also very intimate, and everyone is so nice."
Dave Benett / Alan Chapman/12. Lindsay Lohan and her family live in Dubai. She relocated to the UAE in 2014. According to Cosmopolitan, she moved to Dubai because paparazzi are illegal.
Amy Sussman / Getty Images
In 2024, she told Flaunt, "It's still a city. So it's pretty similar. I mean, I do anything that anyone else does in their daily life. I'm up with my son in the mornings, I do breakfast with him, go to my pilates, come home for lunch, and go to the park, the same things that any normal mom would do in their daily life. Or you would do in LA. I think the only difference is the time zone shift. There's a big disconnect between when work starts for me and other places. I can do my work calls with New York at like three or four, around this time, and then LA picks up later."
James Devaney / GC Images / Via Getty
13. In 1995, Tina Turner moved to Switzerland with Erwin Bach, her then-boyfriend (and later husband). In 1997, she told CNN, "I have left America because my success was in another country, and my boyfriend was in another country."
Dave Benett /She also said she was "as big as Madonna" in Europe. She said, "I went to England for a couple of years, and then I met a man, and I lived three years with him in his country, in Germany. Then I bought a house, in the meantime, in the south of France, and I started to rebuild that, so I'm in and out of there. That's not a place I can go often. [Home is] Zurich. Because my boyfriend was moved there to run the company, and I always wanted to go to Switzerland, and I was very happy."
Pascal Le Segretain / Getty Images
In 2013, Tina married Erwin and became a Swiss citizen.
Dave Hogan / Getty Images
14. In a 2024 Instagram video, Britney Spears shared that she moved to Mexico because of the "extremely mean and cruel" treatment she'd faced from paparazzi. She said, "It really kind of hurts my feelings that the paparazzi make my face look like I'm wearing, like, a white Jason mask. It doesn't even look like me. They've always been incredibly cruel to me, the paparazzi and pictures and the way they've illustrated me to be in some of it."
J. Merritt / Getty Images for GLAAD
15. In 2021, George Clooney reportedly moved to Brignoles, Provence, France with his wife, Amal Clooney, and their children. He and his wife, Amal Clooney, reportedly want to have a "peaceful life" and raise their children primarily in France.
Gotham / GC Images / Via Getty
16. In 2023, Christina Milian and her family moved to France, where her husband, singer M. Pokora, is from. She told the Jennifer Hudson Show, "My husband is French, and we've been together for over seven or eight years, and for, like, the last three or four years, we were commuting back and forth every six months. And then we decided to commit to it last year because our kids were going to go to school."
Marc Piasecki / Getty Images
17. Josh Hartnett and his wife, Tamsin Egerton, lived between the US and the UK (her home country) for years but spent lockdown in the UK. Then, when they were expecting their third child, they decided to stay in Hampshire for good. In 2024, he told the Guardian that in NYC or LA, "people only want to talk about your career," but he prefers how, in Hampshire, "nobody cares." He also said that, because he's on a marriage visa, he's only allowed to leave the UK for work for 180 days out of the year, giving him time to make about one movie. He's fine with that and enjoys getting to spend more time with his kids while they're growing up.
Karwai Tang / WireImage / Via Getty
18. And finally, Michael Sheen moved from LA back home to Port Talbot, Wales in 2018. He first began considering relocation seven years prior when he played Jesus in a local three-day-long theatrical performance of the Passion alongside residents who were dealing with the increasing cost of living and job losses.
Dave Benett /He told the Sunday Times, "Once you become aware of difficulties in the area you come from, you don't have to do anything. You can live somewhere else, visit family at Christmas, and turn a blind eye to injustice. It doesn't make you a bad person, but I'd seen something I couldn't unsee. I had to apply myself, and I might not have the impact I'd like, but the one thing that I can say is that I'm doing stuff. I know I am — I'm paying for it!"
Eamonn M. McCormack / Getty Images