11 Celebrities Who Decided To Leave The United States Behind

While it may not be the most convenient choice to be so far away from film sets and red carpet events, these stars say that leaving the U.S. was an easy choice for their families and they’re now living their best lives abroad.

Find out why these stars left the United States…

Eva Longoria recently revealed that over the past few years, she and her family have been splitting their time between Spain and Mexico. She says that after the pandemic, it just felt like the chapter of their life in California was over. While it didn’t have to do with politics, Eva admits factors like homelessness and high taxes played a role in their decision to leave. And since she often works in Europe and her husband José Bastón is from Mexico, the move just made sense.

“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,” Eva told Marie Claire.

Ellen DeGeneres and her wife Portia de Rossi have long lived in California but in 2024, they were traveling through England when they fell in love with a home in the Cotswolds. The couple decided to purchase the home and not long after, reportedly decided to relocate there permanently. According to TMZ, they were “very disillusioned” after Donald Trump won the election and decided to pack their bags.

In 2022, Amber Heard relocated to Spain after the conclusion of her defamation trial against ex-husband Johnny Depp. Since then, Amber and her daughter Oonagh have been living a low key life abroad and while she hasn’t spoken out about the reasons behind her move, she says she loves living in Spain.

“I love Spain so much,” Amber said in a video acquired by TMZ. When they asked if she plans on staying, she replied, “Yes, I hope so. Yes, I love living here.”

Kate Walsh relocated to Western Australia during the pandemic. The actress traveled to Australia in early 2020 to visit her now-fiancé Andrew Nixon and fell in love with the area. When she found out it wasn’t possible for her to travel home to the United States because of COVID restrictions at the time, she didn’t mind and decided to stay as long as possible.

“I’m really lucky to have a great, rounded life right now,” she told The Spruce. “I feel like that’s one of the things living in Australia has given me is a great life, I met the love of my life, and I’ve got my little old cat and little old dog down there. It’s been great to be there and have that be a place of rest and comfort, and then also just have this just massive abundance of work and so I feel very, really lucky.”

Christina Milian and her French husband Matt Pokora spent years splitting their time between France and the United States -- but recently decided to permanently relocate to Paris. Now that their youngest children are attending school, they made the decision to set down some roots.

“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,” she said on The Jennifer Hudson Show. “And then we decided to commit to it last year because our kids were going to go to school.”

She continued, “I love it out there! So our children, they’re 3, 4, and of course Violet is 14, they’re all going to school in Paris. What better of an opportunity than that.”

Lindsay Lohan has been living abroad for years. Back in 2014, she relocated to Dubai and is now living there with her husband Bader Shammas and their son Luai. She says that she loves the peace and privacy she’s afforded there, especially because there are no paparazzi photographers following her everywhere.

“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,” she told Flaunt.

She continued, “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."

Janet Jackson has been living in London for over six years. She first moved across the pond while she was married to billionaire businessman Wissam Al Mana. The couple went on to welcome a son together and while they’ve now split, she says their child is a big reason she’s stayed in London. In an interview with Allure, Janet shared that although she’s there for her son, she wishes she could live in California full time.

In 2024, Richard Gere and his family relocated to Spain. He explained that his wife, Alejandra Silva, is from Spain and he thought that they should spend some time living in her home country after having lived in the United States since they tied the knot in 2018.

“For me, going to Madrid is going to be a great adventure because I have never lived full-time outside the United States. And I think it will be very interesting for my children as well. For Alejandra, it will be wonderful to be closer to her family, her lifelong friends, and her culture. She was very generous in giving me six years living in my world, so I think it is only fair that I give her at least another six living in hers,” he told Vanity Fair Spain.

While Lily Collins still lives in Los Angeles part time, she and her husband Charlie McDowell spend a lot of the year in Copenhagen, Denmark. Lily says she’s grateful they made the move and has nothing but nice things to say about the city.

“Life here is just so wonderful and so calm and bright. 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. It feels like a big city but also very intimate, and everyone is so nice,” Lily told Elle Danmark.

Early on in the pandemic, Pamela Anderson decided to move back to her hometown of Vancouver Island, British Columbia in Canada. Looking back, she says was in a bad headspace at the time and wanted to take an opportunity to reconnect with herself and her roots. She even purchased a motel that was once owned by her grandmother and renovated it.

“I guess [it was] a homecoming, you could say to really kind of look at my life and remember who I was -- not what other people were telling me I was. I didn’t want anything that had happened to me define me. I wanted what I do to define me,” Pamela told Women's Wear Daily

Shania Twain may be from Canada but she and her husband Frédéric Thiébaud primarily spend their time in Corseaux, Switzerland. Shania initially moved overseas in the late ’90s with her then-husband Robert John Lange, hoping to escape the hustle of Hollywood.

“I was having a hard time finding peace and solitude,” she told Country Music Today back in 2002. “Part of the reason we came here is that the people don’t care about any celebrity. They are very discreet about it, and they pride themselves on that. I find that when I’m home, I can blend in and pretty much forget anything about fame.”

She continued, “We don’t live in a main city so we’re really not that accessible. Which is great, because I get to do my daily things with pretty much complete privacy. And that definitely could not happen in America.”