10 Celebrities Who Got Revenge on Their Childhood Bullies

Find out how these stars got their revenge…

Michael B. Jordan once ran into a former bully when he was walking the red carpet at the premiere of his film Creed III. As Michael approached a line of reporters, he recognized a woman named Lore’l who had teased him when they were classmates. In fact, Lore’l had admitted it herself on a podcast, calling Michael a “nice, corny guy.”

“We went to Chad Science [Academy] together in Newark, and to be honest with you, we teased him all the damn time because his name was Michael Jordan. Let’s start there, and he was no Michael Jordan,” she said on The Undressing Room podcast. “And he also would come to school with a headshot. We lived in Newark. That’s the ’hood. We would make fun of him like, ‘What you gonna do with your stupid headshot!?’ And now look at him!”

Michael obviously heard Lore’l’s comments because when he came face-to-face with her, he immediately called her out by saying, “Oh yeah, I was the corny kid, right?” While Lore’l tried to claim she was misquoted, he totally shut her down and seemed unimpressed by the whole thing.

For Lady Gaga, success was the best revenge -- especially because her bullies told her that she would never make it big in the entertainment industry. While Gaga was a student at NYU, some of those bullies created a Facebook group called “Stefani Germanotta, you’ll never be famous.” Obviously, she proved them wrong. 

“Some people I went to college w made this way back when 👏👏👏 this is why you can’t give up when people doubt you or put you down—gotta keep going,” Gaga commented on a TikTok video about the situation.

Jennifer Lawrence admits she got revenge on her bullies -- long before she was famous. Looking back on her middle school days, she says a classmate once asked her to hand out invites to a party she wasn’t invited to. Jennifer ended up agreeing to the task but got her revenge by ditching the invites in the trash.

“Ugh, there was this one girl at school who handed me a stack of invitations to her birthday party, but I was not invited. She asked me to hand them out. Isn’t that so mean?” Jennifer told E! News. “It’s fine, I spat on them and threw them in the trash.”

Kate Winslet is of the mindset that success is the best revenge. Looking back on her childhood, Kate says there were other girls who made fun of her appearance and would bully her when she started getting acting roles as a teenager. Instead of letting it get to her, she just worked harder.

“I was kind of bullied when I was younger, actually at school. For being chubby, you know, I had girls who were envious of me because I was acting a little bit as a teenager,” she said during a Today show interview. “This is my revenge. This right here, this lovely career I have been blessed with. I have healthy children. You know, I have a really happy life and, to me, it's like, ‘Well, look at me now girls!’”

Taylor Swift came face-to-face with her bullies on her rise to fame. Looking back, she says that when she was in middle school, she got “dumped by a group of popular girls” who told her she wasn’t “cool or pretty enough” and stopped talking to her. But just a few years later, Taylor got signed to a record label and returned to her hometown for a concert. Her bullies showed up -- and it made her realize that success was the best revenge. 

“They showed up, wearing my t-shirts and asking me to sign their CDs,” she told Teen Vogue. “It was bittersweet because it made me realize that they didn’t remember being mean to me and that I needed to forget about it, too. Really, if I hadn’t come home from school miserable every day, maybe I wouldn’t have been so motivated to write songs. I should probably thank them!”

Chris Rock has been open about the bullying he faced growing up, being tortured by a group of boys who spit in his face and even threw him down flights of stairs. In a moment of sweet revenge, one of his bullies ended up being a security guard on the set of Chris’ movie Top Five, which he both starred in and directed. He decided to get revenge by killing him with kindness. 

“‘Hey, man, hope you’re doing well. You take care,’” Chris recalled saying. “The fact that he had to go through that whole day and watch me walk around and watch me -- I was directing a movie -- and watch me be me in all my glory. And to be so close to me and yet so motherf--king far.”

Henry Cavill admits that he was frequently bullied growing up, often teased for his appearance and being heavier than his peers. Since becoming famous, he says he’s bumped into a few of his former bullies and has gotten his revenge by completely ignoring them. 

“I’ve had a couple of awkward moments where I’ve seen one in the room and deliberately ignored him and really enjoyed it. He kept looking over and trying to make eye contact and I just kept on blanking him. That was enjoyable,” he told The Sun.

When Winona Ryder was in middle school, she says she was so severely bullied that she ended up in the hospital. She shared that on one terrible occasion in seventh grade, she was wearing a suit to school and ended up getting attacked by classmates. 

“I was wearing an old Salvation Army shop boy’s suit. As I went to the bathroom, I heard people saying, ‘Hey, fa----.’ They slammed my head into a locker. I fell to the ground and they started to kick the shit out of me. I had to have stitches. The school kicked me out, not the bullies,” she wrote in Winona Ryder: The Biography. 

She continued, “Years later, I went to a coffee shop and I ran into one of the girls who’d kicked me, and she said, ‘Winona, Winona, can I have your autograph?’ And I said, ‘Do you remember me? Remember in seventh grade you beat up that kid?’ And she said, ‘Kind of.’ And I said, ‘That was me. Go f--k yourself.’”

Anna Camp got revenge on her high school bully before she even graduated. Looking back, Anna says after being teased for so long, she formulated a plan to get back at her bully during a school play. Her bully landed the lead role while Anna was stuck working behind-the-scenes, giving her the perfect opportunity to serve up revenge. One of her duties was filling up a water pitcher that her classmate would drink out of -- and Anna filled it with toilet water.

“I was so excited and felt so riveted watching her do this,” she said on Lisa Vanderpump’s show Overserved, adding, “I have a little dark side.”

While Mike Tyson may be an intimidating force now, as a kid he was bullied. Looking back, Mike says he was often beaten up and even once had his glasses thrown into a truck’s gas tank. As soon as it was possible though, Mike enacted revenge on his tormentors. Any time he saw them in public, he says he gave them a beating. 

“I began to exact some revenge for the beatings I had taken from bullies. I’d be walking with some friends and I might see one of the guys who beat me up and bullied me years earlier. He might have gone into a store shopping and I would drag his a-- out of the store,” he wrote in his book Undisputed Truth. “That guy who took my glasses and threw them away? I beat him in the streets like a f--king dog for humiliating me.”