"I got very clear and got very comfortable with being by myself."

The singer first opened up about his decision to be celibate in 2008, explaining in an interview with Maxim, "[It's] just a promise I made until I get married. Where I'm at in life, the women have got to come with something else, not just the body, but the mind and spirit." In 2024, he confirmed that he has remained celibate and hasn't been in a serious relationship for nine years. "It’s a spiritual thing," he told The Guardian. "I have become very set in my ways, in the way I live."

The actress was celibate for several years before meeting her now-fiancé Van Hunt. "I was solo and celibate for four years," she said in an interview with The Times Magazine. "I had to really sit myself down and be alone and grow and reflect and realize my value. I had decided if the right person doesn’t come, I will be alone. And that’s okay. I’m enough by myself. I’ve got my children. I have my career. That’s more than enough. I have an embarrassment of riches."

The pop star has been married to Hailey Bieber for over seven years now, but shortly before the couple reconnected, he practiced a year-long period of intentional celibacy to deal with his "legitimate problem with sex." He explained in an interview with Vogue, "Sometimes people have sex because they don’t feel good enough. Because they lack self-worth. Women do that, and guys do that. I wanted to rededicate myself to God in that way because I really felt it was better for the condition of my soul. And I believe that God blessed me with Hailey as a result."

To prepare for his role in Silence (2016), the actor immersed himself in spirituality and practiced celibacy for six months. "I had an incredibly spiritual experience," he said on the WTF with Marc Maron podcast. "I did a bunch of spiritual practices every day, I created new rituals for myself. I was celibate for six months. It was very cool, man. I had some pretty wild, trippy experiences from starving myself of sex and food for that period of time. ... It gives you some gifts, for sure."

While discussing Andrew Garfield's six-month celibacy stint on The Drew Barrymore Show, the daytime host admitted she's perfectly fine going "years" without sex. "I was like, 'What's wrong with me that six months doesn't seem like a very long time?' I was like, 'Yeah, so?'"

The rapper didn't hold back her thoughts when she decided to abstain from sex for a "New Year's reset," writing candidly on Twitter/X, "Started my 90 day celibacy lil s--- for new year’s or wtv. I’m on da 9th day & my vision blurry af !!!!! Send help."

Lady Gaga is currently engaged to tech entrepreneur Michael Polansky, but in 2010, she stated, "I can’t believe I’m saying this — don’t have sex. I’m single right now, and I’ve chosen to be single because I don’t have the time to get to know anybody. So it’s okay not to have sex, it’s okay to get to know people. I’m celibate, celibacy’s fine."

The Project Runaway personality has been open about his choice to remain celibate for decades after experiencing a brutal breakup when he was younger. "He was the only person I'd ever been with. This is the advent of AIDS. It's 1982. The self-pity then turned to completely unbridled anger because I thought he may have given me a death sentence," he told Chelsea Handler on her Dear Chelsea podcast. "Whenever I was even tempted to engage in something that could become serious with someone, all this would come back like Niagara Falls, and it would just take the desire away."

The Brooklyn Nine-Nine actor shared that he and his wife experimented with celibacy to try to improve their marriage. "I went on a 90-day sex fast [with] her," he said. "And it wasn't about sex. It took us back to those moments. I felt like I was 12 years old again, because sex had been taken out of the equation and it was all about love again."

Before dating her now-husband Robert Pattinson, Waterhouse says she had a "bout of celibacy," explaining, "It's just something about taking away the chaos of receiving attention, having to deal with it and texting people and getting those lurches of excitement. It turned out to be great. I got very clear and got very comfortable with being by myself — then I ended up meeting my boyfriend."

Shortly before he began dating Katy Perry, the actor followed the advice of a friend who suggested he try a six-month celibacy stint to "figure it out" before trying to get into a serious relationship. "I was going to do three months, but I was really enjoying the way I was relating to women, and to the feminine within myself," he said in an interview with The Times.

The singer revealed that she had purposefully gone seven years without having sex, sharing on on the Way Up with Angela Yee radio show, "Just doing without [sex], it shifted my mindset. "It was no longer a focus. The rush to be in a relationship, the rush to be married, the rush to ... have kids or procreate ... I have to start with self [love] always, versus expecting from other sources."

The Dancing with the Stars pro revealed in 2022 that she had been celibate since her divorce from Matthew Lawrence. She revisited the topic earlier this year on on iHeart Radio’s I Do, Part 2 podcast, sharing, "I'm not dating, and I'm choosing not to date. I still think guys are hot. That doesn't mean, though, that they deserve me."

Before he was a father to 12 children, Cannon tried celibacy "for a year-and-a-half when I was young," recalling, "At one point I was attempting to be celibate because it was a very spiritual and religious thing when you grow up in a Christian setting and fornication is bad and all of that stuff. The goal was like, 'Oh, I've found a partner and we're going to withhold and not have sex until marriage.' And then she cheated on me."