Culture

Billie Eilish Has Tourette's Syndrome And Is "Incredibly Offended" When People Laugh At Her Tics

20-year-old music sensation Billie Eilish became a household name fairly recently and her career has been blowing up ever since. She even won an Oscar for Best Original Song this year.

By Gina Florio1 min read
billie eilish
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Billie and her brother Finneas have been taking the music industry by storm. The more she rises to fame, the more she has opened up about her life even though she's a fairly private person. Last year she revealed that she started watching porn as a kid and it negatively impacted her early sexual experience. "I think porn is a disgrace," she said. In a recent interview with David Letterman, she opened up about something else: her diagnosis of Tourette's syndrome.

Billie Eilish Has Tourette's Syndrome and Is "Incredibly Offended" When People Laugh at Her Tics

Billie was only 11 years old when she was diagnosed with Tourette's syndrome, a fact that you probably didn't know. Tourette's is a neurological disorder that can cause uncontrollable repetitive movements, and these tics can sometimes come out of nowhere, causing people to wonder what the person is doing.

She has lived with the disorder for a long time, but there's one thing that she doesn't appreciate—and that's being laughed at for her tics.

"The most common way that people react is they laugh because they think I'm trying to be funny," she said. "And I'm always left incredibly offended by that."

Although she doesn't like being laughed at, she's not someone who shies away from talking about Tourette's. In fact, she said she's "very happy talking about it" and she finds it "very, very interesting" even though sometimes she can be "incredibly confused about it."

When she's moving around and performing, you don't notice any symptoms. "When I'm moving around I'm not even ticking at all," she said. But she still has some subtle tics that can be "very exhausting" for her, even if they're not very noticeable when you're having a conversation with her.

In her interview with Letterman, she also discussed her method of creating music and how she ends up with hit songs.