Ariana Grande has quit her upcoming London theatre role and will step back from public life after facing what her spokesperson described as "ongoing public scrutiny" over her appearance, it was confirmed on Sunday.
The singer and actress, 33, is currently on her Eternal Sunshine tour and plans to withdraw from the spotlight once it wraps in London on September 1.
Her spokesperson told PEOPLE that "Ariana will be taking a step back from visibility," adding that she will be taking "a much-deserved break from public-facing work and appearances, which has led to endless, ongoing public scrutiny."
The scrutiny over Grande's appearance intensified after her starring role in the two Wicked films and the press tours that followed in 2024 and 2025.
During the 2024 Wicked press tour, Grande wore a string of outfits that echoed the wardrobe of her idol Audrey Hepburn, star of Breakfast At Tiffany's, but her appearance has since sparked concern that the tribute has gone beyond a playful fashion nod.
Who was Audrey Hepburn
Hepburn is remembered as one of the most glamorous women of the 20th century, but her life beyond fame was marked by childhood trauma, starvation and a lifelong sense of being unloved.
Born in Brussels, Belgium in May 1929 to Englishman Joseph Ruston and Dutch baroness Ella van Heemstra, both of whom were fascist sympathisers, Hepburn suffered childhood malnutrition while growing up in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands during the Second World War, which permanently affected her frame and growth.
British film director Helena Coan, who made a 2020 biopic of the star, told Harper's Bazaar that women should not aspire to Hepburn's body type. "It was important for me to tell audiences that Audrey was so skinny because she starved," she said. "If you look at pictures of her before the war, she looked totally different. Her body is not something you should aspire to have; she ended up that way because she didn't have a choice, as a result of tragedy."
Coan added that Hepburn, who died of cancer of the appendix in 1993, wanted to "change everything about herself" despite being widely regarded as the "most beautiful woman that ever lived." "She wished she was blonde and that she had a fuller figure," Coan said.
Wartime famine and a stalled ballet career
Hepburn's father walked out on the family when she was six, and her mother sent her to England, where she attended a private school in Kent and lived with a local family.
After the war began, her mother took her back to Arnhem in the Netherlands just before Nazi Germany invaded. The family survived largely on food made from tulip bulbs during the ensuing famine, which killed as many as 20,000 people. Hepburn was rescued by Unicef agents from a basement at the end of the war, left seriously ill with jaundice, anaemia, oedema and a respiratory infection.
After recovering, she moved to London and won a scholarship to the Ballet Rambert in Notting Hill, hoping to become a ballerina, but was told her malnutrition and weak constitution meant she would not succeed. She turned to acting instead, appearing in a West End musical, a background in musical theatre she shares with Grande, who began her career as a child actress in the Broadway musical 13.
Parallel heartbreaks
The two stars' relationships with men also echo one another. Hepburn's first husband, Mel Ferrer, was controlling and difficult, while her second husband, Andrea Dotti, cheated on her repeatedly, leaving her feeling insecure for life.
Grande was married to real estate broker Dalton Gomez for three years before the marriage ended in divorce in 2024. She then began a relationship with her Wicked co-star Ethan Slater, who had recently split from his childhood sweetheart Lilly Jay not long after the couple welcomed their first child. Grande and Slater have since split after three years together, and she is now reported to be back with her ex-boyfriend Ricky Alvarez.
A hidden sadness
Despite winning the rare entertainment quartet of an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony, Hepburn carried a deep sadness. In the 2020 biopic, her granddaughter Emma broke down describing it: "My dad said about my grandmother that the best-kept secret about Audrey is that she was sad... I really think she just wanted love, and to be loved. I think she got that in her life, but I don't think she got that from a lot of people. You know, for the woman who is most loved in the world to have such a lack of love is so sad."
Hepburn traced the sadness to her father's departure. "I learned as a child it's terribly important for a child to have a father. For having my father cut off, or he cut himself off, I was desperate," she said. "If I could have just seen him regularly, I would have felt he loved me, and I would have had a father. You become very insecure about affection, and terribly grateful for it, and you have an enormous desire to give it."
Grande was also estranged from her father, a graphic designer who split from her mother, Joan, when the singer was eight, and the two had lost touch by 2013. Grande chose to use her mother's surname professionally, a decision some have suspected was also influenced by her close bond with her grandmother, Marjorie Grande.
Grande called the falling-out with her father "one of the hardest things" she had to deal with. "It's private… It took me so long to be okay with it," she told Seventeen magazine in 2014. "So much of me comes from my father, and for so long, I didn't like that about myself. I had to accept that it's okay not to get along with somebody and still love them." Father and daughter have since reconnected.
Fashion tributes to Hepburn
Grande has long spoken of her admiration for Hepburn, tweeting in 2010 that Breakfast At Tiffany's was her favourite film. In a 2014 New York Times profile, she said she was trying to channel Hepburn's aesthetic on her 2013 debut album, Yours Truly.
The custom silk Vera Wang gown Grande wore for her 2021 wedding to Gomez, held in an intimate ceremony in Montecito, was widely compared to the dress Hepburn wore in the 1957 film Funny Face, in which she played Jo Stockton.
Petal video backlash
Grande's appearance has come under further scrutiny in recent months following the release of her music video for Petal. She has insisted publicly that she is healthy, but that has not stopped fans commenting on how gaunt she appears in the video.
In the video, Grande plays Pepper, an aspiring starlet who attends multiple auditions. After failing one, a group of studio executives call her "unmarketable," "unattractive" and "inauthentic," and accuse her of having a personality disorder. "We miss the old you," one tells her. "Maybe you could go out and find her and come back and give it another shot?" Pepper leaves, then returns with a chainsaw and dismembers the men, before returning drenched in blood to a round of applause from the other female auditionees.
Reaction focused heavily on Grande's weight. "This is like looking at Karen Carpenter and everyone was like [shrug]," one fan wrote. Another said: "I am actually so over us normalizing this and acting like this is okay." A third called it "shocking and heartbreaking."
Other fans defended the singer. "If y'all actually cared about her you wouldn't be publicly making comments about her body," one wrote, while another said: "The irony of all the girls over 200 pounds saying she's 'unhealthy.' You think being 200 pounds is healthy? Good lord, the jealousy is screaming from you guys!"
Grande has pushed back on body comments before, singing on her 2024 track Yes, And?, from the album Eternal Sunshine: "My face is sitting, I don't need no disguise. Don't comment on my body, do not reply. Your business is yours and mine is mine. Why do you care so much whose... I ride? Why?"
What comes next
After 1967, Hepburn stepped back from the spotlight to devote more time to her family and charity work, acting only occasionally.
In January, Grande told Vogue Japan it would probably be "healthy" for her to take a career break. "I'm not used to taking breaks. But I do know that I grew so much from taking space from music while I was filming Wicked... But yeah, these past few years have been pretty non-stop. And by few, I mean 15."
The Wicked: For Good actress said she is now looking for more balance. "Balance is the goal for the next 15 years. I don't think they will look like the previous 15 years. I think there will be more balance."
