Celebrities Who Left the U.S. Amid Trump Presidency and Current Political Climate (Among Other Reasons)

Ellen DeGeneres confirmed that she and her wife, Portia de Rossi, left the U.S. for the United Kingdom because of Trump. After the former talk show host wrapped up her final comedy tour, titled Ellen’s Last Stand … Up, last year, DeGeneres and de Rossi initially planned to move to the U.K. for a few months. However, they decided to permanently relocate when Trump was voted back into office.

“We got here the day before the election and woke up to lots of texts from our friends with crying emojis, and I was like, ‘He got in,’” she said during a live conversation in Cheltenham, England, in July 2025. “And we’re like, ‘We’re staying here.’”

DeGeneres added that she and de Rossi might also get married again in England since “The Baptist Church in America is trying to reverse gay marriage” in America. She said, “They’re trying to literally stop it from happening in the future and possibly reverse it. Portia and I are already looking into it, and if they do that, we’re going to get married here.”

Rosie O’Donnell, who has been a longtime critic of Trump’s policies, shared in March 2025 that she moved from the U.S. to Ireland, where she is in the process of getting citizenship. The Emmy winner said she moved with her 12-year-old daughter, Clay, and her service dog, Kuma, due to the current U.S. political climate amid Trump’s return to the White House.

“It has been heartbreaking to see what is happening over there politically and hard for me personally as well,” she said in a TikTok video. “When you know it is safe for all citizens to have equal rights there in America, that’s when we will consider coming back.”

James Cameron has said he has no plans to move back to the U.S., partly due to Trump’s controversial policies. While the Avatar filmmaker, born in Canada, has been based in New Zealand for the past 14 years, he is looking to stay and hoping to get his New Zealand citizenship.

“I see a turn away from everything decent,” Cameron said of the States in February 2025 on Stuff‘s The F#$%ing News podcast. “America doesn’t stand for anything if it doesn’t stand for what it has historically stood for. It becomes a hollow idea, and I think they’re hollowing it out as fast as they can for their own benefit.”

Eva Longoria has been open about her reasons for moving her family out of what she’s previously called the “dystopian” United States, now splitting their time between Mexico and Spain. While the actress has explained that she left the U.S. “because my work took me there,” she previously told Marie Claire that not only was the “vibe different” in the States post-COVID, but that Trump’s re-election was also a factor.

“The shocking part is not that he won,” she said of Trump‘s victory last year. “It’s that a convicted criminal who spews so much hate could hold the highest office.” Longoria also acknowledged that she is “privileged” to be able to make the decision to move away, as “most Americans aren’t so lucky. They’re going to be stuck in this dystopian country, and my anxiety and sadness is for them.”

Though Sophie Turner is not from the U.S., she moved there during her marriage to Joe Jonas from 2019 to 2024. However, she has since returned home to the U.K., partly due to the current politics in the States.

The Game of Thrones actress, who shares two daughters with Jonas, opened up to Harper’s Bazaar in October 2024 about her reason for leaving the States, saying that “everything just kind of piled on,” including “the gun violence, Roe v. Wade being overturned.” She previously told British Vogue in May 2024 that she felt like a “little bird trapped in a gilded cage” in the U.S.

“I couldn’t fathom being a mother of one of those children [in the 2022 Uvalde school shooting] knowing that this was something your country could fix, that they’d rather have rights to guns than give kids a right to life,” Turned said. “Meanwhile, women in the U.S. are being stripped of their rights, left, right and center. It all contributed to this feeling of I have to get out, I have to get out.”

Richard Gere didn’t specifically move his family from America to Spain due to Trump’s second term in the White House, but the actor is definitely staying connected with the current state of politics in the U.S. In November 2024, the Pretty Woman actor told THR that he left the States because “my wife is Spanish, and she deserves to have her family and her friends and her culture. And it’s good for our kids, who are bilingual, to have them live in Spain for a while.”

However, Gere added that he believes the U.S. is headed in a “very dark direction right now,” so he has no plans to “disconnect from the social and political process in the U.S. I think it’s too important. We all have to stay plugged in.”

After living in the U.K. for several years, Courtney Love now plans to make it her permanent home, even applying for British citizenship. Though she didn’t directly cite Trump as the reason for her move, she did slam the current president and his administration during a March 2025 event at the Royal Geographical Society in London.

“In terms of Trump and particularly this group … it’s like emperor-core. Like, [they’re] wearing million-dollar watches,” Love said. “Emperor-core is going on at Mar-a-Lago. It’s frightening now. It’s like cyanide now.”

Robin Wright recently shared that she’s been working and living in the U.K. for the past few years because “America is a shitshow.” The actress-producer-director didn’t specifically cite Trump and U.S. politics as the reason for her move but noted that there’s “a freedom of self here” in England as opposed to America, where “everything’s rush, competition and speed.”

“America is a shitshow. … I love being in this country. There’s a freedom of self here. People are so kind,” Wright said in her interview with The Times U.K. “They’re living. They’re not in the car in traffic, panicked on a phone call, eating a sandwich. That’s most of America. Everything’s rush, competition and speed.”