Barbra StreisandĪlthough she doesn’t suffer from heart problems herself, the singer wanted to raise awareness of how many women are dying from heart disease after her mother Diana was diagnosed at the age of 81. It was replaced in 2009, leaving Elton feeling like ‘a turbo bunny’. Elton JohnĮlton had a pacemaker fitted back in 1999 after tests revealed he had an irregular heartbeat. The youngest celebrity on our list, the 24-year-old pop star has tachycardia, a condition that is not life-threatening but causes her resting heart rhythm to exceed the normal range.
Although she managed her condition for a number of years, it was the cause of her death in 2011 at the age of 79. Heart failure means the heart cannot pump blood properly around the body and becomes more common as we get older. Hollywood legend Elizabeth Taylor was diagnosed with heart failure in 2004. The singer, who was only 53, had dilated cardiomyopathy, a condition in which the heart’s ability to pump blood is decreased. George Michael was also suffering from heart disease at the time of his death on Christmas Day 2016. And while drugs can have a harmful effect on the heart, the coroner was not able to establish whether Fisher’s addiction contributed to her death or was just a tragic coincidence.
However, the exact cause of her death at the age of 60 could not be determined in the coroner’s report – her atherosclerosis may or may not have been a contributing factor. Yet the actress was also living with heart disease and died several days after suffering a cardiac event on a long-haul flight. The Star Wars star’s untimely death on 30 December 2016 was widely considered to be the result of chronic drug addiction. Age, genes and lifestyle can all play their part but if you assume heart disease only affects overweight old men, these celebrity sufferers could help prove otherwise.