11 stars who have spoken in public about their private heartbreak

A broken heart can be devastating and it doesn't matter if you're famous or a regular human being - it hurts like hell.

It's a personal thing, but many stars have been able to talk about their own experiences of a broken heart. Here's how 10 of the biggest stars responded when they parted ways with a loved one and how they overcame all that pain.

Selena Gomez has spoken about the struggles of her love life on several occasions. Her most famous ex is Justin Bieber, and we all know that wasn't an easy ride for the young stars.

She's OK now (she's dating The Weeknd, so why wouldn't she be?) but that's not to say her broken heart hasn't left a scar and some difficult memories.

"I've wanted to be in a strong head space for years, and I really wasn't," she says in a new interview with In Style magazine.

"Before, I was so young and easily influenced, and I'd feel insecure. You want someone to add to your life, not to complete you."

Now, as well as herself, she's putting people other than her partner first.

"It's really important for me to love and nourish my friends and family and to make sure that I never get influenced by a guy," she says.

In a shock to fans, Elle revealed via Instagram that she'd got secretly hitched three weeks after meeting Andrew 'Fergie' Ferguson. But a happy ending wasn't on the horizon, with Elle revealing in the same post that they're in the process of divorcing:

"My heart is broken. My soul aches. I am lost. He is the greatest love of my life. He is my best friend. As we separate, and attempt to find our footing through life, all I can hope for us is that we both find happiness within ourselves."

Anyone who's seen Katy's tour movie Part Of Me will know how hard she took her divorce with comedian Russell Brand in 2011.

She later revealed that she made a conscious choice to deal with the break-up in a positive way and to not self-destruct.

"There are two ways you can go: You can either nurture yourself or go destructive," she told Marie Claire in 2014.

"I have gone down the destructive path before, and that didn’t work for me. You dig deep beyond those scars and find that soft tissue again, and you massage and nurture it and bring it to life, little by little, through serving yourself well.

"I did it through hikes and vitamins and therapy and prayer and good friends."

All the Little Mix girls have had their fair share of heartbreak, but Leigh-Anne was the one who spoke most openly about how their 2016 single Shout Out To My Ex related to her painful break-up.

Leigh-Anne says she needed to embrace the pain when she split from long term boyfriend Jordan Kiffin last year.

"I kind of need to dwell on it, I need to cry, I need to feel like s***," she told Yahoo in 2016.

"Then I can move on to “Shout Out to My Ex” and feel better about it all. But I think everyone handles it in different ways."

Break ups hurt and even the toughest people can be torn apart when they lose someone they love. Just ask tennis ace Serena Williams.

"It definitely isn’t a good feeling," she told Piers Morgan on his TV show in 2012.

"I think having surgery is definitely a lot easier — having a pulmonary embolism is definitely a lot easier than a heartbreak."

Emma Stone's description of having her heart broken for the first time is dramatic (she is an actress) but not unfamiliar to anyone who's struggled to deal with the end of a relationship.

"I was crawling on the floor. I remember throwing up," she told Interview magazine in 2012.

"I have never felt anything quite like that. It was so visceral. It’s like someone has killed you and you have to live through it and watch it happen. It was awful."

Rihanna may seem like an untouchable presence in the pop world, but even she had her heart broken and struggled to put herself back together.

"I was very lost. I have to say I felt really confused," she told Marie Claire in 2010.

"I hate talking about it but it was really crazy because I felt so out of touch with myself and when that happens it’s scary because nothing you say or do feels like it’s you.

"You just lose touch of everything that you love and everything that you would normally do."

Jennifer Lopez has gone through a number of public break-ups, including her split from Ben Affleck, which she has described as "her first big heartbreak".

"Back then the pain hurt so much, but I didn’t want what happened to finish me," she told Glamour magazine in 2014, ten years after the split.

"I wanted it to help me grow for the better. I didn’t want to just survive it; I wanted to come out of it stronger than I was before. It took a lot of digging to do that."

"Right now I’d say it was the hardest thing I’ve ever been through."

We know how Taylor Swift deals with her heartbreak; she turns it into hit albums. But just because she's a pop superstar, doesn't mean a broken heart hurts any less.

"The only way that I can feel better about myself — pull myself out of that awful pain of losing someone — is writing songs about it to get some sort of clarity," she told Vogue magazine.

Drake has made a career from sharing his feelings, many of them relating to Rihanna, who he first revealed broke his heart in 2011.

"I was hurt because I slowly started to realize what it was. I guess I thought it was more," he told Elle magazine.

"That was the first girl with any fame that paid me any mind."

Lorde is best mates with Taylor Swift and she's learned a thing or two from Swifty about dealing with a broken heart. She wrote her new single Green Light about her first experience of heartbreak - and turned it into one of the biggest tunes of 2017 so far.

"This song is a break up song, even though it doesn't sound like a break up song," she told MistaJam.

"It's about me trying to put myself back together and move on and that's the start of the record, the rebuild."