Tragic Details About Olivia Rodrigo's Life

Olivia Rodrigo experienced the kind of overnight stardom few artists can relate to. But her journey wasn't easy. For starters, she became a pop star despite suffering from a congenital hearing condition. Then there is the fact she was thrown into the lion's den before turning 18, when her debut single became an instant hit in January 2021. Coping was no easy feat, and she got through it thanks to years of therapy. The success of Rodrigo's song "Drivers License" and its album "Sour" also had consequences for those around her.

The heartbreak in her songs was quickly attributed to Rodrigo's reported relationship with Joshua Bassett (paired with the controversy involving Sabrina Carpenter and a potential love triangle). Bassett was so distraught by the negative reaction and online stalking from Rodrigo's fans that he ended up in the hospital from the stress. But the issues arising from the success of "Sour" carried on beyond. The pressure on Rodrigo to replicate its success with her second album was hard to handle.

Sitting in the shadow cast by her debut album, Rodrigo often found herself doubting her music — though she had nothing to worry about, as her follow-up "Guts" went on to be received with massive critical acclaim. Rodrigo is a big deal, but not everyone has gotten the memo. A border officer not only failed to recognize her but also confused her for a repeat offender on the run. Rodrigo may barely be in her 20s, but she has already overcome quite a few hurdles. 

Musicians rely a lot on their hearing, but Olivia Rodrigo proves their hearing doesn't need to be perfect. As it turns out, she was born half-deaf in her left ear, a condition she still lives with today. Whenever she sits down for interviews, she asks to be where her right ear can face the interviewer. However, she wasn't aware of her birth defect until later.  "I never knew until kindergarten or so when they're doing the tests on all the kids, and they were like, 'Oh, you're a little hard of hearing,'" she told The Hollywood Reporter in 2023.

But because she was born with it and knew no different, she never let the condition have a big impact on her life. It's even become a joke in her inner circle. "One of my friends is this great photographer, Petra Collins, and she has really bad vision, and so we always joke that I make music because I have bad hearing, and she takes photos because she has bad vision," she said. Rodrigo wasn't letting a birth defect get her down.

In addition to one-sided hearing loss, Rodrigo also suffers from synesthesia, a neurological condition in which the brain activates the wrong sense when it receives sensory stimulation. In her case, she sees colors when she hears music. "Lots of songs on 'Sour' are purple, like 'Drivers License' is purple but 'Good 4 U' is like a purple-y blue," she told Vogue in 2019.

During her 2024 Guts World Tour, Olivia Rodrigo had her first run-in with the law. She hadn't done anything wrong, but the authorities didn't know that. Her bus was crossing the northern border on the way back into the U.S. from Canada along the West Coast when a federal officer ordered her to come out after looking at her passport. It was 3 a.m., and, in her haziness, she initially believed he might want an autograph for his daughter.

But no, he escorted her to an interrogation room. The officer asked if she had ever been arrested before. She said "No" because it was the truth, but the agent kept pressing her. "He's like, 'You know, you could go to jail for lying to a federal officer like this,'" she detailed on "The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon" in October 2024. He kept on interrogating Rodrigo, who was out of her mind with fear at that point. "I'm like, 'I'm not going to be let into America.' I'm so scared. I'm like having a panic attack," she said.

After about a half hour, the officer asked her to confirm her name. She spelled it out for him, and he then realized he had been on the lookout for someone named Olivia Rodriguez, not Rodrigo. "I was pissed," she said. "I'm like, 'You didn't look at the name on the thing? You've been interrogating me for 30 minutes.'" Rodrigo can thankfully still claim a clean rap sheet.

Olivia Rodrigo became a Disney Channel actor when she was 12. By 17, she had released "Drivers License," the single that would make her a worldwide pop sensation. A lot happened in a few short years — and those life-changing events happened in the vulnerable teenage years, no less. It was a lot for her to take in. She realized she didn't have to do it on her own. When she was 16, she started seeing a therapist for the first time and never looked back.

Years later, she credited therapy with helping her stay mentally healthy amid her overnight stardom. "I feel so fortunate to have been in therapy for so long," she said on Mix 104.1 Boston in 2023. "It's really amazing." Rodrigo wants to help break the stigma that therapy is only useful after a person has developed a full-fledged mental health condition. She believes therapy is just as efficient at preventing minor issues from escalating. "Going to therapy has just made my life so much better, just exponentially made me so much happier of a person, so much more grounded," she said.

Rodrigo has also learned a thing or two about caring for her mental health from her fellow performers. Chappell Roan, who has been open about her mental health struggles, has given Rodrigo powerful insight. "She actually gives me so much advice on taking care of myself and being me in an industry that's so overwhelming sometimes," she told Billboard.

Olivia Rodrigo's success came with consequences for her personal life. Some of it was to be expected, but others went well beyond what she could have foreseen. When "Drivers License" became the talk of the town, everyone was dying to know who had caused Rodrigo such heartache. Then the public caught wind that the ex-boyfriend she was singing about was likely her "High School Musical: The Musical: The Series" co-star Joshua Bassett (seen above).

Rodrigo stopped being active on social media due to the uproar over the situation. Meanwhile, Bassett couldn't have predicted the hate he was about to receive if he'd tried. His stress levels went through the roof every time he saw a new death threat on his phone screen. He began to feel ill. "I was sleeping 16 to 20 hours a day," he told People in 2022. "I couldn't even stand up for longer than 30 seconds." The days leading up to the release of "Lie Lie Lie" were even worse. "I felt my heart literally failing," he said. "I was like, 'This isn't just anxiety. This is bad.'"

The symptoms weren't in his head. The stress was having actual health impacts on his body. Shortly after, he was diagnosed with septic shock after his "HSMTMTS" producer took him to the hospital. "The doctors were like, 'If you hadn't checked in within 12 hours, you would have died in your apartment,'" he said. Rodrigo was horrified. "All of the drama that surrounded 'Drivers License' was baptism by fire," she told The Guardian in 2023.

Olivia Rodrigo experienced the kind of success many artists will only dream of with her debut album. While an incredible feat, she knew she would have to live up to "Sour" moving forward. And she wanted to move forward. She didn't want to be a one-hit wonder, as she had a lot more to show. She felt the pressure to replicate her success to the point it interfered with her creative process when she was working on her second album "Guts."

Rodrigo realized she had become more concerned with the potential reaction to her new work than with writing what felt genuine to her. "The beginning was really hard. I felt like I couldn't write a song without thinking about what other people were going to think of it," she told Rolling Stone in 2023. "There were definitely days where I found myself sitting at the piano, excited to write a song, and then cried." But she found ways to deal with the sudden fame and its aftermath.

One of them was to take her career one day at a time. Rodrigo opted to take it nice and easy instead of going all in, preferring to perform in small theaters rather than massive arenas even though she could fill them up in a heartbeat. She also stayed away from the party lifestyle that many other artists became known for after shooting to fame. "Taking things slower was my way of coping," she said in the Guardian interview.