When celebrity makeup artist Molly Stern first felt her hands begin to shake in March 2023, she chalked it up to too much caffeine.
She was on a business trip to Las Vegas with a client and had a cup of strong coffee to start her day. She tells PEOPLE that she was in a rush and was feeling the usual amount of pressure at her job, so the shaking didn’t immediately worry her.
But it didn’t stop then.
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
“It kept happening, but then my hands weren’t shaking — my hands were completely still,” he tells PEOPLE exclusively. “I felt a tremor inside, but no external effects. Only once after drinking coffee, and then I got a twitch in my left leg. It was like a frequent twitch.”
Stern admits she did what many of us do and Googled her symptoms and diagnosed herself with “a million things.”
The make-up artist, who works with Julia Roberts, Maya Rudolph, Eve Hewson and others, says at the time she was still able to apply liquid liner with ease, but inside she knew something was wrong, so she went to her regular doctor, who sent to a neurologist.
Celebrities with Parkinson’s disease and what they have said about it
A neurologist ordered an MRI, but told Stern at the time that there was no definitive answer as to what was going on with her. It was now November 2023, and Stern says she felt herself physically slowing down — and could no longer relax her arms. Despite noticing all these changes in herself, the initial MRI showed that her brain looked great, which she says was a relief.
However, Stern says her symptoms only got worse, and says the coming months were when she was at her “sickest” — and that was when she dealt with them in silence while working with director Greta Gerwig during the 2024 awards season. Barbie made a strong showing.
The mom of three mostly kept it all to herself, which she told PEOPLE was very difficult because she’s usually an open book. In the past few years, she also went through a divorce, moved out of the home she had lived in for almost two decades, and experienced her oldest daughter suffering from cancer – and she shared each of these stories with her clients, friends and community on social media. But her symptoms, still undiagnosed at this point, were still largely a secret.
Stern’s symptoms — the sluggishness, the tremors — have gotten to the point where they’ve become very obvious, though, and she says people are really starting to notice.
Maya Rudolph and Molly Stern 2020.
John Salangsang/Variety/Penske Media via Getty
The PEOPLE Puzzler has arrived! How fast can you solve it? Play now!
“I started to be very self-conscious, because I thought, ‘I don’t want everyone to notice that there’s something wrong with me or me,'” she says. “Then another big heartbreak during that period was not being able to dance, and I love to dance. I couldn’t connect my brain to my body and I didn’t realize it was because I was low on dopamine, which has everything to do with your motor skills .”
So she went back to the neurologist for more answers.
“I was moving like I was in molasses,” she says of her life at this point in June 2024. “I walked into her office and just burst into tears. I apologized for crying and I just told her that I felt that there’s something really wrong with me. She said, ‘You obviously have Parkinson’s.'”
Stern says the doctor just diagnosed her like that, as if it was so obvious.
After getting over the initial shock of her diagnosis, she saw a motor specialist who helped her get the right medication for her Parkinson’s disease — a neurological disorder that affects balance, coordination and movement — and says now there are days when she feels alone more than 90%, which is a big improvement from where she was.
However, she had to slow down a bit with her work because the high intensity of Hollywood wasn’t what she needed while she was figuring out her health.
Michael J. Fox on Dismissing His 1998 Parkinson’s Prognosis: ‘You Can Do Anything’ (Exclusive)
“It took me a little longer to get into my groove and I had to first get over the shock of it and then regulate my meds so they were actually doing what they were supposed to,” she says. “I hope to stay busy and keep doing what I’m doing. I mean, oh my God, I’ve been doing it since I was 16.”
Stern has a surprisingly positive outlook for someone who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease less than a year ago at just 52, but admits one of the hardest parts was keeping it to herself. She didn’t tell her clients, even though she’s known many of them for years, and didn’t share on social media until December 2024. She says the secret was “suffocating.”
“I wear my heart on my sleeve. I can’t help but be vulnerable. It’s just my nature,” she says. “It was very difficult for me and my children because I didn’t know how people would react. I didn’t want people to assume something like I did when I got the diagnosis, because I assumed the worst. I needed to give people the space to understand.”
She says that once she felt she understood her Parkinson’s disease, she was more willing to share it, because she no longer had the “victim” point of view. “I’m fine. I’m freaking good, actually. I’m so much better than I was.”
Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education