For years, Jennifer Aniston kept a bottle of eye drops within arm’s reach at all times—on her nightstand, in her bag, backstage at events, even on set. She was convinced that her constantly irritated, itchy, and burning eyes were simply something she had to live with. Like so many people who deal with chronic discomfort, she wrote it off as a quirk of her own body, a nuisance to be managed rather than a condition to be treated. “If I was reading a script, my eyes would start itching. It was so painful and irritating,” she told Glamour in a candid interview about her morning routine and overall health.
But the realization that her discomfort actually had a name—dry eye syndrome, also known as dry eye disease—is the kind of aha moment that many women in their 40s and 50s will instantly recognize. We get used to small, nagging symptoms. We blame screens, travel, dry air, allergies, and age. We quietly accept them, assuming that this is just what growing older feels like, until someone finally tells us we don’t have to. Aniston is one of several high-profile stars, alongside Mandy Moore, Erin Andrews, Julie Bowen, and Ken Jeong, who have recently opened up about their journeys with dry eye disease—and how they finally got answers after years of confusion and frustration.
What Is Dry Eye Syndrome and What Causes It?
Dry eye disease occurs when your eyes don’t produce enough tears, or when the tears you do produce evaporate too quickly. That might sound like a minor inconvenience, but for the millions of people who live with it, the condition can be genuinely debilitating. The surface of the eye becomes inflamed, irritated, and prone to a gritty, burning sensation that makes focusing on anything—whether it’s a script, a computer screen, or a conversation—almost impossible. It can be caused by age, hormonal changes, certain medications, prolonged screen time, contact lens wear, environmental factors, and underlying inflammation.
Mandy Moore, the actress and singer known for This Is Us, assumed her symptoms were simply a byproduct of where she lived. “I assumed I was dehydrated. I live in a desert,” she told Parade. “And while both of these things are true, I also got a diagnosis a year ago of dry eye disease, which I’d never heard of. I just figured the discomfort I had with dry eyes was something that I was going have to live with.” Moore’s reaction is common. The condition is vastly underdiagnosed because people don’t know to look for it. They assume dry eyes are normal, or that they’re just tired, or that the burning sensation is from too much screen time.
Erin Andrews, the sportscaster and television personality, learned at a routine eye exam that excessive tear evaporation was behind her chronic symptoms, according to Flow Space. She had been blaming screen time, nonstop travel, and exhaustion for years. “I thought it was just being tired or the elements, but I was wrong,” she said. Andrews described how she would constantly rub her eyes, which only made things worse. She’d find herself squinting on camera and worrying that her eyes were red or irritated, and she was sick of ruining her mascara. The symptoms were affecting her confidence and her work, yet she didn’t connect them to a real medical condition until a professional tested her tear film and explained what was happening.
Julie Bowen, best known for her role as Claire Dunphy on Modern Family, noticed she was having trouble while filming the horror-comedy series Hysteria!. The artificial tears she was using weren’t cutting it. Her doctor pointed to inflammation as the root cause. “You can’t just wet the top of your eyeball and treat the inflammation, which is what I had been trying to do [with eyedrops],” she told Fox News Digital. Bowen’s experience highlights a crucial point about dry eye disease: it’s not always a simple lack of moisture. In many cases, it’s an inflammatory disease that requires targeted treatment, not just an occasional lubricating drop. She recalled one of her doctors telling her, “You’re not supposed to feel your eyeballs.” That sentence, simple as it sounds, was a revelation. She had been living with constant awareness of her own eyes—a sensation so persistent that she thought it was normal.
Ken Jeong, the comedian, actor, and physician, tied his symptoms to decades of cumulative exposure. He told Yahoo Life that he had worn contact lenses for over 35 years, pulled on-call overnight hospital shifts as a medical professional in his former career, and now spends his days on dusty sound stages, reading teleprompters in dry Los Angeles weather. All of those factors—contact lens wear, prolonged screen use, environmental dryness—are well-known risk factors for dry eye. But Jeong, despite his medical training, didn’t immediately connect the dots. He assumed his discomfort was just part of the job, or perhaps allergies, or just the price of getting older. It wasn’t until he sought out an eye doctor and underwent a comprehensive exam that inflammation was found to be the culprit.
Dry Eye Symptoms People Often Mistake for Something Else
One of the most dangerous things about dry eye disease is that its symptoms aren’t always what people expect. Many patients don’t even realize they have it because they dismiss the warning signs. Jeong told People that patients often confuse the condition with allergies, and the clues can be subtle. He described the symptoms as “achiness, grittiness in the eyes and just itchy burn” and added, “It’s happening in both eyes. It’s not just localized. It’s more bilateral.” That bilateral nature—affecting both eyes at the same time—is a key distinguishing factor from allergies, which can sometimes be worse in one eye or accompanied by other signs like sneezing and a runny nose.
Moore, for her part, noticed that the condition was interfering with her craft. “I’d be in the middle of a scene and feel my eyes cloud over because they were so dry and I was immediately taken out of the moment. I could only think about my eyes and how uncomfortable I was. It was a vicious cycle,” she said. The disruption is more than physical; it’s psychological. When your eyes are constantly burning and blurring, you can’t focus on anything else. You lose the thread of a conversation, you can’t concentrate on a page of text, and you become hyper-aware of every blink. For an actress, that means losing the emotional connection to a scene. For anyone, it means losing your sense of presence in the world.
Andrews kept rubbing her eyes and ruining her mascara, believing the irritation was just from being tired or the elements. She had no idea that her eyes were sending her a signal. Aniston, as she described to Glamour, had come to believe that the irritation was simply a feature of her face—an immutable trait she had to accept. “I always thought, ‘Oh, it must be the environment, or I must have allergies, or someone said maybe because you have wide eyes you’re more sensitive,’” she said, adding, “I’d literally be going to a premiere and my eyes would be burning and I’d have to give myself a dose of eyedrops before I went down the red carpet. But I just thought that was what my eyes were and I had to live with it.”
That last line—“I just thought that was what my eyes were”—perfectly captures the experience of so many people with dry eye. They don’t realize that the feeling of grittiness, burning, or general discomfort is not normal. They assume everyone’s eyes feel like that. They believe the sensation of “feeling your eyeballs” is just a part of being alive. And so they suffer in silence, adapting their lives around a condition that has a name and a treatment.
How Celebrities Are Treating Dry Eye Syndrome
The good news is that there are many effective treatment options, and each of these stars found a different path forward. Their stories offer hope for anyone who has been struggling with similar symptoms.
Mandy Moore started OptiLight, a light-based in-office treatment given as a series of four sessions. It’s a relatively new technology that uses intense pulsed light to target inflammation and improve the function of the meibomian glands in the eyelids, which produce the oil layer of the tear film that prevents evaporation. Moore described the experience as surprisingly easy. “It just felt like warm, pulses of light on my skin. I could have a treatment and then go back to my day,” she said. The fact that it didn’t require downtime made it easy to fit into her busy schedule as a mother and actress.
Erin Andrews was prescribed Miebo, a prescription eye drop designed specifically to reduce tear evaporation. Miebo works by coating the surface of the eye, creating a protective layer that keeps moisture from disappearing into the air. Andrews said the relief came almost immediately. “Honestly, instantly when I took it, I felt such a difference. It was really nice to not have to worry about squinting, rubbing my eyes or wondering if something was wrong,” she said. She emphasized how much mental energy she had been spending on her eyes—worrying about how they looked on camera, whether they were red, whether she’d need to excuse herself to reapply drops. Having that worry lifted was life-changing.
Julie Bowen began using the anti-inflammatory drop Xiidra twice a day for about nine months. Xiidra is a prescription drop that targets the underlying inflammation associated with dry eye disease, rather than merely adding moisture to the surface of the eye. Bowen said the treatment allowed her to finally go through her day without being constantly aware of her eyes. “I’m able to not feel my eyeballs,” she said, recalling the doctor’s advice that this is the goal. “You’re not supposed to feel your eyeballs.” For Bowen, the treatment was a revelation. It changed how she approached her work and her daily life.
Ken Jeong was also prescribed Xiidra after being diagnosed with inflammation. In addition to seeking treatment, he partnered with Novartis, the pharmaceutical company that makes Xiidra, to encourage people to get annual eye exams. Jeong’s background as a physician makes him a particularly compelling advocate. He understands the importance of early detection and treatment, and he knows firsthand how easy it is for even medical professionals to dismiss their own symptoms.
Jennifer Aniston worked with her doctor to wean off the over-the-counter drops she had been reaching for constantly. Those drops, while providing temporary relief, were not addressing the underlying issue. In fact, overusing certain preserved eye drops can sometimes make dry eye worse over time. Aniston said that after working with her doctor to stop relying on them and instead address the root cause, what followed was “this wonderful relief.” The lesson she took away was that she didn’t have to live with the discomfort—there was a better solution, and it was worth seeking out.
Why Seeing an Eye Doctor Matters
All five celebrities pointed back to the same first step: seeing an eye care professional. You can’t diagnose dry eye disease on your own, and you can’t treat it effectively if you don’t know what’s causing it. “At the end of the day, it does take talking to an eye doctor to help determine if you have dry eye disease or not,” Jeong told People. A comprehensive eye exam can evaluate tear production, tear quality, and the health of the meibomian glands. It can identify inflammation and determine the best treatment strategy. For some people, that might be warm compresses and lifestyle changes. For others, it might be prescription drops, in-office light therapy, or other advanced treatments.
Andrews offered similar guidance to anyone who recognizes their own symptoms in her story. “I would suggest going to your eye doctor and asking questions. Talk about your symptoms and see what’s best for you. It’s important to listen to them,” she said. Her advice is simple but crucial: don’t go in and just say, “I want to get my eyes checked for contacts.” Tell them about every symptom you’ve been noticing—the burning, the itching, the blurriness, the feeling that something is in your eye. Those symptoms are valuable clinical information, and they can help your doctor identify a problem before it becomes more serious.
For Aniston, the larger lesson was that eye care deserves a spot on the preventive checklist—right alongside mammograms, annual physicals, dental checkups, and all the other things women track in midlife. As we age, our eyes change. Hormonal shifts, in particular, can affect tear production and oil gland function, which is why dry eye is so common among women in their 40s and 50s. Ignoring the symptoms doesn’t make them go away. If anything, it makes them worse. “As I get older, if I hadn’t taken care of this, it just would have gotten worse,” Aniston said. “And as my doctor said, eventually [your eyes] do start to give out on you if you’re not taking care of them.”
That warning—that your eyes will “give out” on you if you don’t take care of them—may sound dramatic, but it’s grounded in clinical reality. Chronic, untreated inflammation of the ocular surface can lead to damage to the cornea, increased risk of infection, and a significant decline in quality of life. The good news is that dry eye disease is treatable. The first step is simply recognizing that the discomfort you feel is not normal. If your eyes itch, burn, feel gritty, or constantly make themselves known, you don’t have to just live with it. You have options. As these five celebrities have shown, a conversation with an eye doctor can be the beginning of the end of that frustration—and the start of a life where, as Julie Bowen puts it, you don’t have to feel your eyeballs at all.
