Ed Sheeran didn’t leave the house for four months.
The ‘Castle on the Hill’ hitmaker admitted the pressure of fame began taking its toll so he retreated into his west London home and gave up trying to "maintain normality".
He said: "I stayed inside for four months. I just ordered food in and watched movies.
"I couldn’t just go out and get a pint of milk. I always wanted to maintain normality — being able to go to the pub or go and do a gig.
"I just stopped going out — instead I was ordering takeaways and putting on a lot of weight.
"I hadn’t got any balance, so I just stayed inside."
And the 26-year-old star – who is in a relationship with Cherry Seaborn – admitted he reluctantly moved to a "fancy" part of the city because he attracted less attention there.
He said: "I think there is a difference between fame and success.
"Success is playing Wembley Stadium and fame is not being able to go outside. I think they are two very different things.
"I had to move from where I was in London to somewhere else. I never really wanted to live in the fancy part of town, I never really want to be that guy.
"Then I quickly realised that why everyone lives there is because it’s a sheltered community where you don’t really get bothered."
But after taking a 12-month hiatus from music in 2016, in which the ‘Shape of You’ singer quit social media and went travelling, Ed feels he has now "adjusted" to life in the spotlight and is over the "weird" period in his life.
He told The Sun newspaper: "That stops you from going mental when you actually realise it’s not that bad. It’s a very unnatural position to be in.
"I think I have adjusted and I now know how to play it. Look at someone like Adele, she has definitely adjusted to it. You just have to.
"But I had a two-year period which was quite a weird time."
The ‘Bloodstream’ singer thinks even his closest friends and family "act differently" around him these days, which he attributes to his wealth.
He said: "It makes everyone act weird. They don’t realise that they’re doing it.
"It’s just odd comments here and there, like, ‘Well, that must be nice.’ "
"When I got into the industry everyone said, ‘When people get famous, they change.’ So I was very careful. Then what I realised very quickly is you don’t at first change at all — it’s everyone around you that changes.
"Because they want to act super-normal and treat you super-normal, and therefore they change towards you, so then you change towards them.
"There will be someone that does something really weird to you, and because of that you then treat everyone else the same, and you have this wariness.
"And then you do change. And then people say, ‘I knew he would change.’ So you can’t win. You just can’t win."
Ed Sheeran didn’t leave home
