Where Is Belle Gibson Now? All About the 'Apple Cider Vinegar' Subject's Life After Her Lies Were Revealed
She's the Australian wellness influencer who hoodwinked thousands through false claims that she'd cured her terminal brain cancer through healthy eating and now Belle Gibson is the latest female fraudster to be given the Netflix treatment in the streamer's newest limited series, Apple Cider Vinegar.
For the uninitiated, Gibson (who is portrayed by Kaitlyn Dever) was at the apex of her fame in 2014. She had amassed thousands of followers on social media — which she leveraged to secure a lucrative book deal with Penguin — her wellness app, The Whole Pantry, had been voted Apple's 'best new food and drink' app the previous year, and chosen for pre-installation on the soon-to-launch Apple Watch, and she'd banked over $500,000 AUD (£252,000) in two years, giving a large part of it to charity.
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Elle Australia called the 26-year-old single mother 'the most inspiring woman you’ve met this year.' Cosmopolitan bestowed its 'Fun Fearless Female' award on her. Against all of the odds, Gibson's triumph telegraphed, she'd turned her life and diagnoses around — and you could too, by engaging with her business ventures. But simmering under the truth of Gibson's glossy selfies and inspirational quotes was the dark, ugly reality: she never had cancer.
Gibson's fall from grace is one of the weird and often wacky wellness world's most shocking parables. Her downfall can be credited largely to journalists Beau Donelly and Nick Toscano, who began looking into Gibson’s medical history and charitable donations, and, in 2015, exposed her lies in the Melbourne-based daily The Age. (Apple Cider Vinegar is based on the pair's 2017 book The Woman Who Fooled the World.)
Donelly and Toscano had received a tip from Gibson's real-life friend Chanelle who doubted that Gibson actually had cancer. Chanelle told the journalists that Gibson had a seizure in the middle of her son’s fourth birthday party in 2014, but that she wouldn’t allow anyone to call an ambulance and she refused to go to the hospital, which aroused suspicions that Gibson was lying. Chanelle had also spent two days cooking meals for a family that had a son with brain cancer, but Gibson never delivered them, and Chanelle discovered them stacked in her freezer.
After her lies were exposed, Gibson didn’t apologise, nor did she deny suffering from Munchausen’s or pathological lying or any other mental illness. Instead, the disgraced wellness influencer attempted to wipe all traces of herself from the internet. This is everything to know about the real Belle Gibson and where the disgraced wellness influencer is today.
Who is Belle Gibson?
Before claiming to have two birth certificates and four name changes, Annabelle Smillie was born in Tasmania in October 1991 — not 1988, as she’d later tell people. She grew up in a Brisbane suburb with an older brother, Nick, and her mother, Natalie, who changed the family surname to 'Gibson.' In the introduction of her since-pulled cookbook, Gibson described a 'dysfunctional home' where 'I never knew my dad, and grew up with my mum, who had multiple sclerosis, and my brother, who is autistic.' She claimed she left home to live with a friend at 12 years old, although teachers reported she’d once been a diligent student, and eventually dropped out of school at 15 years old.
'When I started school, my mum went, "My daughter is grown up now,"' Gibson told Australia's Women’s Weekly.
She continued, 'All of a sudden, I was walking to school on my own, making school lunches and cleaning the house every day. It was my responsibility to do grocery shopping, do the washing, arrange medical appointments and pick up my brother. I didn’t have toys.'
Gibson's childhood claims, however, were refuted by family members. In 2015, Natalie referred to Gibson’s description of her childhood as 'a lot of rubbish.'
'Belle never cared for me, her brother is not autistic and she’s barely done a minute’s housework in her life,' Natalie said in an interview with Women’s Weekly. 'I’ve practically worked myself into an early grave to give that girl everything she wanted in life.'
Gibson's stepfather Andrew, however, did admit in the documentary Instagram’s Worst Con Artist, that Natalie had 'struggled' to parent Gibson and that the children experienced 'tough times,' per the Daily Mail. As a result, Gibson left home at around 13 years old and moved in with an 'old man' who lived down the road, Andrew revealed.
What is Belle Gibson known for?
Donelly and Toscano found in their investigations records of Gibson having moved to Perth in Western Australia in 2009, where she found work listening to medical claims at a private health insurance company. Shortly after, Gibson began spinning her web of lies. On a skateboarders’ chat forum, she posted increasingly dramatic accounts of her health: 'I just woke up out of a coma type thing. The doctor comes in and tells me the draining failed and I went into cardiac arrest and died for just under three minutes.' In early 2010, Belle retold her cancer story to the parenting forum What to Expect; at 18, she was pregnant with her son, Oliver.
In May 2013, on a then-little-known app called Instagram, Gibson launched her Instagram account @healing_belle on which her lies continued to metastasise. Her account documented how she had allegedly shunned chemotherapy and modern medicine in favour of eating a healthy diet and utilising holistic treatments to cure her terminal brain cancer. Her success snowballed, and upon Apple's embrace of her The Whole Pantry app, Gibson was even flown to Silicon Valley to celebrate the brand's launch of the Apple Watch. But even amid her blossoming success, Gibson's health was reportedly suffering. The influencer revealed in a July 2014 Instagram post that her cancer had spread to her 'blood, spleen, brain, uterus and liver.'
What was Belle Gibson accused of?
Gibson's lies began to unravel in March 2015 upon the publication of Australian newspaper's investigation into allegations that Gibson hadn't actually made the donations to charities and individuals she'd pledged to have. According to the publication, Gibson claimed to have given away 25% of The Whole Pantry’s profits to various causes, as well as purporting she had donated as much as $300,000 AUD (£242,000) to charitable organisations. She also held two public fundraisers, one in December 2013 and another in May 2014, to raise money for five charities. The Age confirmed in its investigation that none of the five charities had any record of receiving a donation from Gibson or The Whole Pantry.
Gibson blamed 'cash flow' issues for the delay in donations.
'The intentions always were and still are to give back,' she told The Age. 'The execution of this has obviously been flawed.'
A second article from The Age, published two days later, called into question her name, age and cancer diagnoses. Close friends of Gibson’s, speaking publicly for the first time, revealed that they had doubts about her illnesses. Additionally, a leading Australian neurosurgeon, Professor Andrew Kaye, shared that Gibson’s claims about her cancer journey didn’t 'add up'.
In response to the claims made against her, Gibson made several incongruent claims. In an April 2015 interview with Women’s Weekly, Gibson admitted she never had and did not currently have cancer. 'None of it’s true,' she told the outlet.
Fast forward a matter of weeks, and in a June 2015 interview with 60 Minutes Australia, Gibson changed her tune yet again. She told the programme that she had been wrongfully diagnosed with cancer by a German alternative medical practitioner in 2009 — and did not discover she was healthy until 2011. She also avoided confirming her age (Gibson claimed she was 26, while her birth records showed she was 23) and her real name.
'I lived for years with the fear that I was dying,' Gibson said in the interview. 'I wasn’t living in a space where I didn’t know that this was my reality.'
She added, 'I’ve not been intentionally untruthful. I’ve been openly speaking about what was my reality.'
Where is Belle Gibson now?
After the truth about Gibson's deception was unearthed, The Whole Pantry app was pulled from the App Store, her U.S. book launch for the cookbook had been canceled and Penguin had stripped The Whole Pantry from the shelves in Australia, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.
While Gibson’s current whereabouts aren’t known, as of 2017, she was reportedly living in a Melbourne suburb where her neighbours reportedly wouldn’t speak to her and former friends walked the other way when they’d see her in the street. At that time, her family said they were estranged from her.
According to the Daily Mail, Gibson also split from her longtime partner, Clive Rothwell, in November 2023. Rothwell and Gibson had been dating since at least 2012, with Rothwell acting as a stepfather to her young son, Oliver. He even stood by Gibson when her lies were exposed and continued to fund her lifestyle for years afterward — paying for her rent, utilities, legal fees and vacations, according to ABC. Their union came to an end in 2023, when Rothwell moved into a separate apartment from Gibson and was spotted with a new woman.
She may have never faced criminal charges in connection with her actions, but Consumer Affairs Victoria sued Gibson in Melbourne federal court in 2016 for violating Australian Consumer Law. Gibson didn’t show up to any hearings, but was found liable nonetheless and fined $410,000 AUD (£206,000) for misleading conduct regarding her health and charitable donations. A Herald Sun article from earlier this year, however, revealed the truth: Gibson has yet to make a single payment.
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