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Key Points 'Stop The Insanity: Finding Susan Powter' explores the rise, fall, and post-fame life after losing her fortune of the fitness influencer. Powter shares candid reflections of her life. Jamie Lee Curtis calls Powter “brazen and brave” for sharing her difficult journey. One of the most iconic fitness stars of the ’90s is opening up about the career collapse that nearly derailed them in a new documentary. Susan Powter, who rose to fame with her fitness program “Stop the Insanity” and a successful series of books and a talk show, is the focus of a new documentary produced by Jamie Lee Curtis. Titled Stop the Insanity: Finding Susan Powter, the documentary explores Powter’s life after celebrity. Entertainment Weekly reveals how the ’90s fitness superstar grew her wealth to $200M and subsequently lost it all, due to a series of bad business deals and lawsuits. She retreated from public life, moved to Las Vegas, and currently lives on a limited income and supplements it with part-time work as an Uber Eats delivery driver. However, in the documentary, she appears determined to tell her story, no matter how uncomfortable the experience. Powter says in a clip, “I don’t need to be comfortable; I need to be filmed, so it’s fine. I can sit here for hours, as long as I have that light on, and that camera on.” Parade Daily🎬 SIGN UP for Parade’s Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox 🎬 Reflecting on her past, Powter admitted she should have been more on top of her finances at the height of her popularity. She claims she never said to her business advisors, “Show me the damn bank balance. I should have. Things happened that nobody expected.” Later in the clip, the woman who famously told her devoted fans to read every label for the fat content of food is seen shopping in a low-price grocery store. She admits, “Why bother reading the ingredients?” Powter previously admitted in an October 2024 interview with PEOPLE Magazine, “I’ve known desperation. Desperation is walking back from the welfare office. It’s the shock of, ‘From there, now I’m here? How in God’s name?’” Jamie Lee Curtis calls Susan Powter ‘brazen and brave’ Jamie Lee Curtis was inspired to learn more about Susan Powter’s story after being contacted by filmmaker Zeberiah Newman, who planned to make a documentary about the former fitness superstar. To PEOPLE Magazine, Curtis says Powter is “brazen and brave.” “As one of the world’s first true influencers at the beginning of what we would now refer to as the social media era, Susan Powter was brazen and brave, and woke us all up,” Curtis stated. “Like so many women’s stories, Susan’s power and her light was diminished, denigrated, and dismissed.” Deadline shared the film’s official synopsis. It reads: “After conquering infomercials, becoming a New York Times bestselling author, hosting her own talk show, and seeing her face on thousands of products, she dramatically walked away from Hollywood and into obscurity. Crippling lawsuits with her business partners left her bankrupt, and she has since lived as a total recluse below the poverty line in Las Vegas, where the filmmaker ultimately finds her.” “This documentary explores the meteoric rise and subsequent fall of Susan Powter while asking what it will take to bring her back to audiences—and whether her message, Stop The Insanity, is still as relevant and powerful today as it was in the early ’90s,” the synopsis concludes.
