The year 2022 is drawing to an end, and many people have made headlines over the course of the last 12 months.
Throughout the year, countless events rocked the globe, from the start of the war in Ukraine, and the 2022 midterm elections, to the overturning of Roe v Wade. In between these events, however, several individuals captured the attention of millions.
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The following list of the 10 most looked-up people in 2022 is based on Google Trends and searches in the U.S.
1. Johnny Depp
Pirates of the Caribbean actor Johnny Depp set sail in court against his ex-wife Amber Heard earlier this year, emerging victorious on June 1 after the jury found that Heard had defamed him and ordered her to pay Depp $15 million in damages.
Depp initially filed the suit against Heard over an op-ed she wrote in the Washington Post, in which she claimed to be a victim of physical and sexual abuse. The actor had previously lost a 2020 lawsuit against the U.K. publication the Sun after it called him a “wife-beater.”
“Six years ago, my life, the life of my children, the lives of those closest to me, and also, the lives of the people who for many, many years have supported and believed in me were forever changed,” Depp said in a statement attributed to his spokesperson. “And six years later, the jury gave me my life back. I am truly humbled.”
2. Will Smith
Will Smith won the Oscar for Best Actor for his performance in King Richard earlier this year, but his achievement was largely overshadowed due to him slapping Chris Rock when the comedian made a joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, at the awards show on March 27.
Many condemned Smith for the action, with Smith resigning from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and later getting banned from the awards show for 10 years. In July, Smith released a video apologizing to Rock, calling his behavior “unacceptable.”
“I was going through something that night, you know? Not that that justifies my behavior at all,” Smith said in a November interview with Trevor Noah. “I guess the thing that was most painful for me is I took my hard and made it hard for other people — I understood the idea where they say ‘hurt people hurt people.'”
3. Amber Heard
Heard battled her former husband in court earlier this year but ultimately lost the legal battle.
“The disappointment I feel today is beyond words,” read a statement Heard released on June 1. “I’m heartbroken that the mountain of evidence still was not enough to stand up to the disproportionate power, influence, and sway of my ex-husband.”
The Aquaman actress scored a partial victory in the trial, however, as the jury ordered Depp to pay her $2 million after it found that he defamed Heard over a statement made by his former lawyer Adam Waldman.
On Dec. 19, Heard announced that she was not going to continue the legal fight against Depp and was ending discussions of a possible retrial in 2023. She has stressed the decision to settle is not an admission of guilt.
4. Antonio Brown
Former Tampa Bay Buccaneers wide receiver Antonio Brown experienced a rough start to 2022, as he was kicked off the team in early-January after leaving his team in the middle of a game.
During a game against the New York Jets, Brown ripped off his gear and walked off the field, giving the audience in the stand a peace sign. Head coach Bruce Arians told reporters that Brown was no longer with the team following the game.
The catalyst behind the Super Bowl champion’s exit was the team’s forcing Brown to play while injured, according to Brown’s comments. His injury was mentioned in a statement the team made announcing his departure.
“While Antonio did receive treatment on his ankle and was listed on the injury report the week leading up to last Sunday’s game, he was cleared to play by our medical team prior to the start of the game and at no point during the game did he indicate to our medical personnel that he could not play,” the statement read. “We have attempted, multiple times throughout this week, to schedule an evaluation by an outside orthopedic specialist, yet Antonio has not complied. Maintaining the health and wellness of our players is of the utmost importance to our organization.”
5. Kari Lake
The Republican candidate for the Arizona gubernatorial race, who received the backing of former President Donald Trump ahead of the election, was the most searched politician of 2022, despite failing to win her race.
Prior to entering the gubernatorial race for the Grand Canyon State, Kari Lake worked at Phoenix’s Fox 10 for 22 years but had no hands-on experience with politics. She then quit her job in early 2021, claiming in a video that she was no longer proud to work in journalism, and announced her run in the governor race three months later, according to the Arizona Republic.
On Nov. 14, six days after the gubernatorial election, it was announced that Hobbs, Lake’s Democratic opponent, was the winner. Lake, who denied the 2020 presidential election results, has filed a lawsuit to overturn the results, claiming that “if the process was illegitimate, then so are the results.” In mid-December, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson issued a ruling that approved Lake’s requests to inspect some ballots before the trial in her challenge to the election results.
6. Anna Sorokin
Anna Sorokin, who had created the alias Anna Delvey and posed as a German heiress, had served almost four years of her 12-year prison sentence for financial crimes when federal immigration judge Charles R. Conroy ruled in October 2022 that she was no longer a threat.
Prior to her sentencing in 2019, Sorokin had gone to banks and other investment groups with a business plan to open an arts social club on Park Avenue South, but prosecutors claim that she wanted to use the money to pay for her upscale lifestyle. On April 25, 2019, she was found guilty of stealing over $200,000 from banks and friends while posing as the German heiress.
Though she has been released from detention, she is required to wear an ankle bracelet and is not allowed to use social media, either through new accounts or her existing ones. She is also not guaranteed to remain in the United States, said John Sandweg, who is representing Sorokin in her immigration case. However, she does get to “aggressively pursue all her cases out of jail” and from home.
Earlier this year, in February, the streaming service Netflix released the drama titled Inventing Anna, which is about a journalist chasing Sorokin’s story as a con artist. The series was incredibly popular for the platform and was streamed for 1.2 billion minutes in its debut week and then streamed for 3.3 billion minutes in the following week, according to Variety.
7. Chris Rock
Comedian Chris Rock, who was on the receiving end of Will Smith’s slap on March 27, may have declined to file a police report following the incident, but has still voiced his disapproval of Smith’s actions.
“Everybody is trying to be a f****** victim,” Rock said in July when he addressed Smith’s apology video. “If everybody claims to be a victim, then nobody will hear the real victims. Even me getting smacked by Suge Smith … I went to work the next day, I got kids.”
Social media data show the majority of the U.S. supported Rock over Smith in the days after the Oscars slap. Online sports gambling company BetOnline.ag, which marks geotagged Twitter data, tracked more than 200,000 tweets that included hashtags such as #TeamChris or #TeamWill, as well as supportive phrases for either celebrity.
8. Andrew Tate
Influencer and former kickboxer Andrew Tate drew both attention and ire in 2022 after several controversial statements he made got him banned from multiple social media sites.
Tate’s social media-wide banning began in mid-2022 after statements he had made comparing women to property and alleging that men would rather date women between 18- to 19-year-old than women in their 20s because younger women have had less sex with men. Shortly after these comments went viral, multiple social media sites suspended his accounts, including TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.
The influencer’s comments kicked up a storm across the internet, with some people greatly critical of his comments while others were in a level of agreement with him.
In November, after Tesla CEO Elon Musk purchased Twitter, Tate was allowed back on to the platform. Tate had been banned from Twitter in 2017 after alleging in a discussion about Harvey Weinstein that women “bear some responsibility” for being sexually assaulted.
9. Adam Levine
The most looked-up musician of 2022 and lead singer of the pop band Maroon 5 received a surge in interest in mid-September after social media influencer Sumner Stroh took to TikTok and claimed that she had an affair with Levine, who is married to model Behati Prinsloo. Stroh also claimed that he had messaged her to ask if he could use her name if Prinsloo’s third baby, which had been announced a few days prior, was a boy, according to CinemaBlend.
Levine denied ever having an affair with Stroh, though he did say that he “crossed the line during a regrettable period of my life” and that he takes “full responsibility” for the situation, according to Cosmopolitan.
“In certain instances, it became inappropriate; I have addressed that and taken proactive steps to remedy this with my family,” Levine’s statement read. “My wife and my family is all I care about in this world. To be this naive and stupid enough to risk the only thing that truly matters to me was the greatest mistake I could ever make. I will never make it again.”
In the weeks following the controversy, Levine and Prinsloo appeared to still be together, with his wife joining him in his travels to concerts and the two being seen together in public.
10. Serena Williams
The world of sports said goodbye to tennis superstar Serena Williams this year after she finished competing in the U.S. Open in September.
Williams, a 23-time Grand Slam champion, competed in the U.S. Open tournament in mid-2022 and ultimately lost to Ajla Tomljanovic in the third round of the tournament. The match marked the end of Williams’s 20+ year career, when she and her sister Venus rose to fame in 1999 after a victory in the U.S. Open that year.
“These are happy tears, I guess. I don’t know,” Williams said in a post-match interview. “And I wouldn’t be Serena if it wasn’t [for] Venus. Thank you, Venus.”
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In August, Williams announced she would be “evolving away” from tennis after the U.S. Open in a cover story for Vogue. Her daughter has been wanting to be a big sister, and one of Williams’s priorities after the U.S. Open is expanding her family.
“I’m here to tell you that I’m evolving away from tennis, toward other things that are important to me,” Williams stated.
