Susan Powter was once a staple of the early 1990s with her “Stop the Insanity” fitness infomercial empire, but she eventually lost everything.
After her company filed for bankruptcy in 1995, Powter told Fox News Digital that she walked away from everything following lawsuits and mismanagement of her money by people she trusted.
The 67-year-old now has a documentary called “Stop the Insanity: Finding Susan Powter,” produced by Jamie Lee Curtis. It premiered on Wednesday and explores her rise to fame and her fall.
In the documentary, Powter revealed she used a cardboard box as her nightstand at her apartment – something she said she still uses: “It’s still my nightstand today.”
“I live in the same place, I’m driving the same car, and I drove Uber Eats before my trip to New York” on a “plane that was paid for,” she said. “That’s not pathetic, that’s fabulous.”
Despite it all, Powter said she’s focused on the present and is “having the time” of her life promoting the documentary and meeting people.
The film will be released in select theaters on November 19, 2025, with plans for streaming in December 2025. Apple TV pre-order is available now in addition to theaters this weekend.
“One of the things I’m the most proud of about the movie is that it tells the truth … the simplicity of the truth and for me, I’m just really grateful that I have a chance to tell people,” Powter told Fox News Digital recently. “People have no idea like, ‘What the hell? Where were you? What happened?’ People have no idea.”
Driving for Uber Eats, which she still does, has also been difficult for her. Powter said that although she looks different, the people she delivers to often recognize her voice. She remembered one specific time that she delivered to actor Louie Anderson’s home.
“And I rang the doorbell to a house with a very, I had a very large order from fast-food. And Louie Anderson opened the door,” she said. “His career was rising. We knew each other back in that day.”
She said she had brown hair and a hat on, but “when he opened the door, I knew that he recognized me. I knew it. And he was polite enough and gentle enough [to] acknowledge it without acknowledging it.”
“It was just a very odd moment,” she continued, noting that fast-food and weight had been Anderson’s struggle. He died in 2022 after a battle with cancer.
She said it was a “horrible feeling” meeting Anderson while delivering his food, “but I was so grateful to him that he didn’t say, ‘Susan Powter!’ But the look in his eye — because he knew suffering, and he knew pain, and he knew there was suffering and pain.”
She said the film has been healing for her.
Powter said if she could go back and give herself advice, it would be more of “an umbrella of awareness and safety, saying things can work … Just keep going. Things can change. Things can shift. Things can work out. I kind of lost hope in that for a while. Like, I literally did not believe it would ever be any different. I would just comfort [her past self] and say, ‘Things change, stuff changes, just hang on.’”
And with her trademark energy and optimism, Powter remains enthusiastic about the future.
“What is happening now makes ‘Stop the Insanity’ look like dress rehearsal,” she beamed. “And that’s literal, I mean that literally.”
WATCH: SUSAN POWTER SAYS SHE’S ‘PROUD THAT HER NEW DOC TELLS THE ’TRUTH’ ABOUT THE COLLAPSE OF HER FITNESS EMPIRE
Despite what happened, Powter said she hasn’t lost her ability to trust.
“I haven’t changed a thing when it comes to trust because I completely trusted Zeberiah Newman, the filmmaker, to tell the story properly,” she explained. “So, I have not changed in that.”
But she said now, with the advancement of the digital era, she plans to check her bank account “every 10 minutes.”
She explained in the 1990s, “I couldn’t say to Time Warner, give me the analytics. I can go online now and see what’s selling and what’s happening. So, it’s a different age and that’s why I’m grateful to be able to work again in different age.”
Powter added, “The ‘90s … a woman fitness expert, infomercial queen. You’re going to ask Simon and Schuster about your — ? No, you’re not. They’re not going to listen. Nobody listened. It was a different game. Everything has changed. And I made it. I’m still here.”
Powter explained that it was her corporation, not her, that filed for bankruptcy in 1995 – without her knowledge.
“The Susan Powter Corporation filed bankruptcy to move a lawsuit from Texas to California and I didn’t even know,” she clarified. “You think they were telling me all that? I was running around writing books and doing stuff and making the money for the corporation.”
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She said: “Things were done strategically in business and … nobody ever told me this is going to affect you for 25 years. Do you know what I’m saying? … And I am not an idiot, but I had the 14 lawyers, there’s five agents, there’s 17 managers, there’s Time Warner, there’s Simon & Schuster, there’s multimedia, they were all real.”
If everything had gone down in the era of social media, Powter said she would have just “gotten online and told the whole story” after she walked away from her success.
SUSAN POWTER REMEMBERS PAINFUL MOMENT SHE DELIVERED UBER EATS TO FRIEND LOUIE ANDERSON AFTER EMPIRE COLLAPSE
Before she left her empire, Powter said she “found out how things were being worked — as in all the expenses were coming out of mine, as in, you know, padding bills.”
She said she “asked one question to somebody. And when — I didn’t even wait for the answer. I was just like, ‘Oh, oh OK.’”
Powter went home to Beverly Hills where she lived at the time and fired almost everyone who worked for her in one email.
“One paragraph. I fired everyone,” she said. “I said, ‘No longer represent Susan Powter or something like that.’ I packed up my kids immediately, and I moved to Seattle with a brand-new baby [and] my two kids.”
Powter went back to her roots, teaching exercise classes. She said at that time she still had some money and one lawyer working for her.
“Then 10 years goes by, and it’s like, ‘Whoa, whoa,’ you know what I’m saying?” she said.
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The fitness guru explained that she didn’t go from “Hollywood to Harbor Island [Seattle] to a welfare motel. It was over the course of” a long period of time.
WATCH: ’90S FITNESS GURU SUSAN POWTER GRATEFUL SHE CAN HAVE MORE CONTROL OVER HER MONEY IN CURRENT ERA
“I’m a workhorse,” she said. “Like, I will do any job under the sun. I work, I pay my bills. What the hell, I never asked anybody to pay my bill. I never would. But then you get 65, it’s a little different as a woman.”
She said even her past fame worked against her sometimes.
“I had a job that I needed desperately,” she said. “I was working in a café. I was the manager of the café. [The boss] Googled my name and she thought I was there doing an investigative report on like the food, because ‘Susan Powter.’ So sometimes being Susan Powter was the worst thing I could ever be.”
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She added, “It wasn’t easy. So sometimes people are like, ‘What the hell are you doing here? What are you riding the bus for? What are doing this for?’ It wasn’t immediate. It was as you get older … And everyone knows that. People know that. And millions of people are living just like that. And I understand, believe me. I understand.”
