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What price fame? Several media celebrities share their thoughts about life on the Australian A, B and C list.
- Published by David Knox
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- Filed under News
Seven celebs fronted up for a thoughtful chat on the price of fame with the Sunday Age’s Melinda Houston.
Andrew O’Keefe, Nicole Livingstone, Cal Wilson, Jason Coleman, Dave O’Neil, Nadine Garner and Kate Ceberano all shared their thoughts on the good, the bad and the ugly of life in the public spotlight.
Most agreed the good outweighed the bad, right down to the odd free pass on a speeding ticket and the free fish and chips.
“The trade-off for getting your free fish and chips, I find, is that there’s a good 40 minutes of conversation before you’re allowed to take them home,” O’Keefe says. “So they’re free. But they’re cold. Life takes twice as long as it ought to.”
Garner said it was difficult to know how to respond to people who thought they knew her personally. “And demanding that I played netball with them, or demanding that I went to school with them. Am I rude if I agree, for peace, but it’s a lie? Or am I rude if I keep insisting I’ve never met them before in my life? Or am I rude – and up myself – if I say, ‘Actually you might know me because I’m an actor’?”
O’Keefe, who made the front pages rather ingloriously late last year, was understandably cutting towards gossip columnists.
“They’ll never call you to check the facts. They don’t care about the facts,” he said. “And the public is told by papers and magazines that there’s this Faustian deal; that in return for fame and wealth then every minute detail of our personal lives becomes public property. And I don’t agree with that.”
In public, Nicole Livingstone had a tip, “The one thing you never, ever do is be rude to a flight attendant. Nothing gets around faster” (having travelled on a Sydney-Melbourne flight several rows back from Livingstone last week, I’m happy to report she was a perfect passenger. I guess the theory is right).
It would also be interesting to hear about life in between jobs. When you’re a B-list star and you’re suddenly out of work, how do you make ends meet? How do you find meaningful employment hidden away from the public and those gossip columnists?
A very grounded Ceberano had a pragmatic approach to celebrity goss.
“After 25 years of it, you realise – these things evaporate.”
You can read more at The Sunday Age
2 Responses
That was a really interesting story, I found it a great read. Well done to the celebrities on sharing their thoughts. Loved it!
Fully agree with O’Keefe. As I’ve always said, having a public profile because of your job does not, ever, never ever, make you “public property”.
The excuses the media make for invading the personal lives of entertainers are, let’s face it, utterly pathetic.