Sorry, what's your name again?
By Wendy Holden 21.12.01 (Evening Standard)
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-922295-details/Sorry%2C+what%27s+your+name+again/article.do
Contrary to popular belief, not just anyone can be a celebrity. The entertainment industry is riddled with people who have everything going for them - looks, talent, a filmography which embraces blockbusting movies and the odd award - yet who can walk, untroubled, through a flock of rampant paparazzi. They do all the right things, get cast in the right roles, date the right people, turn up at the right premieres wearing the right designer frocks. But somehow, lesser individuals - Kerry Katona, who isn't even in Atomic Kitten any more, Liz Hurley - are much more famous.
Consider Ioan Gruffudd, dishy, talented star of the Hornblower TV adaptations and the critically acclaimed BBC1 drama Warriors. Against all the odds, he seems destined to be the eternal subject of Next Big Thing interviews. And Jeremy Northam, tall, dark and handsome, wildly successful. He's been the on-screen love interest of Gwyneth Paltrow in Emma, Sandra Bullock in The Net and Kate Winslet in Enigma. How is he less famous than ex-This Life actor Steve John Shepherd, who went out with Martine McCutcheon for about five minutes?
Or what about John Simm, Stuart Townsend, Max Beesley, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Keely Hawes, Sienna Guillory, Sophie Okonedo, Sean Pertwee, James Purefoy, Matthew Rhys? Stars of cult Brit flicks, girlfriends and boyfriends of extraordinarily famous people, cohorts of Ewan McGregor and Jude Law. On paper, they're the stuff that the A list is made of. In practice, they're just not as famous as they should be.
It's hard to say what, precisely, stymies these people in their pursuit of recognition. Which fame chromosomes they're missing. But maybe their non-fame says more about us than it does about them - about our tendency to celebrate trashier, less-accomplished people at the expense of more deserving cases. But then again, maybe it's down to personal choice. Maybe Gruffudd, Townsend and the rest are deliberately avoiding fame.
After all, right now, being a not-famous famous person - a stealth celebrity - is hot. Star fatigue has set in. As far as the press and public are concerned, celebrities currently have the potential to morph overnight from objects of endless fascination to terminally dull attention-seeking horrors. An increasingly knowing public is getting cynical about some of the lines issued by certain PR departments: are Robbie and Nicole the new Chris Evans and Geri?
According to style-watcher AA Gill, reality TV is also to blame. 'The point of fame used to be that it was a lucky and incredibly rare thing, but Big Brother and Temptation Island destroyed all that. It showed that anyone could be famous, and devalued the currency so now it's worth much less than it was.'
Everybody who's anybody now wants to be a nobody. JK Rowling tries so hard to keep out of the papers, she's in them all the time. Author Jonathan Franzen spent years frantically typing away in an attic, refusing prime-time Oprah Book Club endorsement, before striking literary gold with The Corrections. Toby Young's Manhattan mag disasters, detailed in the best-selling How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, have made failure positively fashionable.
In music, the hottest band of the moment is a pared-down, unassuming, New Wave-influenced brother-and-sister outfit from Detroit called The White Stripes. They became famous through word of mouth rather than global advertising blitz.
As for fashion, the current Gap campaign features such non-household names as Ali Larter (who?) and Kate Capshaw, an actress whom massive fame continuously eludes, despite the fact that she's married to Steven Spielberg.
Think about it. What is mere fame when, like Capshaw, you're a member of what AA Gill describes as 'the most elite club in the world'?
Hoi polloi can be famous with everyone - how much more gratifying to be famous only among people who are famous. Famous in The Ivy. Famous like Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner, who can walk through Bluewater and never be recognised, and yet who are the most powerful people in the British film industry. They've got film stars fawning over them.
These days it's status that counts, not the outward trappings of fame. 'The most rewarding part of being a celebrity,' says Mark Frith, editor of Heat, 'isn't the paparazzi and the free handbags. It's the front row at fashion shows and being invited to Mick Jagger's parties.'
In truly august celebrity circles, being considered obscure is the highest of accolades. It's recognition of your skill.
'Actors such as Alec Guinness worked very hard at not being famous,' says AA Gill. 'There used to be a tradition in the theatre that you should not be recognised outside it, because you so utterly became your role when you were in it. To walk out of the stage door and not be recognised was therefore the greatest of compliments. Much, much better than being a mere star.'
So, all those who are not as famous as they should be, remember this: you're making a very modern style statement. Except maybe for you, Ioan Gruffudd. We suspect people are just too worried about pronouncing your name wrong to talk about you a lot.
Fame Fatale by Wendy Holden, a comedy about celebrity, is published on 14 January (Headline, £10)
All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt. (Charles M. Schulz)
Responses