fame news stories on Newser

Sean Penn: Celebrity Is Obscene Disease

Mary Papenfuss — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 00:02:00 CST

Bad boy Sean Penn is at it again. The eternally angry actor is blasting celebrity as an "obscene disease." "I don't think it's an overstatement to say that it's an obscene disease of celebrity that's taken over far too much of the life we live. I think it's a disease...

Lonely Emma: Men Fear My Fame

Mary Papenfuss — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 03:41:49 CDT

Poor Emma Watson. She doesn't have a guy and she thinks it's because men are frightened by her fame. "I find it hard to believe I would be intimidating," she says. "It must be the fame wall, the circus that goes around me." Guys can even be downright rude when...

Why Wills and Kate Fascinate Us

Matt Cantor — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 13:45:58 CDT

Even to those of us with no plans to sit through the royal wedding, Prince William and Kate Middleton are intriguing. “My friend is not a royal watcher or a tabloid reader. Neither am I,” writes Anne Applebaum in the Washington Post . Yet both were familiar with Kate’s sister Pippa...

Boyle's Now a Prisoner of Her Own Fame

Kevin Spak — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 13:25:11 CDT

It's been exactly 1 year since Susan Boyle's star-making turn on Britain's Got Talent , and the singer is now crazy famous—but she doesn't seem to be enjoying it much. Friends say Boyle's suffered a breakdown and doesn't enjoy her celebrity, writes Ben Macintyre for the Times of London . She...

Ethan Hawke Ditched A-List, Found Artsy Cred

Harry Kimball — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 13:49:03 CST

Standing on the verge of Hollywood superstardom in the mid-'90s, Ethan Hawke blinked. Rather then sign on as the superhero flavor of the month, he turned instead to pal Richard Linklater's small indie flick Before Sunrise. The result has been a career trajectory not so much Hollywood glam as Big...

Boyle: I Did It for My Mom

Matt Cantor — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 14:23:08 CDT

Soaring to stardom was “too big for anyone to handle,” says Susan Boyle. But in her first major magazine interview, the singer doesn't pause when asked whether she’s glad she went on Britain’s Got Talent: “Come on! It goes without saying,” she tells Harper’s Bazaar . She sang "I Dreamed a...

Forget It: You'll Never Be Famous

Neal Colgrass — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 18:36:00 CDT

Celebrities are everywhere, grinning from magazine stands and TV screens galore. But good luck trying to join the glossy ranks of fame, Jim Hanas writes in the New York Post . The odds are daunting: Only 4,763 people are famous, says a market research company, and only 2% of them...

Age of Celebrity Didn't Die with Jackson

Rob Quinn — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 03:31:31 CDT

Media commentators claiming Michael Jackson's death marks the end of mega-stardom couldn't be farther off the mark, Richard Florida argues in the Atlantic. It's true that the fast route to stardom the Internet offers has made celebrities a dime a dozen, but like every other new communications technology, the web...

Jackson Played Peter Pan to Charm White America

Katherine Thompson — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 20:24:47 CDT

A musical genius, yes, but Michael Jackson was also a master of performing roles. And his greatest may have been that of a de-sexualized, non-threatening black man who appealed to white audiences, David Gates writes in Newsweek . The King of Pop looked "blackest" on the cover of 1979's Off the...