Fame or Famine

Or: Blondie Loves Biglips

Life for the rich and famous performer is tough. First they have to be an actor and appear on the red carpet and endless publicity junkets. Then they have to make millions of dollars and play keeping up with the Hiltons. Then they have to fall in love with someone who doesn’t deserve them. Then they have to make a new movie and fall in love with someone else. Then they have to break up with the first person and destroy America’s dream of the perfect famous couple. Christ, being famous is the worst kind of pain in the arse.

As anyone who has dated an actor will know, dating an actor requires a kind of patience that very few people posses. The unfortunate souls with the chutzpah to give it a chance spend so much time amid the drama and pageantry and idiocy that the relationship either all falls apart, never takes off, or they are truly the kind of people best suited to be mine testers in war-zones. Having been an actor and been surrounded by actors, I have nothing but sympathy for “normals” trying to date the famous or-soon-to-be famous. Being famous, for all the money and frippery, is essentially a thankless job. Nothing is quite as pleasurable as ripping apart those we admire, and if the actor spends all of their time focused in like an electron microscope on what people think of them they probably have limited space and time to look to their partner’s needs.

Thus, actors tend to date actors. Actors, as a species, are self-conscious on a permanent basis, neurotic and viciously competitive. Even in areas that have nothing to do with acting. If people stop thinking of them, people stop offering them work. Then the best they have to look forward to is winding up a relatively stable human being who used to have a high-profile job. As you can imagine, there’s nothing worse to an actor than becoming a has-been and so they go to great lengths to keep themselves, good or bad, in the news. The person most likely to put up with that crap from a spousal perspective is another actor.

Celebrity marriages don’t last. Particularly the marriages of film actors, primarily because of the way a film is shot. In a stage production you have time to work on the fullness of character. You have a history that you can work on with your acting partner. Sometimes the character work spills over into real life, but often the context of the story itself is enough to keep the performer grounded. The play has a beginning and an end. You know where the love scenes are and can prepare yourself. Each night you take the story in it’s entirety from beginning to end.

When shooting a film the scenes are cut in an extremely haphazard way. The climax, two minutes from the end when the lovers kiss passionately, can easily be set for filming at the beginning of the season. The moment when the lovers first meet at the very beginning of the movie might be shot at the end of an eight-month filming. As a result, there’s little background. Actors are forced to whip up sexual tension at a moment’s notice. They have to fall in love literally at the drop of a finger.

As you can imagine, it’s not unusual to see actors bounce from relationship to relationship with whomever is their current costar. They have to fake being in love so convincingly, that they fool themselves as well. And it doesn’t last because it’s not real love. It’s the affection of two characters brought, for a moment, to life. After the film comes out those characters die, as does the ‘love’.

There are very few notable exceptions to this phenomenon. However, the way in which actors comport themselves while these events take shape can often determine whether or not I, personally, admire or tire of them. After her failed marriage to Jonny Lee Miller and her truly bizarre marriage/psycho union with Billy Bob Thorntin, I really want to dislike Angelina Jolie. I really do want to sneer at her.

However, in this interview with Ann Curry of the The Today Show she sounds like a woman with her head on remarkably straight. Frankly, I read this today and now am not sure what to make of Ms. Jolie.

Jolie: It’s not about that. And you and I both know that I could make a thousand statements right now, and it doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t matter.

Curry: People will still…

Jolie: They will. People will say what they want to say, and it’s okay. And my life will go on, and I need to focus on my life. So, do I need to defend that I’m a decent woman? I sure hope I don’t. I know I am.

Curry: I admire you for saying it’s nobody’s business when you could so easily just make the paparazzi go away.

Jolie: No, you can’t.

Curry: You just don’t think you can. Do they scare you, the paparazzi?

Jolie: Do they scare me?

Curry: They hunt you.

Jolie: You know, I’ve spent the last month in Pakistan and Sierra Leone in places they should be focusing on taking pictures. They’re nowhere. You know, I’ve just come back to New York. I’ve been gone a month. And so now they’re going to get me on a carousel.

Curry: Well, what about this picture for which a paparazzi photographer got half a million dollars. A long lens pictures of you in Africa with Brad. I mean, this is insane. I would say it’s inane. What do you say it is?

Jolie: You know, you bought it. You’re holding it.

Curry: I didn’t buy it.

Jolie: But I mean the fact is, it’s part of your program. It’s something that we’re talking about. Still. That’s probably why he got half a million dollars. That day needs to forever be a day that I made a sand castle with my son. And that’s what that will always be.

There’s something noble in her answers. Something that is respectful of herself and her family. I like that she called Ann on blatant hypocrisy. I’m respecting Miss Jolie, whether or not she’s telling the truth about her and Mr. Pitts, simply because she’s unapologetic. I like that. I like it a lot.

What I can tell you is that I don’t get why Angie’s in love with the blonde monkeyboy, but that’s something none of us may ever know.

Best quote regarding PB&J:

It’s just that I can’t read or hear about celebrity romances anymore without giggling at the name “Brangelina,” whether anybody mentions them or not. No matter what we’re really talking about, I can always sit quietly inside my head and design the packaging for Hollywood’s sexiest fiber-rich breakfast cereal, and that makes me snuggly inside. – by Kristina Marie

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