I never understood why famous rich people are so insecure that they find a way to kill
themselves.
Be it a drug overdose or drinking themselves to death, these people had it made. First of all, they won the sperm lottery and were born with some sort of gift that they found a way to successfully market. Most of us lose that battle right away – we’re just your average joe or jane.
This guy wasn’t much to look at, But, he had a gift for pretending to be someone else on a stage, and this gift won him an Oscar, as well as 72 other awards or nominations. He was talented, and compared to your average joe or jane, financially well off.
I’ve never been famous, and I’ve resigned myself to the fact that at this later stage of my life, it’s unlikely that I am going to develop any special god-given talent that might make me famous. I’m unlikely to grab a gun and a fistful of grenades and terrorize a movie theater at midnight, and it’s pretty doubtful that I’ll dress up in army fatigues and invade an elementary school. I’m also pretty sure that I wouldn’t want to be famous using those methods, and I’m near 100% sure that that kind of fame wouldn’t bring me much in the way of financial benefit.
Not dead yet.
Not that I really want to be famous. I think that some of today’s young people realize too late that being famous isn’t really all it’s cracked up to be. Justin Beiber comes to mind – he seemed to be a nice young kid for awhile, and then he let it all go to his head and surrounded himself with bad influences. He may end up on this list of famous dead people yet.
Perhaps I am off base, but I would think that these famous people would look back in time and see that a surprising number of their predecessors had some sort of issue handling the fame, and measures would be taken to prevent themselves from falling into the same trap. What is there about being “in the arts” that makes drugs or alcohol so much a necessary part of the lifestyle. Or, is it the drugs that allow them to keep being creative? Is it a vicious circle?
Some of these people had pretty awful starts in life. Cory Monteith apparently hailed from a broken home, the wrong side of the tracks, Janis Joplin was an overweight, acne scarred teen from a dirty little town in Texas, and River Phoenix was raised by parents who were religious fanatics who often called home a cardboard and tin shack in the jungles of Venezuela.
Despite these problems, these people were able to rise to prominence, with riches, fortune and fame – what we humans are supposedly supposed to seek for ourselves above all else.
The news media goes on and on about these celebrities who have ended their lives early. About how there must be some great defect with society that brings these people to their early ends. How we must all share the responsibility for their fragile ego’s.
I call bullshit.
Your ego can’t be all that fragile if you can do what these people did for a living. Even in the best of circumstances, it’s not an easy road, and from everything I’ve heard and read, these guys get told “no” a lot more than they got told “yes” when it comes to getting movie roles or a chance at a hit record.
These people became part of our lives. We willingly invested part of our time, our money, and even our hearts into the characters they created, the music they made and the lives they lived. They helped us feel better about our own circumstances. They made us laugh. They made us cry, they made us feel, in a world where it is increasingly difficult to feel anything.
It’s a damnable waste.
Well said. The list of victims of fame surprised me, as I had forgotten how many there have been over the past 45 years.