An obscure celebrity, if that’s not an oxymoron, but one which Brit Dopers may remember: Jade Ewen. She clawed her way into the public eye as the British Eurovision entry in 2009 and managed a very creditable fifth place, then replaced Keisha as a Sugababe just in time for the Sugababes to become irrelevant, and now is onstage in the West End as Jasmine in Aladdin (the big musical, not yer average local panto).
There’s just a whiff of a fame-hungry stage-school persona that really rankles, but there’s no good reason for this to bother me - she’s clearly talented, she clearly puts in the hard graft, and I saw Aladdin last week and she did a perfectly good job in it. So she’s earned what success she’s had, yet she still bugs me. Irrational, as you say.
Between PotC and all his Tim Burton roles, it’s not surprising he’s gone off the deep end. He used to be able to do emotionally nuanced performances but it’s been beaten out of him by all the ludicrous nonsense he gets the big bucks for.
Personally I’d sentence him to at least four months in some David Mamet or Eugene O’Neill play on Broadway. Maybe six months.
Even Dolly knows that the whole big boobs, big hair, big makeup thing is ridiculous but she does it because the fans expect it.
But the woman is a goddamn saint who has used her money and influence to do a lot of good, particularly in the impoverished region she grew up in. Plus Dollywood is the only place where her gay fans and religious fundamentalist fans can intersect in a safe space, which is a minor miracle in itself. So not too much of the Dolly-hatin’, please.
