Drug issues actually promote your careeer? What the hell is this? When is Hollywood going to put the hammer down esp. on these “repeat offenders”, like Lydsay Lohan or Paris Hilton who both think it’s all a game? What other employer would allow this? Why doesn’t this ruin their careers like it would for you or me?
Paris Hilton isn’t an actress, and drug use isn’t promoting either of their careers. Lindsay Lohan’s career is ruined. That’s why she’s in the news at all. How many movies have you seen her in lately?
It does, however, appear to be one of the careers that earns you greatly reduced jail sentences when you’re caught for drugs/sex/shoplifting offenses.
IIRC, celebrities don’t receive special treatment. I read a thing online that did a statistical comparison of (known) celebrity jail times to the general public and found they’re not as different as most people think.
Drugs are barely a crime in most of the country.
Also, getting caught doing drugs and having sex wouldn’t ruin my job, or any number of jobs I’ve had in the past. What kind of stuck up job do you have where you’re not allowed to get any nookie outside of work?
My jobs have always been “show up, do your job. Stay employed. Don’t show up, don’t your job, don’t stay employed.” who cares what you do on your off time?
Note: politics doesn’t care about sex, drugs or alcohol either – Ted Kenedy and George W. bush both being shining examples.
She’s in the just-released Machete.
(addition of thread title into parentheses to complete the quote mine)
Oh no, not by a LONG shot. I’ve seen salesman/brokers on or use more coke than Maytag uses Tide. I’ve seen it personally in the car industry, in the finance industry, in the securities industry as well as in the construction industry.
Its completely pervasive; its just that cameras just aren’t in their face 24-7.
Some use it to get by. Some use it in front of others to get others to try it, so they can 1) sell to them in future to offset their own $$ habits 2) Get a promotion raise. 3) Get into the pants of the person they want to sleep with them (yes, that still happens).
And the worst the rest of us ever see happening to them is them getting the nick-name ‘f-cking coke-head’ while we work to try to fix their screw ups.
Who knows, maybe the Boss likes to be able to bring home a vial or two for the spouse for birthdays, anniversaries & holidays… :dubious:
But “What other employer would allow this”? Sorry, but I call BS on that, if only from personal observation.
Oh, and before you go “mandatory drug testing” this & “mandatory drug testing” that, I’ll be on board with that the minute you make every Senior Officer & Board Member of a traded company in America pee in a Dixie cup on a random monthly basis.
Any Broadway actor who is suspected of doing drugs is going to find their ass in the street, and they will never get back on Broadway. Ask Savion Glover and Ben Vereen.
No way you can do a show eight times a week and do drugs.
Last I heard, Hollywood was not the police. It is not their job to punish criminals.
An actor with drug problems is often given a second chance, but there are limits. No one is going to risk a big production budget for a star that might show up stoned or end up in jail. Actors often have to jump through all sorts of fiery hoops to be trusted again (see Robert Downey, Jr., who was only able to resume acting because his friend Mel Gibson put up a performance bond for him; even now Downey has to structure his contract so that the doesn’t get his money until the film is finished, just in case he relapses).
I’ve known two guys who were officers (Vice Presidents) of Fortune 500 companies who couldn’t have passed a drug test. And a few others as well at lower levels - Directors and such. If the company wants you to take a drug test, its mandatory you take it - it isn’t mandatory (except for certain regulated professions) that they ask you or that you pass it. If you have enough talent and they want you bad enough, corporations are willing to overlook all sorts of bad behavior to have to work for them.
(BTW, musicians, writers and other artists get to be tortured addicts for a long time before it ruins their career. Amy Winehouse isn’t an actress. Keith Richards isn’t an actor. Edgar Allen Poe, Hemingway - the arts are littered with talented screw ups).
To reiterate - it is all about the money. If you can open a film, people will give you a break. If you can’t, and you disrupt shooting by being late or absent or a pain in the ass, you won’t be working again. I suspect that for each actor with a problem who does work there are a hundred who discover their careers never go anywhere because of unreliability.
You forgot the food service industry.
Moving from IMHO to Cafe Society.
I’ll second that. I’ve been in the industry for 27 years, and it’s rife with heavy alcohol use (and quite a bit of drugs, too). My theory is that in this business, almost everybody starts on the “swing/dinner/closing” shift. And when you get off work every day between 10:00PM and midnight, what is there to do? Nothing is open except bars. Consider the fact that it’s also a high-stress/low-reward job, and you end up with a lot of drunks.
Producers really don’t like to hire actors with drug problems. Anytime an actor’s career trajectory takes a sudden downward turn, I suspect it has something to do w/ drug use.
A friend of mine is close friends w/ **Judge Reinhold **and I guess he’s pretty open about how wild he used to be back in the 80’s. If you look at his IMDB page, he was in a lot of good stuff up until about 1988 (Vice Versa) and suddenly he was in nothing but crap.
See also: Robert Downey Jr and Anthony Michael Hall.
Ralph Macchio is trying so hard to develop a drug habit…
I was wondering what happened to Savion Glover. He was everywhere (unfortunately). I thought Ben Vereen just got old (I saw him in Jesus Christ Superstar in the '70s).
<aussie accent>I’m not so sure about that, sport</aa>
There is NO business in which drug addiction or alcoholism HELPS your career. Trust me, NO casting director has ever told an actress, “Gee, I’m sorry, kid, you’d be PERFECT for the role, but I really need someone who uses more illicit drugs.”
There are, however, a LOT of businesses in which employers will overlook bad behavior if you have a rare talent that can make them a lot of money. Entertainment is just one such business.
And employers STOP looking the other way when drugs or alcohol start affecting performance on the job.
To put it crudely, an NFL team wouldn’t be HAPPY to hear rumors that their star quarterback is doing lines of coke in his spare time, but they’ll keep him around as long as he’s throwing touchdown passes. As soon as he starts missing practices or showing up high for games, it’ll be a very different story.
For that matter, MY boss wouldn’t be thrilled to hear that I was a raging drunk (hypothetical- I don’t drink at all in real life!), but he wouldn’t take any action against me so long as I was showing up at work on time and doing my job adequately.
I’ve never heard of this Lydsey Lohan…
But seriously, I don’t know why people think Lindsay is getting a boost from this at all, apart from the lucrative post-jail interviews. I can only assume they’re not really paying attention to what’s happening to her - which is all well and good, I know there are people who are not interested and will jump at the chance to proudly say how uninterested they are - but really, her career is in the toilet, and has been since A Prairie Home Companion. Drugs are not helping her at all.
There was a rumor that an actress made up a story about being on coke and then getting clean just so she could get some publicity since her career was way downhill. It was Lauren Tewes from the Love Boat. Guess she figured it was OK to say you were a former addict.