Spotify and Facebook insist in thinking I have to like Marc Anthony, but I always hear him described (and think of him myself) as “that guy, used to be married to Jennifer López?” and couldn’t name one of his songs if my life depended on it. If his name wasn’t so easy, I wonder how many of the people who according to Spotify and Facebook form his target audience would recognize it. Yes, he’s a singer, whatever - would he have sold half a donut if he hadn’t been married to her? Maybe he would have, but certainly not to anybody I personally know.
And, with my apologies to Ritchie and Penn, any dude who’s dated Madonna. Most don’t go beyond arm candy and last “about as much as a piece of candy in front of a school”*, but they get their fifteen minutes all right… [Grease]what do they do the other 23h and 45m?[/g]
I believe it was Daniel Boorstin who came up with, or at least popularized, the idea that a celebrity is a person who is famous for being well-known. He didn’t limit this to celebrities who weren’t popular actors/singers/athletes/etc., though. He believed that an awful lot of popular entertainers – maybe all popular entertainers – were famous mostly for reasons other than their actual accomplishments. I think Angelina Jolie is a pretty good actress, but it seems obvious that she didn’t become one of the most famous actresses in Hollywood solely on the strength of her acting ability.
Zsa Zsa Gabor may have been one of the first celebrities who was criticized for being a lot more famous than her accomplishments as an actress would suggest. Her sister Eva is probably best known for her lead role on Green Acres, but Zsa Zsa is probably best known for being Zsa Zsa Gabor. I think most people would have a difficult time even naming a movie or TV show in which she appeared, and an even harder time naming one in which she had a starring role.
I couldn’t name any of his songs either, but he married J-Lo in 2004 and I’m quite sure I had head of him before that. I think the ‘problem’ is that he was a latin artist so most of his albums flew under most peoples radars since he didn’t have many hits on the US pop charts.
ETA I Need To Know, from what I’m reading, this was his first crossover hit and 5 years before he married Jennifer Lopez.
Oh please. Is that the only Clooney movie youve seen?
What about “Oh Brother Where Art Thou?”, “Michael Clayton”, “Thin Red Line”, “The Good German”, and “E/R” episodes …?
Since we seem to be having so much trouble coming up with an example, I would be willing to volunteer myself for the position. Clearly there’s a void here that needs to be filled. And if it means people giving me free stuff and inviting me to fancy parties, that’s a sacrifice I’m prepared to make.
But he became famous after becoming a host and rolled that into a career in other shows and fields.
George Hamilton came to my mind as well. I don’t know the origin of his fame even if he did turn it into some small acting work later.
Talent wasn’t a question. He was in movies, had at least one sitcom, and ended up hosting that sports show. It is true his fame came from Roseanne, though, so perhaps he is a pretty good pick.
Fabio would fit if he hadn’t become famous from the romance novel covers. Aren’t the Gabor sisters and Charo kind of the original ones for this kind of thing?
Piece of cake: Queen of Outer Space, a mainstay on Friday night horror/sci-fi movie shows of the 60s with eccentric hosts (of which Cleveland’s Ghoulardi slays all comers — that’s where I saw it!).
To be fair, it really was the other way around. He had leading roles in several films (of varying quality, to be sure) and guest shots on TV shows before he drifted into being more of a celebrity than an actor.
Part of his undoing had to be playing the title role in a truly awful bio-pic, The Hank Williams Story.
To be still more fair, he’s still acting to this day, according to IMDB, though it’s mostly guest shots on TV shows.
As per IMDB, Hamilton had dozens of acting credits – and a Golden Globe – before he started dating LBJ’s daughter; he later racked up yet more Golden Globe nominations for his leading-man movie work as title character after title character.
He didn’t become a celebrity because of “George”. Before he became a publisher, his fame was from being born into “royalty”, born into money, inheriting good looks, and failing to pass the NY bar exam several times.
Johnson is an example of what I was asking about in the “I need a word” thread I started last week. There never was a satisfactory answer. The guy is more notorious than famous. “Celebrity”, meaning “one who is celebrated”, just doesn’t really apply. “Notoriety” just doesn’t seem right, and “Former High School Jock Who Knocked Up The Governor Of Alaska’s High Schooler Daughter” just doesn’t float lithely from one’s lips. Or across the the cover of a tabloid in the rack in the grocery store check out line.
Sometimes I check out the papers from Sydney or Melbourne and they’ve often got people appearing in the gossip/social pages who are clearly famous within a certain small niche but I (in a totally different city) have never heard of them and suspect many (most) people outside their niche and the paper’s social pages haven’t either.
I also agree the OP posits a fascinating question and one that’s intrigued me the more I think about it.
The thought occurs there’s perhaps two levels of male “famous for being famous” - one is the sort the OP is asking about, where no-one can really identify why the person is famous; they just are (and that’s led to a career in the entertainment industry which may or may not involve legitimate fame accomplishments), and there’s “Did something decades ago and has been coasting along on that ever since, despite having done nothing in as long as most people can remember” level. There would be tons of male examples in that latter category, too.
Along the lines of K-Fed and Levi Johnson, there’s various other men that had at least brief periods of fame solely from marrying/dating famous women. Example include Larry Fortenski (married Elizabeth Taylor), David Gest (married Liza Minelli), Peter Holm (married Joan Collins) and Rob Camiletti (dated Cher). However, none of them managed to extend their 15 minutes after the relationship busted up.
Marc Anthony is quite famous salsa singer. Before marrying JLo he was married to Dayanara Torres, a former Miss Universe. And his salsa hits (in Spanish) hark from even before that relationship. I’ve been hearing his songs (and be a fan of him) for the last 2 decades or so, since I was a kid.
I wonder if the problem with Spotify is that you selected other salsa songs, or your friends listen to salsa music, or you selected some Spanish song, and therefore the algorithm thought that you should know him. I know Pandora and other music stations algorithms kept putting awful Mexican rock bands and mariachis and ranchera songs on my list just because I had selected some Mexican artists. It never dawned on them that liking Café Tacuba meant I had to enjoy Los Tigres del Norte (one is Mexican alternative rock, the other one is ranchera/norteña/mariachi/no idea just country Mexican music).
He’s nowhere near as well-known as Paris Hilton, but seeing a reference to Chris Crocker (the “Leave Britney alone!” guy) elsewhere on the Web reminded me that he’s more famous than one would expect for someone who is best known for being very emotional about Britney Spears. I just learned from Wikipedia that he was apparently fairly popular on YouTube even before the “Leave Britney alone!” video, but since that went viral he’s made several television appearances, been the subject of a documentary, had some minor success as a musician, and starred in a porn video.
What’s the line? Even if you’re famous for being famous you’ll eventually be dragooned to act for the stunt casting value, and on the other side, people looking to become famous may attempt to accomplish this by doing something. Charles Nelson Reilly did some acting, but is mostly famous for being a celebrity panelist. My girlfriend suggested Rip Taylor, in a similar vein.
I’m not that intimate with his work, but I do know him as being one of the Latin/Salsa superstars. Hell, looking through his bio, he won a Grammy as far back as 1998, and has had songs on the Billboard charts (although initially specifically in the Latin Tropical categories) since 1991. He doesn’t seem to have entered the mainstream until the late 90s, though, but he had plenty success before marrying Lopez. So, while I’m sure marrying Lopez didn’t hurt his sales, he was doing fine.