Just wanted to say that I loved delphica’s post about Billy Bob Thornton and the Komodo Dragons. And kudos to her for not wanting to kill all the eels.
Carry on.
Nonsense.
I’m not asking you to shed any tears for Hugh Jackman or any other celebrity. I merely note that YOU have undoubtedly been surly or obnoxious to a waitress or cashier at one time or another. I know I have. We’re human! Sometimes we have headaches, or it’s just been a hellacious day, and we take it out on innocent bystanders who happen to be handy.
If and when I’ve been rude to a waitress or cashier, she’s undoubtedly annoyed, probably curses me under her breath and flips me the bird behind my back, and then she pretty much forgets about me. A month later, if she remembers me at all, it’s as one of a hundred nameless, faceless jerks she’s had to deal with. It’s safe to say that no one I’ve mistreated, or who saw me mistreating someone, is still writing about it on the SDMB.
I’m generally a patient, pleasant person, but once in a while I lose my cool, just as most people do. MAYBE Hugh Jackman is a genuine asshole. It’s possible. I don’t know him, and don’t pretend to. But the casual observations of a guy who saw him once on an airplane don’t prove that (any more than my brother’s casual observations prove that Jackman is a sweetheart).
I’m pretty sure YOU wouldn’t want to be judged by your isolated moments of impatience or bad manners. Is it so much to ask that we not judge celebrities we don’t know and have never met by second-hand accounts of isolated incidents of unpleasantness?
Aside from which, a lot of these stories are completely unaccoutnable. Most of them happened to other people or were talken from gossip. That’s not a very good source. And even the stars often don’;t want people bothering them. I know that amount of attention would quickly render me very irritating - not because I’d be arrogant but because I wouldn’t want anyone to bother me about anything.
I dunno, I have mixed feelings about this. If you make millions of dollars a year - like some of these people do - you can’t have your cake and eat it, too. Being hounded in public for being famious is part of the price they pay for their opulent lifestyles. That being said, I think it’s disgusting the way people freak out over celebrities.
I think that’s wrong. They’re not celebrities, they’re actors (or sportspeople, or musicians, etc), and that’s all they should be considered as. For most of them, that’s all they ever wanted to be. They really aren’t doing it for fame and fortune, that’s merely the inevitable side effect of success in such a mindless business as entertainment.
So that means most of them are not as emotionally equipped to be in the public eye as some people are. In fact, as people who find pleasure in pretending to be other people, living vicariously through the characters they become, however briefly, you can pretty much guarantee that they are socially shy people in many ways, and don’t want a lot of oglers contantly watching them everywhere they go.
Imagine that for a moment - you may only see them for the 90 seconds they’re in the supermarket checkout lane, but for them, everywhere they go there’s another person, and another person, and more and more, all recognising them and wanting to acknowledge them in some way, sometimes in very up-close and confrontational ways.
It would totally suck.
They aren’t signing up to be rich famous celebrities, they just want to be entertainers. Let them do their entertainment job, then let them go home without scrutiny.
It’s no wonder that they aren’t always going to be in a good mood when it’s your turn to be ‘lucky’ to catch a glimpse of them in public.
Having said that, in some situations they should be much more approachable - like when they’re promoting their movie or sport or whatever, or are doing charity work, or have just come offstage from a performance, etc, those are the times when they should be in ‘publicly pleasant’ mode.
I second Bryan Adams.
I once heard him in an interview, sometime in the 90s when he’d “changed his image” or whatever, and he dropped the name of some fashion designer, and asked the interviewer if they had heard the name before. When the journalist said they didn’t, Adams called him a hick. You know, how Adams has such a rich history with fashion and models and all. Pure haute couture going on in the Summer of '69 video, right? Right.
I would have loved, loved to be in your sister’s position that day. When he offered his autograph, I would have said: “I’m sorry, I don’t really know much about, you know, the whole Jeff Foxworthy redneck culture thing, or whatever. You’re a country singer, right? I don’t know who you are. My grandmother might know, though.” 
Please. Most entertainers became entertainers because they’re attention whores. If it wasn’t for the fame and fortune they’d quit tomorrow. No, that’s not true - most of them would probably quit today.
I don’t know. Some acting types are over the top attention whore types sure, but others are more into a means of escape and are really quite shy. Think Peter Sellers, Rowan Atkinson, Sam Neil etc.
The musicians I know are into making music, fame is a side affect that some crave and others hate. In the end though, it’s about music.
Anyway, even the biggest attention whore should be allowed their own space accasionally.
I’ve never bought into this “All I own the public is a good performance” attitude that celebrities often have. People aren’t drawn to them because of good performance. Most of us could go to a local club or theater and see a good musical or theatrical performance.
There is something about most successful celebrities that resonates with their fans in a way that far transcends mere performance. Usually this quality is described as charisma. Without it, superstars would be mere character actors or unsung musicians.
Whether they like it or not, their success and their free and opulent lifestyles are a result of this resonance with the public. People become exited to see celebrities because they perceive them as special and they take an interest in them that is quite separate from their abilities as performers.
The real pros are cognizant of this and behave graciously and patiently with their fans. The ones who are rude and/or impatient toward fans are the ones who want to have their cake and eat it too, and they want to use the “good performance” argument simply to excuse the impatient and boorish behavior they often display toward their fans, whom they regard as little more than annoying inconveniences.
Bullshit. Some are, the ones who are really obvious about it, the ones who have nothing else in their lives aside from their celebrity - but they are far from the majority, let alone the rule. And those people deserve a certain amount of disdain from the general public.
Fame is a side effect of success.
Celebrity is media manufactured.
Arrogance is a perfectly human reponse to sycophantic toadies and worshipping fans.
Gallagher was an arrogant prick when he stayed at a hotel I worked at. He seems completely unaware that his sledgeomatic schtick peaked 25 years ago and has been losing steam ever since. He was rude, loud, spoke to me and other employees at the Alabama hotel in an exaggerated redneck accent (which is ironic since neither eye nor the other employee working have southern accents) and eventually several representatives of a rural water board conference politely but firmly (in their very genuine deep south accents) invited him to refrain from further manifestations of his annoyance. That’s when he and his then wife (they’ve since divorced- imagine Fran Drescher with a buzz cut and in tight leather) mounted their Harleys and went to another hotel. (In his defense, the hotel had effed up his reservation bad [though it was due to a water pipe bursting and causing many rooms to be taken out of order], but his handling of it was inexcusably obnoxious.)
I just finished reading Live from New York (an oral history of SNL) and was amazed at what a total prick Belushi was. He actively tried to have the women cast members and writers fired because “women aren’t funny”, thought nothing of destroying other people’s property, and bashed Curtin and other non-drug users constantly. Piscopo also came across as arrogant (particularly when he made fun of the cast members as they were being fired during the Doumenian purge {when only he and Eddie Murphy survived]- you don’t kick people when they’re getting news like that. Janeane Garofolo comes across as an arrogant nutcase, bashing everything about the show while everybody else interviewed says “It was her- she’s a bleeding nutcase”.
Mary Steenburgen stayed in a hotel where I worked and even though many bigger stars were working on the same project she arrived with a babushka like scarf around her head, dark sunglasses (inside at night) and insisted that she did not wish to be accosted for autographs by any of “the help” (she actually said “the help”). Frankly she could have walked down any street in town wearing nothing but a sandwich board that said “HI I’M MARY STEENBURGEN- ACADEMY AWARD WINNER FOR MELVIN & HOWARD AND WIFE OF TED DANSON” and I doubt anybody would have approached her- nobody recognized her or gave a damn. (Cool moment: I got to deliver a fax to her from Roddy McDowell in which he absolutely and bitchily trashed her performance in a play in L.A. due to her request to “tell me what you think- be honest”.)
Another vote for Crowe- while I’ve certainly never met him the stories of him cursing out waitresses for trivial or perceived imperfections and his trashing of other actors and directors imply he’s totally headed for the Rubber Suite at the Headcase Hilton in the near future. (Also not too bright- I remember reading an interview with him when GLADIATOR came out in which he was trashing the director for not letting him do the Spanish accent he thought would have been so much more authentic- even just reading the back of “The Roman Empire for Dummies” should have clued him to the fact that there WAS NO SPANISH ACCENT then.)
Reba McIntyre was a fault finding bitch when she stayed in a hotel where I worked, even slamming the phone down on a clerk who told her we didn’t have a concierge. Leslie Nielsen (who arrived with a girlfriend who will be cute when she’s grown) was also rude and brusque and condescending.
For counterweight, celebs I’ve met who couldn’t have been nicer: Walter Matthau, Nell Carter, Tony Randall, Fannie Flagg, Roddy McDowell, James Earl Jones, Piper Laurie and Sissy Spacek (who seems to have about as much Oscar winning movie-star ego as your average Winn Dixie clerk).
Oh, and speaking of arrogant (not to mention SMARMY with a capital asshole) celebs, my least favorite of the moment is… well, I’ll give you a clue and see if you can guess who I’m doing an imitation of:
“Seacrest out” (though he most certainly isn’t).
That woman on Dr. Quinn Medicine woman, can’t remember her name. I saw her on Johnny Carson back in her “I’m a major sex seymbol” heyday.
Johnny had had a young comedian on right before her, and had asked him to the couch to stay for the next segment (wish I could remember HIS name too). When jennifer or jane whatserface came out, the young comic was obviously smitten. So in between Johnny’s questions, he made a few “you’re so gorgeous” type comic statements, not HUGELY funny one’s but it was obvious he was being sweet and not snarky.
Her response? An icy, NASTY “I’m too good for the likes of you” tone of voice and look as she literally lifted her perfect little chin, looked down her nose at him and at one of his goofy little “I’ve got a crush on you but am too shy to say it, so I’ll be funny” jokes, said “Did you have a point”?
The sheer, unmitigated and unnecessary BITCHINESS in these 5 little words was so apparent that there was total silence from the audience. IIRC they panned out over the audience and showed a few reactions and then went to commercial.
I don’t care how bad a day you’re having, there is NO excuse for humiliating someone on national TV that way.
Well, I’m going to murder a few if they don’t stop filling up my hovercraft!
Anyway, I’d like to nominate Gene Simmons, based upon his thoroughly obnoxious behavior toward Teri Gross when interviewed by her on Fresh Air . A transcript can be found in her recent book, All I did was ask . What a jerk.
I’ve always thought he was sort of a jerk, too. When he dumped Laura Dern to suddenly marry Angelina Jolie, it was confirmed for me. I remember reading an interview with Laura Dern in which she said (paraphrased) that she went away to shoot a movie and while she was away her fiance married another woman and she found out about it on Entertainment Tonight.
Compared to some of the other behavior described here, this doesn’t sound like much of a candidate for true “arrogance”.
Yes, it’s rude to yell at people, but asking strangers not to address you by your first name is not IMO unreasonable, especially on the part of a woman over 60. It’s probably a lost cause given the cozy first-name basis of modern celebrity culture, but it’s not arrogant.
Hell, I get annoyed even with telemarketers for calling me by my first name, and if I were a celebrity who had interviewers and random fans on the street doing it morning noon and night I’m sure I’d go batshit insane. Personally, I would never address any celebrity by their first name unless I knew them pretty darn well.
I’m kind of an arrogant celebrity. Try sending me an e-mail and you’ll see what I mean.
But I deserve it. The rest of you really are like a bunch of ants crawling around at my feet.
Right, because acting is such a quick, easy, and largely foolproof method of attaining vast wealth and wide-spread recognition. And music? Forget about it! Learning how to play guitar is like printing your own money!
I don’t think its fair to hold an actor responsible for the general public being a pack of morons.
The world is as it is. The same charisma that results in idolization is the same charisma that creates their success, glamourous lifestyle and, for the most part, lifetime financial security. If people didn’t respond to celebrities they way they do, the celebrities themselves would never achive the success they do. Idolization and excitement over celebrities is the flip side of the same coin that makes them successful.
According to Mary Wilson in her autobiography, the “Miss Ross” crap started way back in their 20-something days when the Supremes were first touring. Diana Ross suddenly insisted that she be called that even by their friends among the roadies/musicians who known her for years and had always called her Diana up to then. Sounds pretty arrogant to me.