I’m writing a book about the television industry. If a producer tells me negative things
about a celebrity (he’s crazy, impossible to work with, etc.) – can I be charged
with libel if I quote the producer verbatim? And if the celebrity already has a reputation for being crazy…does that make it less risky for me?
You don’t get “charged with libel”; libel’s not a crime. You get sued for libel.
Can you be sued? Sure, anyone can sue you for pretty well anything. Can you be successfully sued? That depends on exactly what you said, and what defences you are in a position to raise.
So, is it a defence to say “I was only repeating what X said”? No. Is it a defence to say “I was only repeating what X said, and I made that clear by explicitly attributing the complained-of statement to X”? Again, no. By publishing the libel to a wider audience you do further damage to the reputation of the libelled individual, and you’re accountable for that. You may have a good defence, but “I attributed the libel to someone else!” is not a good defence.
Thank you, UDS, for explaining so clearly.
No. For a celebrity to win a libel suit against you he/she would have to prove that you knew the statement was false. Its a much higher burden of proof than an ordinary person.
That sounds encouraging. 
Well, it does depend on where the book is going to be published, and where the defamation action is going to be brought, neither of which are specified in the OP.
That’s always true, of course, when addressing any question about legal liability - whose rules apply? But it’s particularly relevant in relation to defamation, where the application of a different standard to celebrity plaintiffs is a feature of the US rules, but not so much in other countries. Since the plaintiff gets to initiate the proceedings, if the book has been sold/distributed in more than one jurisdiction there is scope for him to choose the jurisdiction with the rules that seem most favourable to his position.
Well…
Truth is an absolute defense for libel.
Have a good laugh everybody? That statement sounds reassuring because it’s true. Sadly it’s also meaningless. It may be true that x slugged a grip in the face on set. It may also be true that everybody hates x because of craziness. But the first can be proved and the second can’t. How much do you pay your lawyers to defend you either way? And who is publishing the book? Unless it’s self-published I guarantee the publisher’s lawyers will be all over the manuscript before it goes out the door.
Here’s a good one-page introduction to libel.
With celebrities, if someone already has a general reputation for being difficult, and what you quote is just a specific example of the person being difficult, you are generally safe, because in that case, there is no reputation to be damaged. However, if the person doesn’t have a reputation for being difficult (the person you are quoting has an ax to grind; the celebrity is a relative newcomer with no reputation one way or another; the celebrity is from another country, and maybe known to be difficult there, but has no US reputation-- just as examples) and you are therefore bringing the “bad rep” to a broad light, then what you have done can be seen as damaging.
That’s a big difference between a celebrity and an ordinary person. If you decide to write a tell-all book about your neighbor’s twisted sex life, because you want revenge for having to listen to it through the wall for two years, but your neighbor is a nobody, who nonetheless has a reputation to protect locally, because she has kids in school, and a place of employment where she doesn’t want to be gossip fodder, or worse, get fired, you can get slammed with a big suit where truth may not be a defense, because what you did was damaging.
But with celebrities and other well-known people, truth is almost always a defense.
Bear in mind that what you write has to be either pretty bad or pretty high profile to even attract the attention of the object of your scorn. Look how many people don’t bother to sue the National Inquirer and other tabloids, because they have other things to do.
I remember once the NI ran a story that Carol Burnett had been publicly drunk somewhere, and had a photo of her tripping (she really did trip, and it got photographed, but not all people who trip and fall are drunk). Anyway, Burnett was horrified, because at the time, she was working hard to keep one of her children clean and sober, and an accusation of drunkenness would have undermined her daughter’s trust, so she sued. I think she won. She was teetotaling at the time and had witnesses to her lack of drinking, if I remember this correctly. She felt (and correctly in this narrow instance) that she had a lot at risk if the story were thought to be true, because she had taken several public stands against drug use, and not necessarily alcohol abstinence, but definitely against public drunkenness.
The thing I remember most about it was how shocked everyone was that someone was taking on the NI, as though anyone believed it anyway.
Does that help? I followed the Carol Burnett case including the parts about the libel, which is how I know details.