I love reposting this anecdote aboout Steven Seagal directing and starring in On Deadly Ground:
Producer and Director Steven Seagal filmed almost forty minutes of footage for the environmental message at the end of this movie, and planned to use it all in the final cut. After pressure from Warner Brothers, and a disastrous preview screening, where audience members booed, laughed, and made obscene gestures for the entire sequence, Seagal cut the final scene down to about seven minutes.
David Crosby.
Though I’ve never met him personally, I’ve read many accounts stating that Paul Simon, too, can be tremendously jerkish.
Peter Sellers. I do not know the details, or have forgotten them. He wrote his family out of his will. The entire estate went to some California undergrad who had never even met her great-uncle (or whatever).
I’ve heard that some of the “Satellite Radio” crowd are total and complete assholes. OCD, mental illness, some Donald Trump style grabbery (that would get anyone else arrested and put on a sex offenders list) as well as out-and-out stalking.
No names, please. It’s very well known number one, and number two, they actually do try to “track people down”.
Jim Morrison was probably the biggest famous jerk ever. He would intentionally hurt and embarrass people; he would invite women over and when they arrived she would find him with another woman humiliating her. His mother, who he hadnt seen in a couple of years came to see him at his hotel. He refused to0 meet her but he did give her and his younger brother front row tix. When they played The End…and came to the part where he screamed ‘Father I want to Kill you!!!’ Then he looked directly at his mother. ‘Mother…I want to fuck you!!!’ They never met again. Stories of Morrisons jerkish behavior could fill a book. 
From Echo in the Canyon: “They kicked me out of the Byrds because I was an asshole.”
Morrison, Hendrix and Joplin jamming in NYC 
The number of asshole musicians (or assholes when they felt like it) is legion. In addition to the above mentions Joe Strummer and Brian Jones could apparently be your best friend one day and your cruelest enemy the next. Johnny Ramone has his defenders, but he played his drill sergeant routine to the hilt and bullied everyone around him. John Lennon could be a total prick. The list just goes on and on…
Here’s almost 6 minutes of Art Garfunkel being insufferable.
As shown by his backstage confrontation with judo legend Gene LeBell;
You know “I have heard” that some unnamed guys are assholes is doubly useless.
OK, Tony Randall was personally a snob to me.
Everything I’ve read about Peter Sellers suggests that he was plagued by severe mental problems. It’s an ongoing quandary to me, the question of just where we draw the line between “mental problems” and “character flaw.”
Totally the anecdotal experience of a single person, but a former coworker used to be Queen Latifah’s assistant. Called her evil or the devil or some such.
She also worked for the Allstate guy, who apparently is horrible too, but not quite evil.
It may help to actually read the article before commenting.
Mister Rogers once ate the last snickerdoodle at a Pledge Week pot luck. What a jerk!
What in the article contradicts that? It was my guess too - that he’s trying to quit smoking, and desperate for nicotine but rationalizing that at least he’s not buying cigarettes.
Good point. I can’t think of what might have possessed me not to list them and/or their ‘show’ by name or to list the specific incidents. Maybe I can delete the post.
Thanks! I’ll try to do better…
That can happen to attractive young women without their being famous - going out in public can be like running a gauntlet of men who are compelled to express their interest in sex in every sort of crude manner, who demand that the target of their interest PAY ATTENTION regardless of what said target may or may not be trying to do, going through in their own life, etc.
The upside is that eventually women get too old to be interesting to such creatures. Celebrities never do, with the added complication of the paparazzi also being after them to immortalize every mis-step and zit in print/social media.
Steve Martin might actually give you the time of day for that, assuming it’s not the typical recognition he gets from people.
The thing is, in order to succeed in a big way as an actor or performer you have to be very driven and very focused, and at times selfish because others will be pulling you in various directions and/or demanding that you set aside your goals and ambitions for them (this is somewhat true of life in general, actually). The people who do manage to get to the top are most likely to have these qualities - drive, focus, excluding things not connected to their goals - in abundance. This is going to make them, at best, look/act jerkish at times. In many cases, they will BE jerks, especially if being a jerk doesn’t interfere with their success (fame, money, number of sexual encounters, whatever they define as success).
Having worked as an assistant to corporate executives… working as an assistant for someone demanding, even if they otherwise a nice person, can make you hate that person with a passion.
If that person is actually a jerk or an asshole it becomes all the more hateful.
Back in the late 70s, Harry Chapin did a concert at Purdue, and I happened to be an usher at the venue that night. After the concert, he came to the lobby where he was selling souvenir programs and such with the proceeds going for his pet cause - I think it was a world hunger charity.
He had a mini-fit complaining that people weren’t buying anything - they were just asking him to autograph ticket stubs. On one hand, I can understand why he was miffed. On the other hand, this was a college crowd, not known for having a lot of spare cash. Did he really expect them to buy his rather pricey merchandise because it supported his charity of choice?
I found his reaction jerkish. Maybe he was having a bad night, or maybe he was a jerk.