No, you do it by being able to hire people to make money for you. Say what you want about Paris, but her publicists have deserved every cent they’ve made, and then some.
Actually, now that I think of it - has she actually made millions? I mean, net after the money she spent to become famous.
Yes, she makes a ton more now than she has coming as inheritance. What do you mean spent? she spent money partying and whoring it up, then released a sex tape and boom… famous.
Not true. The Hilton sisters were famous for being millionaire party girls, just like TWDuke said. Of course, you may be right about the leaking of the tape.
Not true. As has been touched on a couple of times already in this thread, she was already fodder for gossip columns and late-night comedians as an heiress, model, and party girl. She was notorious enough that **The Simple Life **was developed around her and taped *before *the sex video came out.
Cynics never let facts get in their way.
She spends money to party? Isn’t that what her boyfriends are for - to pay for all that stuff? 
Lots of people party. Paris paid millions of dollars to publicists, media outlets and paparazzi to make sure everyone saw her party. I mean, seriously… you don’t think she just became famous spontaneously?
It’s hard to remember now that she once was known primarily for her funny name. Cleveland Hilton, Seattle Hilton, Paris Hilton. ISTR that her parents did it as a joke.
I have never heard of anyone paying paparazzi - certainly not big celebs. You can have your publicist tell them where you will be , but I don’t think they charge anyone to show up. They make money by selling pictures.
Even if she did break the bank doing that, she’s made it back and more by being paid millions to appear at parties. She works damned hard at doing nothing.
She reportedly does not stand to inherit that much, since much of the personal trust fund has been donated to the Hilton charitable foundation by her grandfather.
Remember too that the image she conveyed in the sex tape made her seem cold and calculating. She took a cell phone call midway into it, IIRC.
This is one of those “Who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb” kind of question, isn’t it?
They weren’t all that famous, though. When I first heard about the “Paris Hilton scandal”, I thought it was something that happened in a hotel in France, and couldn’t figure out who was involved in it.
Isn’t that a “six of one or half a dozen of another” situation? Paris Hilton was moderately famous among a certain group of people until she actually did something for real to make her famous. The Simple Life and the sex tape appeared almost simaltaneously. Both made her famous.
But before that, only people that give a shit about society gossip rags had any idea who she was.
ETA: Or what Chronos said.
Sorry, that’s - once again - not true. I don’t read society gossip rags (what is a society gossip rag anyway?) and she came to my attention via The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn. I remember it precisely because I had a who-the-hell-is-this-person-and-why-is-he-talking-about-her reaction, but once I’d become aware of the name I started seeing it pop up more and more.
It’s peculiar that people insist she was unknown before the tape and the series. She would never have gotten the series if she hadn’t already had some name recognition (unless you believe she’s just that charismatic), and If the sex tape had been of just another anonymous skank, it would have barely created a ripple on the Internet.
Now if you want to say she was less famous than she is before she became more famous than she was, that can’t really be argued with.
It seems that various celebs get pegged with a certain reputation that is very hard to get rid of. Some others are:
Jessica Simpson - dumb
Jennifer Anniston - unlucky in love
Clay Aiken - gay (turned out to be true)
Paula Abdul - drunk/high
Simon Cowell - mean
No one’s denying that she wasn’t at least a little bit famous. But I think you’re overstating her notoriety during her pre-Simple Life/sex tape days just a tad.
All that proves is that Craig Kilborn knew who she was. I certainly never heard Conan (or anyone else for that matter) talk about her until the sex tape. She might have been quasi-famous for being part of a famous family, but she didn’t become famous-famous until the sex tape.
As for Pamela Anderson, she was already on the most popular show in the world for several years before her tapes hit. And one of the tapes was with her husband, unlike Paris’s tape, where she was with someone else’s husband. Not saying it makes Pam a non-slut, but certainly most people’s first exposure to her wasn’t the same as their first exposure to Paris.
I doubt most people had any image of her before the sex tape. Apparently gossip rags loved her but the rest of us didn’t know or give a shit.
I will consider myself to stand corrected. I had never heard of her prior to the furor over the sex tape, and for the first few days thought folks were blabbing about some kind of sex tape filmed AT the “Paris Hilton”.
I must say my impression of her is not of ditziness or vacuous shallowosity, but it still seems like a clever and deliberate “put me into everyone’s conversation” media-seeking move to cause that sextape to be published for mass consumption with her ‘consent’, whether she actually did that or not. Had she paid a publicist to insert her name into the minds of the readership of Us and People and Star and Celebrities and the NY Post and other cash-register checkout line periodicals, a better strategy would be hard to come up with.