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"The Days of Wine and Roses.......how swift they pass"
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By
Compiled by The Minx, contributing editor
Thursday,
12 October, 2006
Celebrities, past and present, ruminate on the evanescent nature of fame, life, death, the whole damn thing....
The Upside of Fame......
"(Being a star) is the classic way of getting over your social ineptitude: you think if you're a star, people will come over and talk to you".
Jarvis Cocker, ex-lead singer, Pulp
"One minute I was living in squalor in a condemned building in New Cross next to college, the next I was in a limousine full of cognac in Manhattan."
Alex James, Musician, ex-Blur member
"I like being famous it because it gets me straight into the VIP area of a club."
Natasha Beningfield, pop singer
"What I like most about being famous, is going into a room and not being a stranger. Its a point of reference which means you don't have to talk about the weather and you can very quickly get off talking about yourself."
Sir Ian McKellen, actor
"It was Friday night but I didn't have to wait. I am pretty famous. I walked straight in. People can say that it isn't keeping it real but then, there's nothing real about a rock star waiting in A & E on a Friday night."
Ricky Wilson of The Kaiser Chiefs, on checking into casualty after being knocked down in a street accident
......and the Downside
“How best to explain (the impact of fame)? It is a shift that happens in the head and that very few celebrities will ever really speak about. … One begins to believe in the specialness, and a dangerous sense of entitlement takes over. … When celebrity addiction starts, you become impatient with, and even angry at necessary obstacles. You think could run a red light or two. And then you do.”
Rosie O'Donnell, comedienne
"I live a very cloistered life; I can't go anywhere by myself. I am very, very famous."
Stevie Nicks, singer, ex Fleetwood Mac 30 years on
"That first flush of fame is like being put in a spin dryer. It is like everything and nothing you ever wanted. Very few performers are in control of their career."
Glen Tilbrook, musician (The Squeeze)
"A-list celebrity, try that out for a couple of months ... you'd probably go: yes. Tick it. Just for the experience. And to be honest, I didn't really like it. It's pretty rubbish. It feels like a service job, a bit like washing toilets or something. It feels like you are somebody else's servant."
Bjork, eccentric Icelandic singer and songwriter
"What have I lost? The ability to trust anyone outside my immediate family."
Joss Stone, rising R 'n B star
"When fame arrived he (Jarvis Cocker) found he didn't like it all. He didn't like being observed in the street or pointed out at parties. He wanted to be the observer, not the observed....Paris where he lives now is fine, nobody recognises him at all."
Interview with Jarvis Cocker, ex lead singer of Pulp, by Lynn Barber, in the Observer, 10 June 2007
"Success doesn't come more neatly packaged than a rock band with 10,000 people screaming at them every night, but it's curiously unsatisfying. It's definitely good, but it's silly really, and certainly not enough to make you happy, any more than lots of money is."
Alex James, Musician, ex-Blur member
"The celebrity thing is completely crazy. I think I just have to move away or give it up altogether. I'm just not so hungry any more. I made a decision very recently that I wanted a life instead."
Keira Knightley, actress
"I can't imagine how it would be anything other than hideous in public for someone to be of the elevated celebrity of Paul McCartney."
Jo Brand, comedienne
"These people claim they hate the intrusion that fame brings but then they bring it on themselves by having huge entourages everywhere they go, attracting attention to themselves."
Jon Bongiovi, lead singer, Bon Jovi
"I think celebrity is the curse of modern life."
Julie Christie, actress
"I'm not into the celebrity side of things. It's all hot air really; it's not about anything real. I don't think I ever believed in it."
Julie Walters, actress
"Ricky Gervais is now so famous that when he's staying in a hotel, he'll choose to go to his room rather than head for the bar if anyone is already there. He won't go to a pub after 8 pm and he tries to avoid going out in public by himself. Visiting London's West End is only possible if he keep walking. Otherwise he's bound to get recognised, approached, pestered."
Interview with comedian Rick Gervais in the Telegraph Review supplement 31 March 2007
"I've already done (rich and famous). I hope if I come back, it's in a good, healthy place. And I'd have to say 'no thanks' to being rich and famous - being famous, people think you owe them something."
Cameron Diaz, actress
"I was - I am - no longer that bothered about being famous. All those dreams I'd had about being a big film star, or winning an Oscar, I've let go of them."
Billie Piper, singer and actress
"I think I am past needing celebrity. I don't want to feel the void I see in a lot of celebrities - the unhappiness underneath the smile."
Beyonce Knowles, singer and actress
"I never wanted the fame. I have always tried to be someone who doesn't get noticed. I wear a hat and glasses all the time. I try to be part of our society so I can exist without being a freak."
David Cassidy, singer and actor
"(Fame) just isn't for me. I don't want people coming up to me in shops."
Duncan "Zowie" Bowie, advertising executive, son of David Bowie
Motivation
"I've never been in this business for the recognition or the awards. I just want to do good work, grab a decent paycheck, and move onto the next job."
William Petersen, actor and producer of CSI/Vegas
"At a young age I did everything competitively, I wanted to win and I hated not being the best at any sport I did. When I competed against anyone I thought, "I've got to win".
Lewis Hamilton, British Grand Prix racing driver
" I don't need validation, recognition or praise. What I need are facts, and the facts are that one of my books gets sold, somewhere in the world, every second."
Lee Child, best selling thriller writer
"I am my own muse."
Tom Ford, fashion designer
""Always in life you have to look ahead; the best things are ahead. What drives me is learning new things: like becoming fluent in French, an expert on meteorology, or learning to film my own voyages."
Dame Ellen MacArthur, world-record translatlantic yachtswoman
"The only reason I make art is to talk to people. I want to say that the computer is a wonderful new idea but some of the old ideas matter still. Like people."
John Maeda, artist, digital designer and inventor of the computer screensaver
"The motivation is not for the applause or the money. The motivation comes from getting inspired when I write a song and thinking it's good and wanting to record it and share it and get it out there."
Jon Bongiovi, lead singer, Bon Jovi
"I never went into this to be a celebrity - I wanted to be an artist- I went into it to make music and maybe, just maybe, to earn some money."
Lily Allen, rising reggae-rap-pop star
“I never wanted to be one of the crowd. From about the age of 10, I was keen on leaving a mark."
Jonny Wilkinson, international rugby player
"The only pressure I feel is to keep on working. I became an actress because I wanted to act, not because I wanted to be famous."
Amanda Redman, actress
Touring
"I don't want to get to a stage where you're only spending two seconds in the real world and the rest of the time on a tour bus, because what the hell are you going to write about?"
Newton Faulkener, rising musician
"I have a food rider for every show and it has to include vegetables, light sandwiches and juices and fruits. But being on the road is extremely tough. Different bed every night, long bus rides and all of a sudden it's show time."
Stephen Seagal, actor and touring musician
“In 2007 EVERYBODY plays live. None can afford to stay at home and live off their royalties. The road is where the money is.“
David Hepworth, music journalist
“If people don’t see you standing next to the drummer and on stage and on tour, it appears you’re not as committed.”
Johnny Marr, guitarist on his decision to join American indie band, Modest Mouse
“The world of touring is much bigger than it used to be. All those countries you could never go to for one reason or another, you now can. So I do.”
Bryan Ferry, veteran rock singer
"Persistence and desire is the combination that's got us where we are. We would tour everywhere early in our career. We'd work until we dropped, until we were dizzy. We put out album after album four times before we ever took a break."
Jon Bongiovi, lead singer, Bon Jovi
"I'm looking forward to sleeping late and doing sound checks in my pyjamas. And going down the Co-op. That should be what coming home is all about."
Corinne Rae Bailey, R and B singer
"We go through cycles. Sometimes we're getting drunk everynight and out at too many parties and then we get bored, so we go teetotal. Last time that happened we bought a load of gym machines and were sitting around drinking orange juice in our shorts."
Matt Bellamy, frontman, Muse
"Many of the things that come with touring, I can take. Sleeping on a smelly bus, sitting in departure lounges. But you get to a point where you want to do something that isn't written on some f****** schedule."
K.T. Tunstall, singer-songwriter
"A bag of dope, a gram of coke and as many chicks as I could bang."
Ozzie Osbourne, former lead singer with Black Sabbath, sums up his life on the road
Saving the Environment
"If I drive a gas guzzling 12 cylinder vehicle knowing what I know now about carbon emissions and our dependence on foreign oil, I am basically saying that I don't care about the planet I leave behind for your or my kids."
Sheryl Crow, singer-songwriter
"I’m trying to find out why I’m not on the list. It’s not as if I’d be busy off-roading in my Range Rover.”
K.T.Tunstall, singer-songwriter, wants to join Al Gore’s Save the Environment campaign
"I don't give a fuck about my carbon footprint or global warming. I have to travel, I'm in a band. I don't have a conscience for stuff like that at all."
Bobby Gillespie, Singer, Primal Scream
Vegetarianism
"You start with an insect and it ends up being Afghanistan. I'm reaching with this but there is a connection."
Richard Gere, actor and Buddhist
"We just saw the lambs in the field and Linda said, "Is there any way we don't have to eat this anymore?" And that was the start of it."
Sir Paul MacCartney, musician and songwriter, former Beatle
"Look, I'm a meat-eater, this isn't gonna work. You're meant to save the world, I'm meant to use up its resources callously. What we're trying here is just impossible."
Drew Carey, American comedian, on dating vegetarians
Star Biographies
"I can't stand biographies. Most of them are just bollocks, aren't they? I'd like a biog that just has a list of what I've done and a few quotes. As little soapy bullshit as possible please. That would be top. Thanks."
Richard Ashcroft, singer and musician, ex The Verve
Image
"I'm very admiring of women who've decided not to play the game of looking pretty: women like Amy Winehouse, Janet Street-Porter, Germaine Greer and Charlotte Church."
Jo Brand, comedienne
"(Bling's) like branding, any picture anyone takes gonna be branding you and your company. You've got to get people talkin'. A wood chain with no diamonds ain't gonna get people talkin'."
Charmillionaire, Houston based rapper
Reality Check
"We never read what critics write about us. Never. Anyone who does that suddenly hears a lot of strange voices in his head. And there are plenty of those buzzing around in my head already."
Thom Yorke, Radiohead
"Some people eventually get through it, but other people still hold on to the thought that they're a saviour, when the reality is they're just an actor for hire".
Leonardo diCaprio, film star
"I don't have a publicist. Never had one. I don't go to premieres. I don't go to parties. I don't covet the Oscar. I don't go out. I just have dinner at home every night with my kids. Being famous, that's a whole other career. And I haven't got any energy for it."
Gary Oldman, actor and director in 2007
"When an actor becomes a movie star, it's very difficult to find someone to tell them their behaviour is boorish and they have to stop it."
William H. Macy, actor, Fargo star
"We really want Gary Oldman for a part in my next film, River Queen, but we cannot even get him a script because he won't read anything we send him unless we offer him a million. I mean, how sad is that? These actors get people to do everything for them and five years down the line they don't know how to pay their bills or even cook their own food."
Samantha Morton, actress on Gary Oldman in 2004
"There are times when I think: Christ this can't all be true. Days when I think, hang on, any minute now I'm going to wake up back washing vans at Eastman's Vehicle Hire in Derby and find I've been dreaming in my lunch break."
James Morrison, rising singer-songwriter
"I'm one of the rare breed of rock 'n' rollers who actually does my own shopping. I don't mind rubbing shoulders with the mere mortals in the street. It doesn't freak me out going to buy a pint of milk."
Noel Gallagher, musician, Oasis
"I do normal things, walk in the park. I don't want to be off on my own diva planet. I want to be on Earth. I want to be normal."
Beyonce Knowles, singer and actress
"With all the years Rod has been stranded away from that group thing, He's been Hollywood-ified. He's got all this attention and all these poofs around him. He's lost the earthiness I know he still has inside."
Ron Wood, guitarist, Rolling Stones, talks about his old mate the singer Rod Stewart
The Fleeting Nature of Fame
"Y'know, if they take all this away from me tomorrow, they take it away. And that'll be fine. I'll be a hairdresser. Which is what I always wanted to be anyway."
Beth Ditto, punk leader singer with Gossip
"I've never jumped into the sequel featherbed. All actors want immortality. And the only way to do that is to be in a classic film."
Kevin Costner, Hollywood star
"I'm sure that once I stop being Darcey Bussell, ballerina, that will be it. I think the media will turn right round and run after someone else. "
Darcey Bussell, Prima ballerina who retired in June 2007 aged 38
"The difference between a good film and real life is that in real life there's the next day, the next year, the next lifetime, to contemplate the ruinous consequences of easy applause."
Hugh Grant, actor and movie star
"The standard tragedy of rock'n'roll renown is that being in a band - especially a really good one - is an almost impossible thing to ever let go of, and the rest of the band's lifetimes are spent trying to recapture some remote heyday with diminishing returns."
Alex James, former Blur guitarist turned writer and farmer
"It hit me and Ben (Affleck) around the same time - how insecure the (acting) profession is. Every single person is sweating the next job. Everyone.......The reality is in terms of an acting career, you can't attach your emotions to it lasting."
Matt Damon, film actor and writer
"While I'm here, I'm gonna milk it for all I can, so when I'm no longer hot - and I know that day is coming - I will step over here and enjoy everything I've created up to this point. And if I decide to do music after that, I'll do it because I just feel like doing it - but not because I have to do it."
Akon, rapper
"I don’t think anyone thinks this is a job for life. I always say two crap albums in a row and we’re out. That, and a fat arse, can close this operation down."
Bono, lead singer, U2
"People are intrigued by popular people but that s**t is so precarious. It can be gone tomorrow."
Corey Taylor, lead singer, Slipknot
Ageing
"There's something great about being an older artist, because you know you're not going to compete with 22-year-old American Idol winners."
Sheryl Crowe, 44, singer-songwriter
"There is nothing sadder than an old rock star. We have far too many middle-aged rock stars hanging around, clogging things up. It is a microcosm of the way the baby boomers have dragged youth culture into the grave with them."
Steven Wells, ex-NME journalist and author
"I'm pretty comfortable with it when it comes to experience, maturity, er, wisdom; but I'd be lying if I said that it don't piss me off that I don't have the same energy I used to have when I was 20."
Bjork, 41, eccentric Icelandic singer and songwriter
"I don't remember there being an age limit when I started. That shalt not go beyond 59? F*** that. The only thing that will stop me is if I become physically unable. But what is there in retirement that could possibly be better than what I've got?"
After 32 years on the road, veteran rocker Lemmy Caution, 61, of Motorhead just plans to keep on trucking
"I still feel the same as I did when I was five-years-old - just with different ups and downs."
Sir Paul McCartney, 65, ex Beatle, singer-songwrter
"Once you've resigned yourself to the fact that you are the more mature performer, and you're past the age you ever thought you'd do it, you might as well do it as long as you can. As long as I can still lift a microphone, then I'll do it you know."
Jarvis Cocker, 43, ex leader singer Pulp
"Maturity brings added confidence but that's about the only good thing that comes with it. I don't relish the fact of being 60 at all. It's just that my body tells me I'm not 25 any more - which is really irritating."
Elaine Paige, 60, singer, actress, musical theatre star
"I found myself 10 years ago looking around thinking, "Now what?" The business is somewhat cannibalistic. It eats its young - I wasn't young anymore. I was not exploitable I suppose. So I had to keep reinventing myself. But that gets a little exhausting after a while."
Emilio Estevez, 45, actor and director (son of Martin Sheen, brother of Charlie Sheen)
"At the end of the day, it all gets back to that thing about how, as you get older, you really have to do only the things you want to do in life. Nothing less will do."
Andrew Lloyd Webber, 59, composer and theatrical entrepreneur
"I don't do drugs any more, I don't smoke cigarettes any more, I'm just this boring middle-aged rock star."
Ozzie Osbourne, 58, former lead singer of Black Sabbath
"No longer bothered by her critics' belief that her sell-by date has been reached, Joni Mitchell, now 63, is delighted to be embarking on her busiest and most productive schedule for more than a decade."
2007 Interview with Joni Mitchell by journalist Paul Sexton
"I'm 50 in September. Whatever impact I have made as a performer or musician, it's never going to get any bigger and better."
Nick Cave, 50, singer-songwriter
"You could say I'm an old maid - I remember when I was a kid, if you were labelled an old maid, it was like being a witch. But now that I am one, I don't feel that way. I don't even think about romance. I never married because I was never in a relationship that was good enough to warrant it."
Diane Keaton, 61, actress
"I’m not interested in any obituaries, or social status like knighthoods, peerages and dodgy honours. I don’t crave social acceptance any more as I’ve got older. I have no ambitions left except to be gainfully employed for as long as possible."
Janet Street-Porter, 60, Journalist, on reaching 60
"All these things I abhorred and shunned and wrote songs about hating, I'm now embracing. There is nothing more grotesque than an ageing, women-chasing, whiskey-swigging rock 'n roller, so it's been quite dignified, this whole process."
Alex James, 39, former Blur guitarist, on taking over as a regular presenter of the weekly UK farming show "On your Farm" on BBC radio in January 2007
Mortality
“When a role is finished, it’s finished. I get no emotion from leaving a character or a film. It is like I have done my duty and have done the best I can. There is no need to have any nostalgia or fear. You learn dying, in a way. We are all going to leave one day, so films are a good way to prepare yourself.”
Juliette Binoche, French actress
"On the day that I die I'd like jokes to be told."
Paul McCartney, singer-songwriter, ex-Beatle
"In the Sixties you did not know you were going to get older. But you do and you are. People become much dearer. There is a wonderful recognition of the life we have lead and a terrific sense of mortality."
Julie Christie, actress
"Five albums in, the age I'm at, with two kids, with a lot of people I know having died, I'm questioning mortality."
Badly Drawn Boy (Damon Gough) singer-songwriter, aged 37
"Just after 50 I took stock of my own life. I looked at my career and said ,'Is this it? Is this the guy that did Fargo And now it's a steady slide to the grave?'"
William H. Macey, actor, Fargo star
"John Entwhistle went out fairly well, I thought: five strippers and a quick heart attack. And in the Hard Rock Hotel in Vegas at that."
Lemmy, singer, Motorhead
"And as for fortune, and as for fame
I never invited them in
Though it seemed to the world they were all I desired
They are illusions
They're not the solutions they promised to be."
"Don't Cry for Me Argentina"
From "Evita" Lyrics by Tim Rice
The Naked Reader 2006
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