Since the beginning of time (or I guess more like since the advent of movies and television), celebrities have led lives of luxury that, while enviable, can lead them down destructive paths.

In recent years, it seems that more and more celebrities are leading sad lives filled with bad choices, drug or alcohol addiction, and run-ins with the law. While I cannot say what has caused this increase in bad celebrity behavior (Is it because such behavior is glorified? Has the Internet simply allowed us to follow every celebrities’ mistakes?), there has been no shortage of celebrity scandals, outbursts, and bizarre behavior in recent weeks.

As any celebrity or entertainment news fan may be able to guess, I am referring to Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan.

The saga of Charlie Sheen has been going on for months, and to even attempt to recap all of it would take up the entire word limit of this column. But his recent radio and TV interviews show that Sheen is clearly an angry soul with a multitude of problems.

Lindsay Lohan is a celebrity who one must wonder why she is even still famous, since for years now the antics in her personal life have far surpassed anything she did on-screen. She continues to commit crimes and violate her parole, and I can only conclude that she thinks the law is above her. And she may be right, seeing as she has spent  a combined less than a week in jail despite her many infractions.

But at least Lohan is having trouble finding work. Up until about a week ago, Sheen continued to be rewarded with a salary of almost $2 million per episode of Two and Half Men. The man locked a woman in a closet in a hotel room while in a drug-fueled rage, and CBS didn’t blink an eye. Only when Sheen personally insulted and threatened the show’s creator did they pull the plug on the show. What does this say about CBS? Perhaps more importantly, what does it say about Sheen?

He is a multimillionaire for what seems like the easiest job in the world (after all, he’s basically playing himself). And yet he and other celebrities like him seem deeply sad, disturbed, and angry. I guess the old adage that money can’t buy you happiness really is true.

But these celebrities’ sad and awful actions lead me to a chicken and the egg question – Does fame make people crazy and destructive, or are problem-plagued individuals more likely to seek out fame? Or is it a combination of both?

Like anything in life, I believe it’s likely a combination of nature and nurture. Not all famous people are crazy drug addicts, and not all crazy drug addicts are famous. But some attention does need to be drawn to the fact that there are so many famous individuals who at one point or another run into problems with family, drugs, relationships, alcohol, and/or the law. Many people’s problems likely would have existed no matter what, but are worsened by fame. For instance, the accessibility of drugs due to money and connections likely makes drug addiction more prevalent in celebrities.

And the younger you are when you become famous, it seems the worse your problems later in life will be. Maybe I’ve seen one too many E! True Hollywood Stories, but I can name dozens upon dozens of child stars who have drug and alcohol problems because of a combination of too much fame too soon, low self-esteem, and poor family support.

Lohan serves as a case in point. She played the sweet twins in The Parent Trip and even offered up her best performance in Mean Girls as a teen, but it seems after that the more fame she experienced, the more problems she ran into. Lohan’s case also brings the all-important family dynamic into the equation.

Not only were her parents at each other’s throats for most of her life, her mother also served as her manager – a double whammy for a child star. Her poor family life suggests that she may have had problems regardless of whether she became famous. But when too many lines are blurred between family and work, I believe this is when things get really bad. When the child is the prime breadwinner in the family, things are bound to go wrong.

And all of this leads me to pose what I believe to be a fundamental question, yet it is one that is rarely asked. What makes people want to be famous?

Why isn’t living a normal life good enough? It seems to me that people who have an overwhelming desire to be famous likely have issues with self-esteem and feelings of adequacy. This is not to say that all actors or singers have these issues. There are many people out there, even some who are superstars, who have these careers because of their love for their craft.

But I think that more and more people are entering into these careers, or even taking the easier way out by becoming reality television starts, because of a desire for fame. The love of the art should far outweigh the desire to be famous, not the other way around.

So many celebrities have shown that there is a dark side to fame, and I can only hope that this disturbing trend of people becoming famous for the wrong reasons will end soon.

 

To contact the Ionian’s Michael O’Connor, e-mail him at [email protected]