The sad truth about fame is that it often has very little to do with your talent. OK. It is a *little bit* about your talent, but more about how effectively you manage to sell yourself as a “product” to the star-maker industry – whether it be Hollywood, New York art galleries, theatre critics, or record labels.
When you start getting jobs, gallery shows, or reviews, you start to figure out which part of you “sells” and what grows stale on the shelf. I’m not talking about the money (yet). I’m talking about the artistic work you make or perform that audiences want to see. Think of that work as your artistic “product.” What “sells” is what people want to see. You may have more than one “product” and some of them might be more successful at generating income than others.
The early success of your artistic “product” is the beginning of a story – the choices you are making shape that story at every turn. You’ll be presented with many difficult choices in the early years – should you do or make something just because it sells? Or do you stick to your guns and wait for the parts you really want? Do you keep performing for an audience of twelve people who bought tickets or for the four hundred who all got in free?
Each choice you make tells your fans who you “really are”, but more importantly, perhaps, this story will tell you who you have to be to maintain that level of success. Being multi-talented, beautiful, intelligent, and globally accomplished (Vanessa Williams) will not be enough to make a family audience forget about those old naked pictures. Naked pictures may not be enough to convince the world that your other work is worth looking at (LaToya Jackson).
So, who are you, really? And what do you want your career story to say? Do you want your character to change and grow over the course of your career (Ellen DeGeneres) or will your character need to stay the same (Meg Ryan, Kevin Costner)?
Ultimately, your story becomes a script for the play that is your life as an artist. It’s an evolving spiritual text, in a way. A statement of your mission about how you – the talent, the famous person, the artist and her “product” - will behave in the public eye. This script will guide you through decisions about the art or performance work you accept from this point forward. However you feel about Tom Cruise – he’s an actor who knows who he is and what he wants to be. His career decisions are careful and deliberate and each one contributes to a very clear picture of who “Tom Cruise” will be for the public eye.
We’ve all seen popular celebrities try (and fail) to be themselves after a long spell of being the person their agent wanted them to be. American Idol talent Kelly Clarkson is a great example. After cutting a series of successful albums with Clive Davis at RCA, Clarkson decided she wanted to go out on her own and make music that was closer to her heart. She went off the [probably] RCA-encouraged diet plan and started going out in public without her hair and makeup on. She altered the “Kelly Clarkson Product” in one fell swoop. The album flopped. Now, she’s left with the hard work of starting over – on her relationships within the industry, and even amongst the fan base that she abandoned with her radical switch from pop to metal.
It’s tempting to say you want to be “real,” because the distinction between “soul” and “product” is difficult to maintain over the course of a lifetime. We’ve all read People magazine (only at the doctor’s office, I swear) and know that fame can alienate the soul in some pretty profound ways. But the truth is the “real” you – unless it is what made you famous in the first place – might not be what your fans want to pay for. And this may be the most difficult choice your character ever has to make – do you work for the money? Or do something else for the money and do the work for you?
This is the first post in a new series called “How to Be Famous.” Stay tuned….
