Fame and power

I've often thought about the business of fame, and the oddities it must bring along. So many people are obsessed with famous people, and I can't help but ask why. What is a famous person, after all, but merely someone who a lot of people are aware of? They're people who become the focus of others, and for what?

Whenever I've been in the public eye, I've noticed a peculiar adoration that's only ever made me want to wear some mask to hide behind. I've found myself needing to pretend something for people, as if to fulfill their fantasies in some way: I'm certain that really famous people get this all the time. They must have to wear similar, more complex masks every moment of the day.

So what's the point? What's the point in having power over people who you can't actually be yourself with? It must be one of the most boring things on Earth. I mean, sure, if you're egocentric enough to want to have sex with a bunch of people who think you're the best thing since sliced bread, then that's one thing. But how soon must that novelty wear off? That must be the dark side of fame. It would be like always winning at chess: there's no point any more in playing it.

And this must be so with ultimate power. We think we crave power and fame, but with it comes such huge responsibilty, and probably a desperate kind of loneliness.

What must it be like to know that people want to know you? Where's the excitement in getting to know someone else, when all that other person wants to do is know you because you're famous or rich or powerful?

It strikes me that in life, what we need more than anything is a stretch so that we feel alive. We need challenge in order to feel connected, and we need someone to be real if we're going to find intimacy. If life becomes easy - if winning is easy, or attracting someone becomes easy - it all becomes as meaningless as having someone do everything for you.

I've known some very famous people, and it's surprised me how miserable they've been. In some cases, desperately miserable, bitter, lonely and sad.

I never knew Marlon Brando, but I can imagine that he was a desperately lonely man towards the end. He'd explored human nature to such an extent that he just didn't know where to go with it. That's the unique perspective of an actor like that. I can see that he looked at things in ways that others don't, and it took him down. How do you become motivated in life when everyone wants to look at your every moment, everything you say and do? When everyone is leeching at your energy?

I was presented to Prince Charles on time. Meeting him, I was indifferent. I just thought it absurd that there I was, in line with a dozen or so others, and waiting to be seen by this other human being whom I'd never met, who'd popped out of a woman's vagina just like me, who ate and shat and got scared like me; who had opinions and hopes like me. Yet everyone was beaming at him like he was God himself. And I wondered if he thought what a fucking bore it was to meet the same smiles every single day from the same kinds of people who thought they were such nobodies and he was such a somebody. And I wanted to ask him if that was so. And strangely, he seemed to pick up on that.

I watched Johnny Depp on Oprah a few weeks ago. He sat on her sofa and was cringing, I could see, at the adoration he was getting. The fawning, cloying fans who he knew paid his salary but whom he knew, too, that he wouldn't be able to spend more than a minute with in private.

It's so odd, the masks we all wear, whether we're famous or just "nobodies". Only other people make us somebodies or nobodies. Why we stop and stare at a person just because others stop and stare at them is bizarre, considering there are other people we just walk straight past.

Fame is something given us by others. It's a conspiracy of strangers in our favour.