Summary:
-
Stardom can lead iconic figures down the wrong path, struggling with personal issues or changing careers.
-
Macaulay Culkin, Britney Spears, and Amanda Bynes all faced struggles under the media spotlight.
-
Tom Felton, Kit Harington, and Lindsay Lohan have also experienced post-stardom challenges, from addiction to mental health issues.
Stardom is a deceptive allure that tends to conceal a grim truth: the unyielding whims of the media glare can be very disorienting. Although it may appear that many celebrities have it all, the rise to fame then the media spotlight must have seen a number of iconic figures choose the wrong path either through struggling personally, withdrawing or by radically changing their careers.
Macaulay Culkin
Culkin rose to prominence as the most earning child actor of his time with Home Alone. Nevertheless, the mix of a strained relationship with his parents, who engaged in a legal war over his inheritance, and the extreme media attention drove him to an extended break and extremely publicized personal problems.
Britney Spears
The fame of Britney to pop royalty was accompanied by a certain degree of paparazzi harassment which served as a warning to the business. This surveillance was the cause of a highly-documented mental health crisis in 2007, which ultimately resulted in a restrictive 13-year conservatorship that has become the subject of the global FreeBritney movement.
Amanda Bynes
ADVERTISEMENT
Having been a comedic prodigy, with her own variety show, Bynes could no longer be a clean teen idol, and could not make the transition to adult stardom. Following numerous court cases and unstable behavior in the public, she was involuntarily hospitalized on a psychiatric hold and conservatorship, ultimately quitting acting to concentrate on her health and fashion.
Tom Felton
Most famously, as Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter films, Felton recently shared his post-stardom struggles with drug addiction. He described how the stress of living up to his early success pushed him into rehab several times in his memoir, as he struggled to work out his identity when not in the wizarding world.
Kit Harington
The huge popularity of Game of Thrones all over the world has cost the actor that plays Jon Snow a lot. Harington has openly criticized the pressure he felt as the centre of such a huge cultural phenomenon as terrifying, which ultimately made him seek help in treating stress and exhaustion, as well as alcohol consumption.
Lindsay Lohan
ADVERTISEMENT
Lohan followed The Parent Trap and Mean Girls with critical and commercial success. But the party girl story that the paparazzi fed off of was accompanied by a string of arrests and rehab visits. Before her recent career comeback, she at least fled to foreign countries in search of peace without the Hollywood lens.
Jean-Claude Van Damme
The “Muscles from Brussels,” who was at the height of his action-movie stardom in the 90s, had a serious cocaine addiction and an unidentified bipolar disorder. The pressure of his sudden fame, the actor later disclosed, only worsened his mental health issues, resulting in a stage of career decline.
Mara Wilson
The Matilda and Mrs. Doubtfire star left acting at a young age because she found the examination of her physical appearance growing up to be devastating. She has since emerged as a strong voice to talk about the psychological cost child stardom has on young girls.
Prince Harry
To be a “royal” is a special kind of fame, and the Duke of Sussex has openly spoken about the distress of residing in a goldfish bowl. He confessed to having taken drugs to bring him through the loss of his mother and the constant intrusion of the British media before he withdrew royal responsibilities.
Selena Gomez
Gomez has battled Lupus and the mental health issues that go hand in hand with being a chronic illness and a star in the spotlight. She has often made pauses in the limelight and social media to overcome anxiety, depression and diagnosis of bipolar disorder.
