Word: stardom
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Much has been made of Marilyn's desperate personal history, the litany of abusive foster homes and the predatory Hollywood scum that accompanied her wriggle to stardom. Her heavily flashbulbed marriages included bouts with baseball great Joe DiMaggio and literary champ Arthur Miller, and her off-duty trysts involved Sinatra and the rumor of multiple Kennedys. The unauthorized tell-alls burst with miscarriages, abortions, rest cures and frenzied press conferences announcing her desire to be left alone. Her death has been variously attributed to an accidental overdose, political necessity and a Mob hit. Her yummily lurid bio has provided fodder...
...insanity? She is the absolute triumph of political incorrectness. When she swivels aboard a cruise ship in clinging jersey and a floor-length leopard-skin scarf and matching muff, she handily offends feminists, animal-rights activists and good Christians everywhere, and she wins, because shimmering, jewel-encrusted, heedless movie stardom defeats all common morality. Her wit completes her cosmic victory, particularly in her facial expression of painful, soul-wrenching yearning when gazing upon a diamond tiara, a trinket she initially attempts to wear around her neck. Discovering the item's true function, she burbles, "I always love finding new places...
Brandy wants mature stardom. "I have a crazy side to me, people don't know," she says. One is sure of her sincerity but unconvinced of her veracity: Brandy comes across, at all times, as sweet as a side order of candied yams. She continues, "I wanted to be in [the urban action film] Set It Off so bad, I wanted to rob a bank so bad ..." One tries to picture Brandy with a firearm. It's difficult. One tries to picture Tipper Gore with an AK-47. That's easier. Brandy keeps going: "I was a happy little girl...
Brandy's biggest fear is losing her stardom in scandal: "I'm scared of ever making one mistake where tabloids and magazines can make me look like something I've never been." So far, though, her life has been pretty much an embarrassment-free dream. Her latest record, Never S-A-Y Never, isn't just double platinum, it's quadruple platinum. She has worked with Whitney Houston (on Cinderella). Now she's working with Ross. Even Brandy's dad, Willie Ray Norwood Sr., is impressed by this latest pairing. "I've loved Diana Ross my whole life," he says...
...Japan, like Diana Ross has been to Japan." Impact is everything. It's at moments like these that one sees another side of Brandy, a shrewdly ambitious side. She may lack the blunt careerist lust of, say, Celine Dion, but her gaze is just as focused on global stardom. TV movies are just an initial step. Watch out, Tokyo...