Actors who really hate being famous: George Clooney, Megan Fox, Daniel Craig, Jennifer Lawrence

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Actors who really hate being famous
JULY 31, 20179:17AM

THINK it would be cool to be a famous movie star? Think again.
Sure they get paid millions of dollars, live in fancy mansions and are fawned over by adoring fans, but there are actually a lot of downsides.

Here’s what some of the world’s most recognisable actors have said about the dark side of fame.
GEORGE CLOONEY

Imagine being recognised by people wherever you go, being hounded by fans and followed by paps.
Welcome to the life of George Clooney.

“There are restrictions to this kind of fame,” he told Esquire in 2014.
“I haven’t walked in Central Park for 15 years. I’d like to, you know?”
The actor relocated to Lake Como in Italy in 2001 to try and escape the Hollywood bubble, but even there he’s hounded relentlessly.
“If I could I’d be out on the boat every day,” he said.
“I’d sit out on the lake and read a book. But every time you go out, it’s a scene. Other boats follow you, photographers follow you.
“There’s a funny thing about fame. The truth is you run as fast as you can towards it because it’s everything you want. Not just the fame but what it represents, meaning work, meaning opportunity. And then you get there and it’s shocking how immediately you become enveloped in this world that is incredibly restricting.”
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George Clooney and his wife Amal Clooney at the 69th Cannes Film Festival in Cannes.Source:AFP

MEGAN FOX
The Transformers star told Esquire in 2013 that being famous is comparable to being bullied at school, only much, much worse.
”I don’t think people understand,” she said.
“They all think we should shut the f**k up and stop complaining because you live in a big house or you drive a Bentley. So your life must be so great. What people don’t realise is that fame, whatever your worst experience in high school, when you were being bullied by those ten kids in high school, fame is that, but on a global scale, where you’re being bullied by millions of people constantly.”
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Megan Fox hates being famous.Source:Getty Images
DANIEL CRAIG
When he landed the role of James Bond, Daniel Craig was thrust into a new level of fame.
Now he’s photographed by starstruck fans wherever he goes.
“The difference, and this has changed rapidly in about 10 years, is smart phones,” the actor said in 2012.
“They are the f***ing bane of my life. I get people who just take pictures of me with their camera phone while I’m having dinner. I want to get violent and I can’t.
“They think it’s their right to take a photo of me and I find that incredibly intrusive. But every phone has a camera on it, so how do we stop it? We can’t.”
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Daniel Craig is reportedly going to play James Bond one more time.Source:AP
JENNIFER LAWRENCE
Jennifer Lawrence rose to fame after starring as Katniss Everdeen in the first Hunger Games movie in 2012.
A year later she told Vogue that being famous was more of a curse than a blessing.
“I am just not OK with it,” she said.
“It’s as simple as that. I am just a normal girl and a human being, and I haven’t been in this long enough to feel like this is my new normal. I’m not going to find peace with it.”
Jennifer Lawrence’s attitude towards fame had changed slightly by 2016 when she told Glamour magazine that she was slowly getting used to it.
“I didn’t really realise how angry and distorted I felt,” she said.
“For, like, probably a solid three years. It had nothing to do with Hunger Games. It had to do with the thing that came with Hunger Games. I still felt entitled to a certain life that I just wasn’t allowed to have [anymore]. I felt like I had the right to say, ‘I don’t want to be photographed right now, I don’t want people outside my house right now, I don’t want my nephews in People.’ I felt so much anger of ‘Why can’t I just do my job?’ And then you just get used to it — and it just is.”
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Jennifer Lawrence is slowly adjusting to her level of fame.Source:AFP
ZACH GALIFIANAKIS
The Hangover films turned the hilarious comedian into a bona fide movie star who now gets recognised wherever he goes.
“Being a celebrity is shit,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2012, “it’s dumb and I’m not interested in it.”
“I like to be an actor, and that’s it. The blurred lines are, I think, man-made. I think celebrity is a man-made thing; it’s not innate in us, we have people telling us, ‘We should pay attention to these people,’ for all the wrong reasons, their personal lives and whatnot … I’d rather just do my work and go home and watch Lifetime.”
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Zach Galifianakis has no interest in being famous.Source:Getty Images
SHIA LABEOUF
In 2014 the troubled star announced that he was retiring from public life. Unfortunately, he’s since had several brushes with the law that have kept his name in the press for all the wrong reasons.
LaBeouf has vented about the downside of fame on many occasions, including in 2015 when he told Variety that to be a celebrity is to be “enslaved”.
“The craft of acting for film is terribly exclusive and comes with the baggage of celebrity, which robs you of your individuality and separates you,” he said.
“As a celebrity/star I am not an individual — I am a spectacular representation of a living human being, the opposite of an individual. The enemy of the individual, in myself as well as in others. The celebrity/star is the object of identification, with the shallow seeming life that has to compensate for the fragmented productive specialisations which are actually lived.
“The requirements to being a star/celebrity are namely, you must become an enslaved body. Just flesh — a commodity, and renounce all autonomous qualities in order to identify with the general law of obedience to the course of things. The star is a byproduct of the machine age, a relic of modernist ideals. It’s outmoded.”
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Shia LaBeouf tried to step out of the spotlight. Except this 2015 mugshot has kept him in the news. Picture: Austin Police DepartmentSource:Getty Images

Donnamarie wrote:
George in particular is a standout role model for how to successfully handle fame without letting it take over your life.