Photo: xirannisxReading about the sad and sudden death of the actress Natasha Richardson, I’ve come to wonder if perhaps, in some small part, she died not in spite of her fame but rather because of it.
Most people seem to think that fame is generally a good and valuable thing. I don’t think that’s so true. Money, power, even glamor — O.K., but fame comes with hidden costs. There is loss of privacy, of course, and a variety of vulnerabilities, especially if you have children, as Richardson did. I have written about a number of famous people over the years and every single one of them had a serious stalker at some point. (Here is one hideous example.) To most of us, privacy may seem like an important but abstract notion; to the famous, it is a high-stakes game. President Obama, whose fame is obviously attached to even higher stakes, on The Tonight Show yesterday mentioned his security detail:
Michelle jokes about how our motorcade — you know, we’ve got the ambulance and then the caboose and then the dog sled. The submarine. There’s a whole bunch of stuff going on.
Even for a famous person who isn’t president, the vulnerabilities of fame naturally create anxiety. It becomes more necessary, or at least more appealing, to build a cocoon. When you are famous, your every move is of interest to someone — and, consequently, of value to someone else. While anti-paparazzi sentiment seems to have diminished since Princess Diana died — an obviously extreme case of the price of fame — I would posit that, among the famous, that sentiment is as strong as ever.
There is a vicious cycle at play. When famous people complain about the price of fame, non-famous people complain about famous people’s complaints. Shouldn’t they be happy that so many people care about them? I would! Besides, they bring it on themselves by courting attention …
To this last point: sometimes yes, sometimes no. There is a big difference between a professional celebrity and an actor, or a pair of actors like Richardson and her husband, Liam Neeson, who are in a business where fame is a byproduct of success. Do some movie stars love being famous? Sure. Do some of the smartest ones hate it? Yes.
According to this Times article about Richardson, she died of an epidural hematoma. “If surgery is performed quickly,” wrote Denise Grady and Anahad O’Connor, “it may be possible to save the patient’s life.”
This article and others report that Richardson had a relatively minor fall on a beginner’s ski slope outside of Montreal and seemed to be fine but left the slope immediately. The ski resort reportedly advised her to see a doctor; an ambulance was called but was sent away “because treatment was not needed.” Later, however, another ambulance was called and took Richardson to a small nearby hospital, which seems to have had no trauma center. She was eventually moved to a larger hospital in Montreal and then flown to a New York hospital, where she died. [Addendum: a more recent update has further details.]
It is a horrible story and one can’t help but feel great sorrow for her family. To die so suddenly from a minor mishap, to leave behind a husband and two children … well, it is heartbreaking.
The question that came to my mind was whether Richardson and Neeson’s fame may have, in some way small or large, contributed to her death. I realize this may sound ghoulish; I do not mean to offend. But if I were part of a famous family and was advised to go to the hospital after a minor mishap, the invasion of privacy might have appeared to outweigh the benefit of what was a seemingly precautionary measure. Do I really want to deal with the possibility of tabloid photos, career rumors, the sheer noise of it all? There’s another angle as well: it may be that, because of the patient’s fame, medical precautions were delivered but, if met with resistance, not followed through as aggressively as they could have been.
I am probably wrong about the particulars of my speculation. At least I hope I am. But that doesn’t change the idea: fame carries a price that shouldn’t be so readily dismissed. Richardson’s death is sad; it would be sadder yet, however, if her fame did play a role.
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I still think it’s a choice. Why do I know every little thing on Angelina Jolie’s shopping list, but I couldn’t even tell you if Johnny Depp is married? Why did I know everything about Ben Affleck and J-Lo, but I know next to nothing about him and Jennifer Garner?
If one chooses to live the life of a celebrity, pose for the pictures, do the interviews, live in LA, etc, then perhaps there’s some risk there. But as guys like Depp and Afflect prove, you can quite easily escape it. There’s no paparazzi in Cambridge MA, as far as I know.
That’s an original (and not implausible) line of thinking, which is saying something, after all that has been written about this tragedy.
I think its a double edged sword. Fame and wealth can buy medical care – especially in emergencies – that may not be available to the common man.
That said, this incident is no different from a parent thinking that a child’s mild fever is OK to treat the following morning, only to realize that the child was in the beginning stages of something much worse than a mild fever.
There are 2 morals to this story: (1) always trust your doctor; and (2) the doctor should live up to such trust.
Link, your argument makes no sense because you are saying that Depp (France, not married BTW) and Affleck (Mass.) skillfully avoid the paps but Jolie (also France the last 7 months) can’t? Brad and Angie don’t spend most of their time in LA. or even in the U.S. The reason they have more of a magazine presence than Depp of Affleck is because they sell more mags, not because they openly court the press. That’s Miley Cyrus and Paris Hilton. As far as the writer’s argument, it could be true. Just like it could also be true that celebs live longer because they have better doctors and eat better food than the rest of the population. I’d like to see some empirical evidence.
I think it’s a very valid and interesting psychological question but I don’t think it’s too significant. We all have experiences, formed throughout our lifetimes, which in one way or another will constantly affect our decision-making.
Perhaps if she had not been famous, she still would have avoided going to the hospital because when she gave blood the week before, the nurse gave her a wicked bruise, and subconciously, that tipped the mental scales against going again. Perhaps she was famous, but she was good friends with an ER doctor, so the costs of paparazzi vs her good feelings towards doctors balanced out, so she made a normal, rational “average person average situation” decision.
We could speculate endlessly- my point is, we all have these subconcious cues that lead us to make decisions one way or the other regardless of reason. Dealing with them is a part of life, not just celebrity life, but everyone’s.
I don’t think she rejected further treatment because she was afraid of losing her privacy at the hospital. I think she (like many women, actually) didn’t want to cause any more trouble for anyone. Many of us have the instinct of not wanting people to fuss over us, especially if it appears to be a minor thing. The trouble here was, it was deceptively “minor”.
augmenting that if she had not been famous, hence sucessful, and thus financially sound enough to be skiing, then she might have been at home or work instead of potentially risking her life skiing. which can be said for all successful people who have died through means of wealth, Sonny Bono, John Denver, Stephen Fossett, Buddy Holly, etc. (Exclude drug or suicide deaths on technical aspects.) As well, any person that vain about appearence due to an injury deserves any negative outcome, she thus risked her life if she denied medical treatment. If her fame played a role it would have only been in her head, which ironically is where her final undoing emanated.
To me the fame caused a different reaction. The article linked to asks the question of why medical treatment was suggested due to the percieved minor fall when normally this would not even have happened. One could argue that the only reason the first ambulance was called and the trainer even suggested medical treatment in the first place was because of her fame, whereas she thought such attention for such a minor fall (as believed at the time) was silly and unnecessary.