Price of celebrity
PEACE
Posted 4/28/2003 10:35 PM
http://www.usatoday.com/life/2003-04-28-carys_x.htm
Price of celebrity:
By Karen Thomas, USA TODAY
Just 1 week old, and already the wee Carys Zeta Douglas is causing a
ruckus, mostly because we don't know what she looks like yet.
Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, who like to control family
images, may sell the first photo of baby Carys to a British
publication.
By Chip East, Reuters
With the Easter Sunday birth of Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael
Douglas' second child, the race for a picture is on.
Zeta-Jones is the No. 1 actress in Great Britain, where celebrity
images are much more in demand and pricier (being married to Old
Hollywood ups the ante even more). More important: the couple's
penchant for wanting absolute control over private pictures. It's a
policy that has the paparazzi even hungrier to scoop the couple's own
picture.
It's not likely official portraits or paparazzi photos will surface
this week. And with every day that passes, the bounty goes up.
Demand for exclusive pictures of celebrities in any private setting is
at an all-time high. To avoid unflattering treatment by paparazzi,
many stars negotiate ahead of time to avoid being hounded by
photographers and surprised by unfavorable images.
A spokeswoman for Zeta-Jones says there are no plans "at this time"
for photographs of baby Carys (pronounced KEHR-is) to appear publicly.
About a dozen photographers remain camped out in front of the couple's
Manhattan apartment, but only Douglas and the couple's son, Dylan, 2,
come out to run errands. Zeta-Jones and baby, apparently, are
housebound.
When Dylan was born, the couple negotiated about $875,000 for the
first public baby pictures to appear in Britian's OK! magazine nearly
six weeks after his birth. Guesstimates for Carys' first portrait hit
a quarter-million last week.
"It could be $500,000 by now," says Sue Jen Lee of WireImage, the
agency that captured the first official portrait of Jerry and Jessica
Seinfeld's first baby. WireImage is not pursuing an image of Carys,
she says, but "would we love for their people to call us and invite us
to do the first portrait? Sure."
But it's likely that a British publication will get the first
portrait, since those magazines pay significantly more money.
New parents Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick chose the
get-it-over-quick route: They posed on hospital steps with their
newborn.
Michael Jackson, on the other hand, masks his kids before stepping out
in public.
Douglas and Zeta-Jones may be feeling a bit cautious. Plans went awry
when the couple tried to control publication of their wedding photos.
Photos were sold in advance to OK! for $1.6 million, but unauthorized
long-lens photos appeared first in rival magazine Hello! The couple
sued Hello!, and the ruling this month has both sides claiming
victory: Unofficial publication was a breach of confidence, the court
ruled, but it was not an invasion of privacy.