Brittany Murphy And The Hollywood Starlet Syndrome
Twitchell
Ultimately, an autopsy will determine how Brittany Murphy died. For now, we know
enough about how she lived to detect some depressingly familiar themes about how
she lived: needy, agitated, ever-shrinking, drawn to an apparently unsavory man
as a protector.
Such is the Hollywood starlet machine, which draws eager entrants like Murphy.
Willing to do anything for their turn on the red carpet, even the ones who make
it often seem chewed up and spat out by the system, unable to overcome their own
fragility or ill-advised choices.
In recent years, Murphy became one of those tabloid mainstays whose misfortunes,
real or circumstantial, outweighed the impact of her actual career. On gossip
blogs, the read on her life was brutal and efficient. A typical one, after news
of her 2007 marriage to Simon Monjack, who had recently been arrested for
staying in the country on an expired visa:
Brittany Murphy is crazy and gets engaged like once a month, so if I was an
illegal, I'd feel pretty good about my chances. She also never knew her father
and used to be kinda fat. So all you have to do is tell her she looks good in
her dress, and a little while later she'll say there must be something about you
because she "normally doesn't do anal on the first date."
Cruel and misogynistic, but not diverging terribly from the facts. Speaking to
The Los Angeles Times yesterday, Murphy's father, Angel Bertolotti, "described
himself as a 'retired mobster' who now works in the movie business, [and] said
he and Sharon Murphy divorced when Brittany was 4. He last saw his daughter
about three years ago." (Other news reports put Murphy's age when her parents
divorced at two years old). Berlotti, who hadn't seen his daughter in eight
years, told Radar that he "served prison time on federal drug charges."
At 13, Murphy moved to Burbank, California with her mother to try to make it as
an actress. Her toothy smile, brown curls and klutzy sweetness served her well
enough to play Tai, the out-of-towner who gets glammed up by her Los Angeles
classmates, in Clueless. But the actress who had gotten her big break with a
makeover storyline could not help but draw the same lesson for her own life. In
her twenties, slimming down and going blonde and straight-haired served her even
better, at least on the romantic fluff circuit.
This is not just outsider speculation. On Sunday, Amy Heckerling, who wrote and
directed Clueless, giving Murphy her most memorable role as a teenager, told one
blogger,
Maybe she felt like she was not the, like, skinny, pretty girl, you know? And
then the next few movies she was, you know, thinner, blonde ... and going out
with Eminem and Ashton Kutcher, and, you know, suddenly got more into that whole
glamorous scene � I think she felt the pressure to become a different sort of
commodity to survive in show business, and I think it was awful."
And today, People goes even further. Says one anonymous friend:
A lot of her problems were due to poor self image. She wore extraordinary
amounts of makeup, tons of fake eyelashes, got her teeth capped, dyed her hair
blonde, lost weight � she wanted to be a beauty. She didn't want to be the fat
girl from Clueless. She didn't eat a lot. She would drink copious amounts of
coffee.
A director who had hired Murphy for the upcoming (and aptly named) Shrinking
Charlotte told E! this morning of a recent meeting, "I noticed that she had
dropped a lot of weight in the last six months." An anonymous on-set makeup
artist told The Daily Beast,"She had too many drugs and too little food."
Then there were the men in her life. She was engaged three times. The third
time, she married Monjack, a man she met when she was seventeen. As reports of
his checkered past and their erratic behavior together are multiply, it's hard
not to see the connection with her absent father and his own run-ins with the
law.
Nearly every photo of Monjack and Murphy together shows her clinging to him, or
touching him protectively, or looking dreamily into his eyes. Some news reports
refer to him as her manager. People on the sets of her movies called him her
"handler." Producers on films Murphy worked on had "summits" to discuss how to
deal with his constant interruptions, according to The Daily Beast. Murphy's own
unstable behavior on set was also harming her career and leading to persistent
speculation about drug use.
Having turned herself into what Hollywood seemed to want, Murphy became like so
many other young actresses who clung to a man or men who seemed to offer
something real, who ignored telltale signs and put up a wall between "us" and
the world � Britney Spears and Anne Hathaway come to mind. Maybe it was just the
enormous eyes and the slightly nervous smile, but she wore more openly than most
that needy vulnerability, an extension of the kind that lead all of these women
to seek affirmation from the entire world on the biggest stage available, no
matter what the price. Though it came at a price, Murphy got some of that
affirmation in her short life. Her sudden death, ironically, will give her more
of it than ever, at least for now.
Palin'sAnusRimmer
foretell the future!
http://jezebel.com/5431143/brittany-murphy-and-the-hollywood-starlet-syndrome
Kris Baker
"CyberDroog" <Cyber...@ClockworkOrange.com> wrote in message
news:2v30j5ljeup7gvp9q...@news.easynews.com...
How's that worse than dying in your own vomit?
Kris
Kris Baker
"CyberDroog" <Cyber...@ClockworkOrange.com> wrote in message
> On Mon, 21 Dec 2009 17:52:58 -0700, "Kris Baker"
> <paralle...@ggmail.com> wrote:
>
>>"CyberDroog" <Cyber...@ClockworkOrange.com> wrote in message
>>news:2v30j5ljeup7gvp9q...@news.easynews.com...
>>>
>>
>>How's that worse than dying in your own vomit?
>
> and in other bodily fluids and excretions as well.
You just detonated whatever point you were attempting to flame with.
Thank you.
Kris Baker
"CyberDroog" <Cyber...@ClockworkOrange.com> wrote in message
> On Tue, 22 Dec 2009 13:27:31 -0700, "Kris Baker"
> <paralle...@ggmail.com> wrote:
>
>>You just detonated whatever point you were attempting to flame with.
>>
>>Thank you.
>
Nope. Didn't trim a crosspost, you soc.women regular.
Kris
Rhiannon
LOL!
--
Rhi
chatnoir
> On Mon, 21 Dec 2009 12:55:05 -0800 (PST), "Palin'sAnusRimmer"
>
> >You could change Brittany's name in this screed to LINDSAY LOHAN and
> >foretell the future!
>
>
> Beats spending 40 years as a librarian and then dying in a nursing home.
>
Jim Sumner
> On Mon, 21 Dec 2009 12:55:05 -0800 (PST), "Palin'sAnusRimmer"
>
> <perryneh...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >foretell the future!
>
>
> Beats spending 40 years as a librarian and then dying in a nursing home.
>
> In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people
> very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
>
> - Douglas Adams
Brittany Murphy wasn't even that big of a star. You are pathetic if
you would rather die young to be a mediocre actress than live a full
normal life.
John Fartlington Poopnagel
> On Mon, 21 Dec 2009 17:52:58 -0700, "Kris Baker"
>
> >"CyberDroog" <CyberDr...@ClockworkOrange.com> wrote in message
> >news:2v30j5ljeup7gvp9q...@news.easynews.com...
>
> >> Beats spending 40 years as a librarian and then dying in a nursing home.
>
> >How's that worse than dying in your own vomit?
>
> and in other bodily fluids and excretions as well.
>
> Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right.
>
> - Arthur Schopenhauer
=============
SPEAKING OF ... did you know that yogurt is made from CAT VOMIT?