These are all people who need the exposure to survive.
Tara Reid was a great young actress. But she chose being a celebrity over being an actor. Jedward are the product of Simon Cowell and were dropped by Sony after the first single. They got signed by Universal for a while but no-one cares. The record sales are poor and they don't matter. That's why they need to whore out to Big Brother.
Amy Childs got known for an idiotic TV show. After she got known she could have worked on some independent films but instead she posed for lads mags. And she could have got an acting coach but instead she got a boob job. So now she has to keep doing the reality shows because she needs the exposure. She's resigned to a life of gossip mags. But it's not even a life, it's two years, because then no-one cares.
Kerry Katona. Who? Nobody cares. I vaguely recall she was in a girl band. When you're in a band that teens love, you either commit to the music, like Hanson, or you work on producing great material like Beyonce. Kerry did neither, she just turned up on TV and did the celebrity thing.
The show is an embarrassing array of has-beens, parading around like a big orgy of plastic surgery.
No-one needs to be a has-been in this industry. There are ups and downs but if you hold onto yourself as a professional, you can continue to grow. The plastic, the reality shows, they add up to nothing. Sure, we sometimes watch, but it's the same way we slow down to look at car crashes.
There's always a deal being offered somewhere that will ebb away at your credibility, it'll suck away your individuality. I remember when I first saw Tara Reid in 'American Pie', I was in love. The voice was so sexy and she was a beautiful blonde dream. It meant something. But she didn't try to build a career like Michelle Pfeiffer or Kate Winslet, she went the other way.
And these weird celebrities may continue to turn up on reality shows and cooking programs for the next three or four years but it's only because the schedules need filling. After that it will fade because there'll be a new group with fresher fake tans and boob jobs.
If you want a career or longevity, be an artist. Be a worker. It takes longer but it also lasts longer.
Film sneaks into our lives in different ways. I grow fond of a film not just for what it is, but because of how we met. Associations sit so strongly in my head that a movie becomes entwined with certain occasions or periods of my life, and a select number of films maiden voyage into my heart was through television. Seeing them beamed out to me from the TV screen for the first time has left them intrinsically connected with a certain period of my life, and, for some strange reason, has reinforced my love of them.
Catching Goodfellas a quarter of the way through, round about the Copacabana tracking shot, or finding the opening credits of Undersiege reaching an end, and with a thrill settle in for guns, cooking and Gary Busey cross dressing (Busey, by the way, featured heavily in my childhood, as the king of the supporting part in dubious 90’s films: Underseige, Point Break, Predator 2). Yes, Undersiege seemed to be on TV almost every weekend when I was 14.
I was drawn to these films because of their violence, their dramatic dialogue and their phenomenal music (Terminator 2’s mournful industrial clanging is still one of my favourite movie themes). Since those tender years I may have watched subtler and more intriguing films, films which have become my all time favourites no less, but whenever I find one of the above on TV, I still have to sit down and watch it, hypnotised. I may have it on DVD but I still have to watch it, then and there, because it is being broadcast to the public. And even though there are more obscure films I love which are rarely broadcast, it’s still a special moment when Undersiege or Candyman invade my living room. And I’m pretty sure it has to do with me at the age of 14, sitting in the television’s electric glow. 