About this Blog

"In the future everybody will be world-famous for 15 minutes." So said the bleached-out, late lamented artist Andy Warhol. Having lived and worked in New York City, Warhol came to fully grasp the hold celebrity has on us. In this very famous sentence, he meant to point out that in a culture fixated on fame, many people will suddenly flash brightly onto the public screen, then--poof--will just as quickly disappear from public view--like shooting stars. Other individuals derive their celebrity from one stellar accomplishment (one hit song, one iconic role, etc.) that they never again match.

This blog is devoted to the one part of our celebrity culture that no one has written much about: temporary/one-shot celebrities.

The pace of modern life has quickened, and now we hear people speaking of someone's 15 seconds of fame. These "celebrities with a lower-case c" who will appear in this blog sometimes come to us from the world of entertainment, sometimes from the world of news. All are fascinating.

The need of our communications media for a continual stream of new material assures that we will have no end of colorful people who go quickly, where celebrity is concerned, from zero to hero (or villain) and back to zero. Now you see 'em, now you don't. What a crazy world, eh?

Temporary celebrities coming from the world of entertainment include one-hit recording artists; TV and movie icons who, although they might have had a great many accomplishments in their career, are remembered for one big role; standouts of reality TV; sports figures remembered for one remarkable accomplishment; and people whose celebrity came from one big role in a commercial or print ad.

News-based temporary celebrities come in many forms: mass/serial killers, other murderers of special note, sex-crime offenders, disgraced figures of government/military/business/media/religion, spies/traitors, hoaxers, femmes/hommes fatale, heroes, whistle blowers, inventors/innovators, and victims.

Celebrity Blogsburg will consider each category in turn.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

One-time movie icon Jaye Davidson

Note: Major movie stars--people such as Marilyn Monroe, Julia Roberts, Clark Gable or George Clooney--are mega-celebrities with many highly acclaimed motion pictures to their credit.

Some other actors, although they might have appeared in numerous movies and TV shows, have had but one major, iconic movie success with which they are always identified. Examples follow of this second type of movie celebrity.


Recalling the remarkable acting job done by Linda Hunt a few years earlier in The Year of Living Dangerously, Jaye Davidson (born in California as Alfred Amey) won Best Supporting Actor at the 1993 Academy Awards for portraying a transgendered woman in the English/Irish movie The Crying Game (1992).

In this film about the IRA in Northern Ireland, Davidson plays the role of Dil, love interest of an IRA member. This suspenseful movie is also a really, really unusual love story.

After 1992, Davidson was in a handful of other far less acclaimed movies but by the end of the 1990s gave up acting to work in the London fashion business.

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