What next when your best is behind you?
JK Rowling was unusually frank for a celebrity in admitting that her success has peaked and her status could be diminishing. But many stars are unhappy with fading fame, says Judith Woods
RUBY Wax likened it to “death”. Singer Gary Barlow compared himself to an addict who overate to numb the pain when, without warning, his “drug” was withdrawn. Donny Osmond’s self-esteem was in such tatters that he almost embarked on a new career installing home security alarms.
When the fame bubble bursts, the fallout can be toxic. The loss of adulation, attention and status can be devastating to those who have invested their careers, their lives — their personalities — in performance. The impact can be just as marked on those involved in other creative arts, sport or indeed politics, for whom dizzying success is a given — until, one day, it is not. Cue either a breakdown or a sense of liberation.
When JK Rowling admitted this week that she would never again achieve the height of her phenomenal Harry Potter success, she was doing more than simply stating the blindingly obvious. She was drawing a line in the proverbial sand by openly and graciously acknowledging that she was no longer trying to prove herself.
“So what do you do if you’ve had the kind of success that you never expected? Well, you can go one of two ways,” said Rowling. “You can think oh no, how dreadful. I’ll never ever top that. Or you can say how incredibly marvellous and liberating that I made money beyond my wildest dreams and I can affect issues I really care about.”
To this end, she has set up a charity, Lumos, to help children across the globe who have been abandoned to the care of institutions.
Yet she has also continued writing. Her adult novel The Casual Vacancywas a bestseller and The Cuckoo’s Calling, a crime novel penned under a pseudonym, was also critically acclaimed. But by being upfront about her motivation — that she continues to write for the sheer love of writing rather than to demonstrate her versatility or talent or longevity — Rowling has, very wisely, made things a little easier for herself.
“JK Rowling’s response both to fame and the diminishment of fame is psychologically healthy,” says Dr Tim Rank, consultant psychiatrist at The Priory in Brighton.
“A healthy person psychologically doesn’t need fame. The trouble starts when someone craves adulation in order to make up for some unmet need.
“Comedians are a classic example — their work isn’t just a job and a source of income, it’s who they are. The fame props them up and when it goes they crumble. Tony Hancock was a prime case.”
So too, was Ruby Wax, whose acid-tongued wit garnered a huge following until TV fashions changed.
“I just barked at people,’’ she said, “until barking at people stopped being funny and television gave me up. TV had always been my ambition, so leaving was a death. If I don’t do anything I go berserk. I can’t just sit and read a book.”
But Wax, who suffers from bipolar disorder, did decide to read a great many books and now has a degree in psychotherapy and a master’s in cognitive therapy. Although she appears on stage, her — still entertain- ing — show now revolves around mental health issues.
Reinvention is not for everyone, however.
JD Salinger peaked with The Catcher in the Rye in 1951 and became a recluse. Margaret Mitchell never followed up her Pulitzer-winning 1936 novel Gone With the Wind. Ditto Harper Lee, whose To Kill A Mockingbird won the Pulitzer in 1961 and who subsequently started, but never finished, two more books. But that was then.
In our brave new multimedia world, where ups and downs are recorded for good or ill but most certainly for posterity in cyberspace, it is harder for anyone — writers, actors or singers — to withdraw from public life once their Faustian pact with fame goes awry. It is a curious fact that we “never-weres” are disproportionately curious about “has-beens” and have precious little sympathy for those whose fame really did last for only 15 minutes and who never quite recovered.
Even Sir Bob Geldof, who has made a global name for himself as a tireless charity fundraiser and human rights campaigner, still only half-jokingly admits that it rankles that nobody pays his Boomtown Rats hinterland the respect he feels it is due, because music remains his passion.
His autobiography, in the
I did all the things pop stars do. If you give someone aged 25 a lot of money and feed their ego, they behave extraordinarily badly. People are always pleased to see you and tell you that you’re marvellous. You get used to that in 30 seconds, but coming down from that takes much longer
wake of Live Aid, was called Is That It?
“Our culture tends to talk people up and then enjoy their fall,” says Rank. “But performers who are hooked on the buzz of an audience can really suffer when the curtain comes down on their career.”
Whether it is Andrew Ridgeley from Wham! popping out for petrol near his 15th-century farmhouse in Cornwall or Christine Keeler pushing her shopping trolley in south London while having the temerity to look her age (72), there is a bizarre prurience at play.
Richard Coles, the drummer who partnered Jimmy Somerville in the ’80s band The Communards, became a Church of England priest after he experienced the chilly winds of rejection. “I did all the things pop stars do. If you give someone aged 25 a lot of money and feed their ego, they behave extraordinarily badly,” said Rev Coles.
“Your friends are on the dole and suddenly you’re doing the Montreux pop festival or messing about with Roland Rat. People are always pleased to see you and tell you that you’re marvellous. You get used to that in 30 seconds, but coming down from that takes much longer.”
Quite so. After Take That split up in 1996, the band’s stolid songwriter, Gary Barlow, was hotly tipped as the member most likely to succeed. But it was cheeky, manic Robbie Williams who went stratospheric, whereas Barlow’s solo career bombed and his record company pulled the plug. His depression manifested itself in overeating.
His weight soared and rendered him unrecognisable; it was better to be a nobody than a once-was. But Barlow’s fall from grace was followed by another giddying rise, thanks first to the reunion of the band, then his stint as a judge on The X Factor, which has seen him elevated to (slightly grumpy) national treasure status. He has even been moved to record a solo album, due to be released this month.
“This is going to sound wrong, but I couldn’t care less,” he said of the record’s prospects.
He, like Rowling, has enough money in the bank not to worry about the mortgage. But even for artists without the benefit of his back catalogue, it is personal fulfilment that is often the driver. Take Sir Bradley Wiggins, who has failed to recapture his Tour de France glory.
Or Roger Federer, once feted as the greatest tennis player of all time, but whose lacklustre losing streak has prompted commentators to suggest that it is time, for the sake of his dignity and his legacy, to hang up his racket.
“Some sportsmen know exactly when to stop,” says leading sports psychologist Martin Perry. “Gary Lineker and Mark Spitz both felt they had done all they wanted to do and that it felt right to walk away, so they did. But Maradona and Paul Gascoigne were addicted to the euphoria that you can only really get on the sports field or pitch.”
Pride and ego also play a role in an athlete’s decision to stay or go. Federer has responded to critics by pointing out that, aged 32, he’s far too young to retire and besides, he still loves playing and competing.
That spirit of rivalry is vital in sport. Less so in literature, most particularly when you have sold more than 400 million books worldwide. But Rowling and Federer do at least share one trait, namely the insight that it is not always about victory.
Sometimes it is all about enjoyment.