It was Oprah Winfrey, I think, who said that ‘if you come to fame not understanding who you are, it will define who you are’. I read that to mean that if you get famous when you are young – get famous before you have a stable sense of yourself – then you are in trouble.
One Direction’s Liam Payne, who struggled with depression and addiction before falling to his death last week after what seems to have been his umpteenth relapse on drink and drugs, is only the latest in a long line of those who reached adulthood damaged beyond repair by fame.
The chimney-sweeps and cotton workers of our own age are on Instagram and TikTok, on talent shows and football pitches rather than up chimneys or labouring away in mills
Britney Spears, Michael Jackson, Judy Garland, Macaulay Culkin, Lindsay Lohan and Drew Barrymore are only a handful of the better-known casualties.
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