First let me be clear that I am NOT a celebrity. But a few years back, I worked closely for one, and have first-hand experience dealing with them on an everyday basis.
I learned a few things from that experience.
– Celebrities are human beings fundamentally like everyone else. They have problems that weigh on them.
– Being a major celebrity can be a full-time job all by itself, in addition to actually doing the work that keeps one being a celebrity.
– Paparazzi are tenacious and a blight on our society. They make it their mission to magnify any flaws in a celebrity. In my experience, this often involves Photoshop and making things up to sell to magazines. Or ambushes. Or telephoto lenses peeping through windows from a rooftop across the street. It makes “normal” privacy impossible.
– Being a celebrity is stressful in ways I could never have imagined before working for one. When really famous, one can’t just go to the local pub or to the beach without having to deal with a stream of people.
– They don’t just have fans, there are people who are fixated on them, and sometimes not in a good way.
– They tend to work very long, odd hours, most often away from their homes and core supporters and confidants.
– Through no fault of their own, celebrities attract to them people who aren’t necessarily good for their career or their well-being. Unfortunately, a small percentage of people will get close to a celebrity so they can do damage. This may cause a celebrity to “roller-coaster” through ups and downs. It’s not all one big joy ride.
Sometimes you see celebrities featured on the covers of People magazine over time going in and out of drug rehab, or getting another divorce, or having custody problems, or going broke. They have their problems.
So it’s no wonder to me that there are a lot of celebrities who have embraced Scientology, because it provides tools to deal with these stresses of being a celebrity.
For one thing, there’s a wealth of Scientology information on how to organize one’s business or career. It starts with the Scientology Organizing Board, a simple tool that helps one organize any activity, including a celebrity’s career and support people. It helps one organize one’s personnel, marketing, finances, production, quality control, public relations, and executive structure. It helps one figure out what functions to outsource, and what to keep in-house. A celebrity can experience tremendous relief (I’ve seen it happen myself) when these functions are just listed out clearly on a big board, and when they turn over functions they were holding on to, over to someone else who is competent and can do them.
For another thing, there’s a whole section of Scientology’s technology devoted to helping one understand and overcome the effects of those people (sometimes very well hidden) to whom one is connected, who may be holding one back from pursuing one’s goals. These are real tools for understanding and handling live people. Though intangible to others, the relief one experiences can be immense.
Those are just two of many tools, either of which anyone can learn to use in any Church of Scientology or at the posh Scientology Celebrity Centre in Hollywood or in other Celebrity Centres such as Las Vegas, Nashville, Vienna, Austria and Florence, Italy.
Like any average person, they have problems that Scientology’s tools help them to solve, despite having all the fame and money in the world.
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