Actors didn't use to be celebrities. A hundred years ago, they put the theaters next to the brothels. Actors were poor. Celebrities used to be kings and queens. Then the United States abolished monarchy, and now there's this coming together of show business and celebrity. I don't think it's healthy. I don't want to sound self-important, but all these celebrity shows and magazines - it comes from us, from Hollywood, from our country. We're the ones creating it. And I think it works in close step with a lot of other bad things that are happening in the world. It promotes greed, it promotes being selfish and it promotes this ladder, where you're a better person if you have more money. It's not at all about the work itself. Don't get me wrong. I love movies. But this myth of celebrity has nothing to do with movies.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- The speaker argues that the modern celebrity culture, which glorifies wealth and status over work, is unhealthy and self-created by society.
- In plain terms
- Celebrity culture promotes greed and selfishness instead of valuing actual work.
- What can you take from it?
- Society creates celebrity culture, which often promotes negative values like greed.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- How do you define a celebrity today?
- Does fame distract from artistic merit?
Another view
The quote generalizes complex historical shifts in entertainment into a single negative trend.
More from Joseph Gordon Levitt
To me, a sex scene in a movie generally means a gratuitous scene that doesn't serve the story but gives a kind of excuse; we've got these two actors, we want t…
Permalink to quote #4 At the heart of the movie, to me, is there's these two characters that can have one horrible, traumatic experience but react to it in opposite ways and it show…
Permalink to quote #6 Most scripts are bad. I read a lot of them. 'Brick' was a good script just to read. It was like, 'Oh my God, these words feel so good in my mouth.' A lot of mo…
Permalink to quote #3
Related quotes
In the future everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.
Andy WarholAndy Warhol quote #1 I have experienced as violence the emergence of the culture of compulsory industrialised joy, which is the companion of consumerism.
Jeremy SeabrookJeremy Seabrook quote #1 Hollywood is a town that has some stars on the sidewalk. - Dateline NBC July 23rd, 2004
Denzel WashingtonDenzel Washington quote #5