Original subtitles

The Human Face - Fame

Hello, I'd like to introduce some friends of mine

This Norman, and down there's Sarah, and this is little Bert,

and I can recognise them because I know their faces and their bodies, of course

But over here are some creatures that I think you'll be able to recognise

because they are very, very, famous

Here perhaps one of the most famous actors in the world,

and here's another equally famous and I'll give you a hint - female

Here's another, possibly more famous even than the first two,

and finally a particularly fine actor or actress,

characteristic little dark mark there, just above the right hip

Now, did you miss any?

Well, if you did, here are the answers

Faces help, don't they?

Wherever we go we're assaulted by famous faces

Cinema, television, magazines, papers, hoardings

- you just can't escape the gaze of the famous

And what drives this mad merry-go-round

is the simple desperate craving - to be famous

Performers, actors, people who become actors want the fame

A star is someone and from the moment they would get up in the morning,

go in, go to bed at night, they are obsessed with only one thought,

"How can I be a bigger star tomorrow than I am today?"

That's what consumes them

I don't think it improves who they are,

because it's gratuitous the kind of fame that we're talking about

I mean, it's, by chance, it's flukish

You've done very little to deserve it, normally

Certainly television fame's like that

I mean, if you're - if you're Winston Churchill well you

- you've done the bit, you know, but by and large famous people

are not Winston Churchill

Good morning

Good morning Mr. Figus, we've been expecting you

Do sit down

Now, I understand that you wish to become an icon

Is it difficult?

Well, that depends

Would you say that your life has been marked by an unusual amount of suffering?

Oh yeah, definitely

Drugs? Drink? Sexual addiction? That sort of thing?

Lots

Excellent. And, would you say that you feel very vulnerable most of the time,

and would you be prepared to talk about that at inordinate length?

Oh yeah, no problem Is that it?

Well, there is one other thing

You have to die young, and preferably in tragic circumstances

Is that a definite requirement?

I'm afraid it is, yes

Phew. Alright then

Oh I forgot to ask, have you actually done...?

Oh, never mind Give me the Daily Mail, will you

Some people are just dying to be famous

A young actor called Ryan Martin is one of them

I think it would be a wonderful thing to be famous

To see people, you know, happy with your work,

and happy to see your face when you're walking down the street,

say, "Hello. How are you today?"

I say, "Great. I'm doing good."

They say, "I remember you man You're the one from"

- you know - "the picture on the screen."

I say, "That's me."

The music is - was an off-shot

I kinda - got a little bit disgusted with acting for

about two years - two or three years

A couple of weeks ago when I came out here,

I mean no one even looked at me,

you know, it's very humbling very humbling

I'll do whatever it takes I mean, I don't care

I wanna be famous, you know

That's all - that's what it's all about

If Ryan wants his face plastered all over Sunset Boulevard,

he'll have to impress someone like Mali Finn

She's one of the world's leading casting directors,

she persuaded James Cameron to cast Leonardo di Caprio in Titanic

and Curtis Hanson to give Russell Crow his big break in LA Confidential

I think that anybody can be famous,

and I don't think you have to have the face of a Leonardo di Caprio

or of a Mark Damon to - to be famous,

I think you simply have to have a face that is distinctive

Not surprisingly, she knows exactly what kind of faces she likes

See, some of these guys don't have a distinct enough look

OK. See this is - this is something that just doesn't do anything for me at all

Again - some of these look like they are - are - they're so

- there's some typically contemporary

Rick Edwards is an ex-Chippendale

He's come out to Hollywood for one thing

I would like to walk down the street and have people say,

"Hey, look at - that's Rick Edwards."

Well I can't speak for everybody, but I would assume or imagine that

- that a little boost on the ego, when you first get started,

and you first start getting recognised, it must be great

Three years ago I joined Chippendales and I was on the US National Tour

That was a - a great time A different city every day

You're travelling around in a tour bus Different State every week

Being on stage. Bright lights Screaming women. It's just the job

He's now working as the Scotch whisky Ambassador for Los Angeles Orange County,

so of course he wears a kilt

It's not Disneyland where we're dressing up as a character

What it is is, the kilt is a very formal wear,

and the Scotch company I work for is a very formal company,

and so it's no different than if I was wearing a tuxedo

- doing it, but because it's Scotland,

and it's Scotch Whisky, it's the Scottish tuxedo

"Ladies and gentlemen the next Scotch that

we're gonna sample tonight is the Johnnie Walker Gold Label

This one specifically just splits my kilt.

"This is my favourite one right here It's very smooth

You're going to detect a lot of..."

When I was seventeen years old, I enlisted in the army

Spent six years in the army as a paratrooper

My nickname all through the army was "Hollywood"

That's my drill sergeants called me

That's what everybody in my unit called me

- "Hollywood" - that was my name

And in 1992, when I got out of the army I figured

"Do I wanna go back to lowa or Minnesota? Go to Hollywood."

So as they say in Scotland, our toast of Slangiva which means Good Health

and Happiness to you everybody. Slangiva Good Health and Happiness to you."

Unfortunately for Rick, the Hollywood the competition's tough

There's an estimated six million actors,

every one of them trying to get their face noticed

A fair number of them are filed in Mali Finn's office

This is where everything just gets spread out all over the place

We have file drawers here

We have African American men/women here

Actors with tattoos. Bikers We have speciality men down here

Foreign actors. Martial artists Musicians. We have teams here

Models and Asian Actors. Boys, girls, so, this is the work space

How many pancakes do you want Mary?

How many pancakes? Yeah

Michael Rix is another young actor who wants his face to be famous

It's cool, you know going down the street and seeing head on a big,

giant billboard with - premiering a movie, and everything

It makes - it does make a lasting impression,

but it makes more of a lasting impression that's really good

Did you sleep OK? I live with my two great-aunts

I actually hadn't seen 'em since I was a child,

and I kinda ended up here because one of them broke their hip,

so, I'm here and I take care of them - rent's free

And - it - it keeps me grounded

I - I play basketball regularly

It's something, it's another form of expression for me

I play with a lot of passion

I'm not Michael Jordan but - you know - I don't like losing

I came here, because it felt like I had a void in my life

I worked at the Ford Motor Company as an assembly man, for four years

I just didn't wanna grow old doing a repetitious job

Gosh put - the thing - man, I - I put it all off

It's so simple it sounds dumb But all Michael,

Ryan and Rick have to have is a face that Mali Finn likes.

I don't think he's classically handsome enough

There's a long face with this jaw that sticks out here

His eyes are most liquid - of all of these

It looks as though it's going to be an enlightening meeting for all of them

Film, television, magazines Faces, Faces, Faces

Why? Actually, the people who first realised how important

faces are to us were in advertising, because they discovered,

early on, that faces sold things,

and that famous faces sold things even better

But why? What's underlying this obsession of ours with famous faces?

Well, maybe part of the answer is to be found here

Faces are virtually all that we draw when we're first given a pen or a brush

Now, these children aren't painting pictures of Roberts, Cruise or di Caprio

The most famous people around them, are their mothers and fathers

They just have some paint, same colours of paint

Four colours, and they have - they're each doing in a circle,

but if you look at the circles, and the noses and the eyes,

each face has their own personality on them, which is like a footprint,

a fingerprint - the child's style, and it's imbued with their own emotions,

and their own experience of their mother looking at them

The mother's face is telling them how she feels about them

Crucial to live to know that mother loves you

They're interested in the pop stars

They're interested in princes, but I think they draw the person

that's showing experience that is significant in that face

there is a faces oh, is me!

Our obsession with famous faces isn't a new phenomenon

It began a hundred and forty thousand years ago,

when our modern minds were being formed

Most of the important things that happened to human beings

happened during our remote history

The history of civilised human beings is so brief

that it's not had any time to affect our minds,

so we still have stone-age minds living in silicon-age bodies

Lots of animals live in social groups, with a social structure,

including us, and if you do that you have to know the boss guy,

you have to know one another, but particularly you have to know the boss guy

You have to have someone that you want to look up to,

that you actually enjoy looking up to because

he kind of takes responsibilities, and you have to recognise him

So, fame is one way in which you recognise somebody

in a crowd who isn't just one of those sitting around there just like you,

but he's the guy up there, and that is nice for the guys up there,

but actually the rest of people down there,

are also glad that there is someone up there

So, as your tribe got larger, so large that

now you couldn't know everybody in it, it became possible,

for the very first time, for someone whose face

you've never seen before to have a major influence over your life

So, how could you know what this very important person looked like?

Well, the only place you could see their face was here - on money

Another famous JC

Good day

Good day

I'd like to have my head on a coin

Well - who are you?

I'm a peasant but an outstanding one

Alright. Well, there's three things you've gotta do

You've gotta pay me twenty groats, and then, you've gotta fill out this form

Thank you

Thank you

What's the third thing?

Well, then you have to become King

Have you got a pamphlet on how to become King?

Yeah, there's a box at the back

Oh

The other way that you could have your face in a public place

for people to see what you looked like was to put up one of these

And the great advantage was that you'd be surrounded by other statues

- most of them of Gods - which made it clear how special you were

But you see no dress designers

No footballers No - restaurant critics

And let's not forget, no chat show hosts

Ladies and gentlemen It's the Julius Caesar Show

And on tonight's show the King of the Senate, Mark Antony,

the King of the Coliseum, Maxius Lucius And here's Julius

Thank you, thank you so much

Until recently, if you were famous, you were powerful - seriously powerful

Life and death powerful In fact, in medieval Europe,

the only thing that really mattered was your power,

not what you actually looked like

In those days, if they wanted an image of the king,

they took anybody's face, and I mean anybody's,

stuck a crown on it, and wrote the name of the king underneath

It seems extraordinary to us, but they didn't expect

a portrait of the king to look like him,

and we have to wait until 1500 for the first portrait of an English king,

and this is Henry the seventh, it was Henry the eighth there,

that was actually painted from life, and looked like him

His left eye looks a bit odd - was that the painter or His Majesty?

Take the greatest ever - William Shakespeare,

here at the National Portrait Gallery

Did he actually look like this?

Well, we don't know, cos there's academic squabbling about

whether this was painted from life or painted after he died from memory

And here's the point - it's Shakespeare,

and we've got one dodgy picture of him - one!

And the reason why famous faces weren't well known?

Well, they just didn't have the technology.

Thank you Alfonso, excellent

Thank you Sir Excuse me Sir, the paparazzi are outside

Do you want me to - shall we give them a couple of minutes?

If we must

That's it. That's enough for tonight Thank you

If you wanna be famous today you start out with a photograph,

a simple eight-by-ten photo called a head shot is the fuel

which powers the whole fame machine

Head shots - actors send out to casting directors

On the back of the head shot it'll say,

"Went to college. He can fence He can ride horseback. Speaks a little..."

All these are lies

"Speaks a lot of languages Is a great story flair"

blah, blah, blah On the front is the head shot,

and you're hoping someone will say,

"Wait a minute. That's kinda - let me see that guy."

Head shots are important in Hollywood because looks are important in Hollywood

The look is the only thing that anyone remembers

People often forget what somebody's been in

What someone's name is

What someone's resume says, but they see the face,

they suddenly get terribly excited

You know, if you have a Ferrari you want to show it off to people and say,

"Hey look, I've got a great Ferrari here you know,

and look at the brochure This is beautiful."

And you wanna say "Well I've got a good face

This is what I look like Put me in something."

This is again your call

So, if you want to have a famous face, Mali Finn has to like it

We're looking for one thing only

We're looking for warriors, and that somebody who has very strong,

frightening facial features that just jump off the page at you

A lot of handsome guys here, that look a - ooh! There we are

It's very easy when you look at head shots to say "OK this person's it."

You can see it in the face

And other faces it's like you see the mischievous eyes,

or you see the dimples, or you see some distinctive feature,

but something's happening there that says,

"Ho ho, I wanna - I wanna get to know this person

I - you know - I like what I see here."

So how long have you got to get your face noticed?

On average, nearly half a second

These are mine, so of course they're all brilliant.

Actually I've never put him here

So for Michael, Ryan and Rick, that means a trip to see the king

of the Hollywood head shot, Kevin Major Howard,

who makes a virtue out of working at the back of his garage with no lights

I don't pursue the lighting schedule of a studio photograph. It's portraiture

Here Ryan I want you just doing this

Look straight ahead like this

I think because of the style that I shot in I have enabled the industry

- the actor within the industry

- to really get authenticity about whom he is,

or she is, to the performance level that when people

look at my work they actually feel that they're meeting that person

How's the career going? It's going good

Yes? It's going very good yeah

Tell me what's been going on?

Well I - I - I - I - well just - just kinda moving along, you know

What I try to do with available light is just

that's the light that's God given us

It's what we look like everyday of our lives

Every minute we walk somewhere Let's use that light

Rick, what I want you to do here You're gonna start off this way

Like - like this Butt back in the chair, just hang out

Really nice. You know who you remind me of a little bit?

Eric Robert

No, Ray Leota

I hear that

It would be smart for you to actually to take your eight-by-ten,

find - send it to Ray Leota, send it to Ray Leota's manager, and his agent

Well, Ray Leota...

Photo double

We - not - no...

You could be cast simply as his brother, or twin

I like to recreate in the camera what I physically see in life

When you and I both meet we look into each other's eyes

When we do such things, our ears are not in focus, Our shirt is not in focus,

this background is not in focus, so I really try to record

that authenticity within the photograph

For instance, when you look in my eyes, you see that relationship

but that's not being in focus

It's the same thing I'm trying to create in this photograph

You can see her eyes They really come off the page

But it's because of I've shown you within the camera

that illusion of our ears are not in focus, like hers are not

The clothing is not in focus,

and so all you get is her representation of who she is authentically

OK, Michael. Kevin Major Howard, nice to meet you

My favourite...

Nice to meet you. Right, what I want you to do is sit up with

Pan down just a little Oh yeah

Good Michael. Good. Right there Where are you from, Michael?

Eh, Detroit, Michigan

Detroit? Yeah

How long you been out here? Eh, three years

You're a baby out here? Yes I am

And how's it going? Eh, it's steady

Photography gave birth to me more the concept of a famous face,

but the people having their picture taken a century and a half ago,

when the camera was first invented, had actually done something significant

Well, the Victorian era was one of rapid change,

of technological developments, not only in things like photography,

but the development of the railways, the canal systems,

and people looked after the sort of makers and shapers of that era,

and wanted to record their impact on that world

and the best way to do it was through that idea of eminence,

that portrayal of biography

and the promotion of the image through the photograph

Local clerics were incredibly popular

So they had - they were sort of local celebrities in their own right

There were writers, scientists,

the sort of leading figures of the new technologies

You're on my toe

Sorry

The next development, which led to the democratisation of fame,

was the revolution in publishing

Now, one of the things that emerged was

a whole genre of celebrity publications,

and they were called things like "Men of Mark"

"Men and Women in the Women in the Day", "Our Celebrities",

"Living Celebrities" and their titles give away really people's responses,

and attitudes to - to what was in those - those albums

So now we've got photographs and the popular press

Well, the third invention to transform the human face is the movies,

because you try and think of all the famous faces that you can

- I bet about half of them are movie stars, and yet, here's the odd thing

When movies first started, from the point of view of the actors' faces,

it wasn't that different from going to the theatre

To prove the point, here's an old piece of film from 1909

showing one of my acting ancestors, Sir Stilton Cleese, playing the Dane

To be, or not to be? That is the question

When movies first started, they looked a bit like theatre,

because they were filmed in a wide shot But that didn't last very long

Movie-makers soon came up with the close up,

and fame and the face were never the same again

The close up I think changed everything because suddenly you were

looking at a different head than you'd ever seen before

You were looking at a giant head I see your head

You're what? Six five? Six six? You have the head of a man that height

That's all I ever see. I don't see a head like this. That is Godlike

That brings it kind of importance

"My God, he's fifty feet high

He must be able to be champion of the world

He must be better than anybody else

And the first person to experience what that was like was Charlie Chaplin

He was for a period of time the most famous man in history because in Africa,

they would run his one- and two-reelers on sheets,

so the natives in Africa could see him, and so there was no place on earth

where he could go where his face wasn't famous,

and I don't think that had happened before

Chaplin had just happened and he was beautiful in a way

That famous shot at the end of City Lights,

and that face, that smile that he makes,

that ends and irises out of the movie

It's an amazing shot. It's - but it only works because of his face

And its power only became evident when he came back

to Britain for the first time, in 1921

And remember, England's a little country

When he left, he was an unknown guy who went and he toured America for a while,

and suddenly this thing happened in that prop room,

when he discovered the character of a tramp

I mean, it's a very, you can't fabricate - you can't repeat it

And suddenly he was coming home, and it was, you know, to their little place,

and my God they went nuts, didn't they?

Because, he was returning to us It was like the prodigal's son coming back

Where Chaplin went, everyone else followed But now it's all much quicker

There's this insatiable appetite for famous faces,

driven by the inexorable expansion of modern media

The media has changed the concept of fame

There's just so much more media than there ever was before

Not just because of television and radio, but because of the Internet,

because of this vast proliferation of magazine publishing, and they need faces

They need - they need to have something, an image, to put on their cover,

and inside it's gonna make you, the reader, stop and pause and look

So this desire to be famous is matched by this machinery

that says we need famous faces

We need famous faces or faces that we can make famous

because that's somehow the - the fuel on which all of this operates

The magazine cover that everybody wants their face on is Vanity Fair,

the ultimate barometer of how famous your mush really is

In terms of celebrity - in terms of Hollywood is a very important cover to get

To get yourself on that cover it kind of signifies that you've arrived

It's Jude Laws' turn to be officially declared famous

on this cover of Vanity Fair

But how much of this great British actor did they really want?

...all great covers, they are all great covers, I think we need to come in...

On a beautiful face

On a beautiful face

There you get the eye contact, which is nice

This one's the best one that shows intensity on the face,

and the different kind of character he could do

I love these large - these larger scale...

I think they always look so much better on news-stand

It's whether they can sell magazines

Whether there's something instantly appealing about their face

that's going to get them on the magazine cover

Not that they're particularly good at what they do

I mean, how often do you see Woody Allen

on the cover of a magazine, for example?

How often do you see any of the really powerful directors?

When's the last Martin Scorsese cover you saw in Vanity Fair?

Well, you didn't see one because why would they?

That's not the nature of fame

Michael, Ryan and Rick are still some way from the cover of Vanity Fair,

but today they have a once in a lifetime chance

to get a bit closer, by meeting Mali Finn

I'm very excited about it

It reminds me of a Shakespearean quote from Taming of the Shrew,

Petruchio, goes Such wind as scatters young men through the world

to seek their fortunes further than at home where small experience grows

Ryan is definitely a character actor

He would never play a leading man role for me at the get go

I have thrust myself into this maze happily to arrive and thrive as best I may

He has almost hawk-like round nose here

Crowns in my purse I have, and goods at home

Very tight, little thin lips

And so I'm come abroad to see the world

Very squinty eyes

I'm very excited. I hope that she'll call me in for an interview

His face is so ill proportioned

And cast me in a major motion picture That's my ultimate goal

His face is a very closed face to me

What impression do you think your features get?

Well, my nose is the first one to the door

So that's an interesting impression I suppose

You have a very - very prominent nose...

Yes it...

...a very hawk-like nose There are other noses like that

It is a very big nose, and it's - and - and it's

- it's one of those features that stands out immediately, and

- and it's going to - it could either limit you in terms of what you apply,

which naturally will - to a great extent, but there - also because

- because it is so prominent, actors have had prominent, you know,

features that have - that have really made them stand out, so

You have crooked teeth Crooked teeth yeah

I love crooked teeth Oh really

Yeah - yeah - yeah - yeah They're very good teeth

Very crooked. That works fine OK

They work for you That's good

And very big ears Yeah

That you're hiding right now And probably a smart thing to do

No, so I imagine the comedy, you know, the comedic characters and

- and every once in a while, the nasty side kick

Yeah

I feel a little humbled

It was very shocking and I felt a bit uncomfortable at first

because I'd never had anyone done it before you know, but it was

- it was - refreshing to have someone so honest

and so professional to really confront you with

what you need to do to be successful or unsuccessful

I think it's a great opportunity

Rick's face is more beautifully proportioned

I'm just looking forward to it

It's a stronger, fuller, wider jaw line

I think I can get a lot of direction from her

This eye looks like it's a little bit smaller

She'll kind of give me a - her opinion

Both of them have quite - large foreheads

Her ideas. A recommendation maybe

There's an openness about his face

If you were the casting director, how would you cast yourself?

What kind of roles?

Probably a kind of soap opera type - maybe leading man

Soap opera leading man

Sure

Why do you say that? Be specific about that

Um?

In terms of your eyes, your lips, your nose...

Shape of the face

I've been told I have striking features

Ahum

You know, so

Well, everything is - very well proportioned

You have these beautiful eyebrows here

You have this - you know, you have this strong jaw line, and

- and you have - you have - looks like you know your ears and your

- your cheek bones, everything seems very well proportioned

Your face is too pretty for me And I would put you in a soap opera

You would? Yes, I would

So you kinda agree with me, then?

Yes I do. I do. And I think that's a good place to start

We could start it in soap operas, Meg Ryan A lot of people started in soap operas

They do...

...But don't come to me until you get a few bruises and you know,

until you have a scar on your

And until, you know, your teeth are a little crooked...

A little chip in the tooth?

Exactly. I want all of those things Right

Because I really like real faces, and that's what I try to populate

my films with, are faces that have blemishes, and have a reality to them

It's terrible to look at somebody's face and say,

"Your face doesn't look real." You know...

I felt a connection just talking to her, and felt a lot of honesty

It's just a vibe. It was a great vibe sitting in there

For my special play it's gonna go real well, I'm gonna make sure of that

I don't know whether he has any of the stupid features

that are going to really mark him as a film

It's very important, you know, being an up and coming actor

to meet as many casting directors as you can

His face is more perfectly proportioned than Ryan's

The more casting directors you meet, of course, the better

His eyes are the most liquid of - of all of these

This is like - like a piece of pie like golden

He would definitely play the supporting, the best friend of in films

It could really skyrocket your career almost over night if - if they like you

There's a - a sweetness and an openness about his face

Talk to me a little bit about - how

- what kind of roles you think you'll play?

Leading man. I've got a very domineering presence

And how do you see your face? Tell me about your face

Talk to me about...

My eyes are piercing My - my smile is enticing

You have beautiful teeth

Yes, I have very beautiful teeth Never had any cavities

And you have very full lips

Yes... Carry on, you'll make me blush

Good

I can be just as kind-looking on the wing and too can I say Lucifer himself

I perhaps would never cast you in a mean-spirited

or villainous or bad guy role initially.

Well, that's good

I would - yeah - I've been quite blunt with you

I don't know if you're gonna play the leading man. You may.

Right

Usually I - I think of leading men has having something that is

- that is - that has - of someone who has something very facially distinctive

the minute they walk in, that just really holds my attention

She told me that she didn't really see me in a leading man type,

and that deflated me, because I - I always thought me as that, but,

then I thought about it, you know, most really, really,

great actors are supporting, they help and I'm good so

I'm - I'm inflated now about the - you know - the interview but yes,

initially I was a little - I guess inside myself

- a little disappointed to what she said

Not that she said anything wrong, it was just different

from the way I viewed myself

But, I'm a very optimistic person, and I can work with what I get

So, which face will Mali choose? Would she go for number one,

Ryan who has a nose for Shakespeare? Or what about number two, Rick?

Would she go all soapy about his pretty-boy looks? Or is it number three,

Michael, who thinks he's a bit of a devil,

but does he have the face of an angel?

Michael has a face that invites me in immediately

There are - his eyes as he says - and he said

"I have piercing eyes" and he's absolutely right

And his wonderful warm smile. I would use Michael more than the other two

I remember one last thing about fame It's luck. It's luck

Almost every movie star that we could mention got famous

because they had a good part in a hit movie that someone else turned down

So they didn't, basically, except for a man like Stallone

who wrote his own part, or Ben and Matt Damon,

who wrote their own parts in Goodwill Hunting, stars become stars by accident,

and they know that, and that insecurity goes with them for ever

And what's waiting for Michael if his face does become famous?

I mean, when I came here to America eighteen years ago,

and I did Remington Steele, I remember when Remington started coming out

on TV going through the shopping mall with the - the family,

and you know somebody would recognise me and my kids, my children,

would say, "Dad, someone recognised you."

And I'd say, "Where, where..." And it makes you swell doesn't it

It makes you feel good, you know

I think the biggest emotional effect was when my Estee Lauder campaign

started kicking in, and I was in South Africa making a movie,

and I went into a mall, and suddenly there were enormous posters

of myself selling the perfume Pleasures, mascaras and stuff,

and they were massive, I was completely freaked out,

it was so weird that I felt embarrassed to be standing there

and looking at myself in case someone saw me, and to this day I still feel,

you know, in the front of the magazines where all the ads are?

And so if I'm sitting on an aeroplane,

I, of course I want to look at the ads,

number one I love other people's ads

and number two I want to have a look at my own,

but I could never dare to open the beginning of a magazine

in case an air hostess walks past just as I'm looking at myself

I've found that the greatest single advantage of it is

that it gets me to meet people I wouldn't otherwise meet

Oh yes, much of them, sure, oh,

you can think of lots of advantages, I mean like money

Oh yes!

I think it's part of a business deal

You know, I think it's very similar to you know,

if I give you, you know, a book - from my bookshelf,

it doesn't mean you can come and take as many books you want any time,

and that if I go to a premier, to publicise my film,

you'll take some photographs, sell them and make some money,

my film will be publicised, and that's - that seems like a fair deal to me

I don't see why, that suddenly means you can put a lens

through my bathroom window

I think once - once people identify certain characteristics in you,

and fame sort of inflates all that, you know

You have to be famous for something

- I'm famous possibly for being nice

- being agreeable, for being genial

So a lot of people project onto me,

"Oh he'd be very sympathetic about this, that, and the other."

...They see a kind of completely simplified version of what you really are

The trouble with fame is that you can't ever switch it off,

which is why I like spending time in Santa Barbara,

a small town in California well clear of Los Angeles

I like the relative anonymity I have here, I can walk down the street

and nobody really takes any notice

Back in London, well, I enjoy being recognised by the people

who live and work in my local community,

like the Greek Cypriot fellows who run the local greengrocers

What are these Turkish cherries then?

What?

Turkish stuff you've got here? Does your mother know?

Is my mum here?

No. Flash of alarm there

Seriously, what do you think of the black cherries?

They're nice The black cherries are nice, yeah

Oh well give me about a half a pound

Give me about half a pound?

Hold on, you haven't paid for those Unfortunately we know where you live, mate

So, you can't get away

If you're as slow as that, you don't deserve to get paid

Oooh

Right, out we go Do you wanna bag?

No - no the hands are working just...

You see, that's the kind of recognition I like, and I think everyone does,

because it makes you feel part of the community, you know,

to those guys I'm just the man who lived round the corner for years

and who apparently is sometimes on the television, which is - is great,

cos it feels natural, and they know me a bit, so it's real,

whereas this business of getting recognised from the television

- to be totally honest, I've never been a hundred per cent comfortable with it,

because it feels, well, artificial I mean, they don't know who I actually am

You shot him!

Only a bit

In this frenetic, crowded, yet socially isolated modern world,

the ability to quickly spot a famous face is essential

If you lived in a - in a village of three hundred people you knew

who the squire was, and the doctor was, and all that,

and so everybody had a role, and everybody recognised who they were,

even if you were the ploughman's boy, you know,

people knew who you were and what you did, and why you were there

When you live in this enormous anonymous aggregation of,

I don't know how many million people there are in Greater London,

but it's a heck of a lot, and nobody, you don't know when you get on

the tube unless you've been travelling on it with three other people

for the past fifteen years, you don't know who you're sitting next to

You don't know what they do They are anonymous

So by and large you avert your eyes, you don't want to recognise them

They are - and so you listen to your Walkman

You do actually need to - to have somebody who you recognise

It's as well as your friends, or - or and so a famous person is

- is useful to you because you orientate yourself towards him, and

- and see yourself within the social structure, with him up there

Here's my take on it

I think most of us today aren't quite sure what our life means

or what the purpose of it is

And then we see someone over there, and everyone's looking at them,

and we think to ourselves, "They must know something that I don't"

Well, unfortunately they don't

Whereas back when Florence Nightingale, Duke of Wellington,

Abraham Lincoln were famous, well, they had something to say,

they were seriously interesting

Which is perhaps why we now put them on our bank notes,

but I can't help wondering who are we gonna be putting on

our bank notes in a hundred years' time?

How about Posh and Beck's on a fiver?

Or maybe George Clooney on a dollar bill?

We still have the same notions of fame in a modern society

as we did in ancestral hunter-gatherer societies

but the whole thing has been hugely amplified

and detached from the reality of our own everyday lives

What seems to be happening is that we're - our brains our wired up

so that fame is assumed to be a result of high achievement

In the modern world that's not the case but our brains are still

operating on the basis of a world where fame was something you earned

So all the trivia on these racks, all this obsession with air-brushed

show business pond life, clear example of evolutionary wiring gone wrong,

because all these very famous people

don't have a single idea between them that will help your lives

So my advice is - ignore 'em Don't listen to a single word they say

Ryan Martin is still playing his guitar in Santa Monica

and stacking shelves in a supermarket to make ends meet

He's just finished playing Hamlet in the Redonda Beach Players Winter Season

Rick Edwards has auditioned for a number of roles in daytime soap operas

He's not been cast yet, but he continues to represent

Scotland's main interest on the west coast of America

Michael Rix has been cast by Mali Finn

as a warrior in a sequel smash hit movie

The Matrix.

Action No, no, no, no, no

They're wrong?

They're wrong, they're wrong. Oh