"great movie rolls"
Couldn't get in via this link. What's the dilly, yo?
Yes, stars like Owen Wilson can hurt, too
By Tony Hicks
STAFF WRITER
Article Launched: 08/28/2007 01:01:09 PM PDT
Click photo to enlarge
Owen Wilson arrives at the premiere of "The Wendell Baker Story" in... (AP Photo/Matt Sayles)
Shouldn't Owen Wilson be immune to misery?
He's a movie star in the prime of his career. He dates beautiful women. He has bags of money. He's the epitome of the life so many people would give their left arm for.
So why -- assuming the reports coming from the Associated Press, the National Enquirer, and Celeb.TV.com are accurate -- would he want to kill himself?
Doesn't this guy, adored by the masses with a dream life, have way too much to live for?
I don't know. And neither do you. Only one person does.
On Sunday, Wilson apparently tried to commit suicide at his home in Santa Monica. The Associated Press reported Tuesday that Santa Monica Police logs indicate the call to Wilson's home was for a suicide attempt. He was listed in good condition at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles Monday; no updates were offered on Tuesday. His family and spokesman have declined to comment, citing Wilson's request for privacy.
All of this will prompt a giant, collective public head scratching over why someone with talent, money and fame would slash both wrists and take a belly full of pills (as reported by the National Enquirer on Monday).
All the analysis will be for naught. Because the only person who knows is Owen Wilson.
Which is important to keep in mind. In our everyday dream world, good looks, hot girlfriends, great movie rolls and fat paychecks are the ingredients of happiness. But even if a person seems to have all that, no one knows what else
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is at work, bubbling under the surface. Success and happiness are ever-shifting, and personal, concepts.
Assuming it's true, only Owen Wilson knows the level of pain that pushed him to try taking his own life. Therefore, it's extremely difficult to pass judgment.
If anything, Wilson deserves our sympathy for feeling so barren that suicide becomes a real option.
This is different than scrutinizing a celebrity's public behavior, which is and always should be fair game. Public figures who put themselves in that position forfeit many of the same privacy protections the rest of us enjoy. It's called the price of fame.
But this was a private act by a man, we can only assume, was suffering intensely.
When Kurt Cobain killed himself, I took it extremely personally. I wrote a column for my college newspaper, calling Cobain selfish and acted as if he'd personally insulted me. As a fan, I would no longer have his new music. He had fame, money and talent that 99.9 percent of us could never even imagine.
How someone with so many gifts could blow them into the abyss with a shotgun was unfathomable to me.
Exactly. Because, quite simply, I didn't live in the guy's head. I didn't know, and I was wrong. Just like so many people will get it wrong while delving too deeply into what went wrong with Owen Wilson.
A few years back, an old high school girlfriend of mine e-mailed me out of the blue. She'd noticed I wrote for the paper and re-established contact through e-mail for a spell. She described a happy life, with a husband she loved and kids she adored. She was beautiful, warm, and seemingly had everything she wanted. I was happy that she'd found such a satisfying life.
Then, probably a month after we last e-mailed, she took a gun and ended her life.
I didn't get it. But that's just it -- what we see on the outside has absolutely nothing to do with what's happening in someone's brain and heart. And if we can be so shocked by people we know, why should we try to understand when it's someone we only know through movies, Web sites and tabloids?
It might even be surprising this doesn't happen more often. Perhaps never in pop culture history have celebrities been so scrutinized, and looked so miserable in the process. The wild and sometimes embarrassing life has always been a component of Hollywood. And sometimes -- as demonstrated by the recent conga line to rehab centers and courtrooms -- the process itself is too much for the participants.
Which may have nothing to do with Owen Wilson. He's hardly a tabloid target on par with the likes of Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, and even David Hasselhoff, a semi has-been whose public (and even private) bout with alcoholism is documented at every turn.
All of Wilson's gifts apparently weren't enough to make him want to keep living, if the reports are true. It's very strange. But then again, you'd have to be Owen Wilson to understand.
Tony Hicks is the Times' pop culture critic. Reach him at 925-952-2678 or thicks@bayareanewsgroup.com. Read his blog, "Insert Foot," on ContraCostaTimes.com
