WEIRDLAND: More Paparazzis

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

More Paparazzis

Jake trying to hide from paparazzis.
On 5th August, 2008. Reese Witherspoon was shopping at Robertson Boulevard, Los Angeles. Paparazzis questioned her if Jake had proposed her marriage.
Another actor who can't stand paparazzis, Michael Cera:

"Filmmakers love Michael Cera. Peers respect him. And girls want to marry him. So what's next? Frankly, he's thinking of quitting.After breaking out at 15 as George Michael on Fox's Emmy-winning cult sitcom Arrested Development, Cera hit the jackpot last year playing sensitive young funnymen in Superbad and Juno. His first foray into leading-man territory — the low-budget teen comedy Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist — just banked a respectable $11.3 million in its opening weekend. And he's already shot lead roles in two more promising titles for next year — Harold Ramis' Year One with Jack Black, and the literary adaptation Youth in Revolt. Now the Ontario native insists that he's taking the rest of the year off, and that he'll be thinking long and hard about whether he should put the brakes on his career.

Yes, Cera's serious. This isn't just another example of his famously bone-dry wit. ''I'll definitely slow down,'' he says over breakfast at a Manhattan hotel restaurant that serves him the apple juice he orders in a wineglass. ''I have a movie lined up for early next year [Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, directed by Shaun of the Dead's Edgar Wright], and then nothing after that. I'll just take it step by step, I guess.''It's the other stuff that comes with the job that's starting to get to him. Cera started to feel ''vulnerable,'' he says, after Superbad grossed $121 million last summer. As his costar Jonah Hill puts it, ''One day things were normal for us, and then the next day the movie opened, and things kinda changed completely.''
One year later, Cera still isn't comfortable with the paparazzi at red-carpet events (''They're so aggressive and really mean''), with people eye-balling him on the street (''I was always self-conscious, and feeling like you're being looked at just amplifies that feeling — you get paranoid''), and with haters who rag on him on Web message boards (''People are crazy'').

But is it really possible that all the annoying celebrity parts of the job could be enough to make him stop acting? ''Yeah, I think so,'' Cera says. ''Acting's not something I need to live, by any means. So I'll just see how it goes. I definitely don't think I wanna star in movies, if...'' His voice trails off. ''I like acting, but I'd like to start doing smaller parts, I guess, where I could just kind of relax and not have to worry about it too much. That'd be fun.''

Cera knows people don't like to hear actors complaining about fame. ''You get very little sympathy for it,'' he says. ''I don't wanna change because of other people,'' he says. ''I wanna be myself still, and I don't think I need to toughen up. It'd be weird to be comfortable with [celebrity]. But I won't drive myself crazy or have a nervous breakdown. I'll just deal with it.'' Source: www.ew.com

Some pictures of key places in Brampton, a suburb of Toronto, Ontario, where Michael Cera grew up:
The Train Station in Brampton.
The Gage Park lights, Brampton.The Rose Theatre, Brampton.

3 comments :

Xenia said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Xenia said...

Sorry Kendra, the former deleted post is mine, I wanted to edit it and I simply couldn't, so I deleted it. :)

I like this Michael Cera guy. What he says makes a lot of sense.
And I don't think that what Reese is forced to face in that park lot is something that goes with the job.
I think that this is what fans and paps and rags love to think and make us think to feel less guilty.
Actors's job is acting, knowing a little about them is nice but claiming to know everything is crazy.
And I agree with you Mike: people sometimes are crazy.:)

Elena said...

Despite Reese's fame and wealth, you can't avoid feeling sorry in moments like that, cornerned by vultures.
I understand Michael Cera is tired, after reading zillions of reviews claiming he's typecasted.
This is a crazy, dangerous, violent side of the movie industry that sadly is associated to it inseparately, becoming a nasty phenomenon.