2007 Biggest Celebrity Breakdowns

From Lindsay Lohan to Britney Spears, Hollywood teems with stars and their dust-ups. But today's Tinseltown may not have more scandal, just more cameras.

The reality is this: Hollywood has long been home to mishaps from drugs to marital affairs, but its stars never before faced the kind of media scrutiny they do today. With six celebrity weeklies, five national nightly entertainment shows and a blogosphere heavy on celebrity content, the roller coaster lives of the A-list have morphed into a can't-miss soap opera for a massive audience.

Harvey Levin, managing editor of Time Warner's entertainment news Web site, TMZ.com, says Hollywood is basically the same as it was 50 years ago when it comes to scandal. He says the difference between then and now is that before nobody was really paying attention.

"For so long, people never got a glimpse of stars in real life," he says of a media that largely steered clear of life outside of award shows and press junkets. "It looked as though these stars basically lived in limos and on red carpets, and it was almost unreal to see them outside of their perfectly manufactured pose or scene."

That's hardly so anymore. In today's celebrity media, stars are just as likely to be photographed at a gas station as they are the red carpet. And it's this sort of access that enables their audience to follow celebrities' lives as if they were neighbors. Says Sarah Ivens, editor in chief of OK! Magazine: "We now have that same kind of intimacy, or we think we do, with A-listers."

The result: The wall between what is public and private is gone for today's stars. According to veteran publicist Howard Bragman, who most recently mopped up the mess of Grey's Anatomy cast-off Isaiah Washington, celebrities must know and accept that the concept of privacy is not guaranteed anymore.

But rather than fault the pesky paparazzi and the outlets that publish their work, Eric Dezenhall, a Washington, D.C.-based crisis management specialist and author of "Damage Control," points a finger at the attention-seeking stars. The way he sees it, the paparazzi doesn't chase them, they chase the paparazzi.

"You don't get the kind of coverage Lindsay Lohan or Paris Hilton get if you don't want it," he says of the tabloid fixtures whose past year include DUIs (Lohan) and a jail term (Hilton). "These antics are designed to get media attention."

And no one got more attention in 2007 than Lohan, Hilton and Spears.

A former Mouseketeer, Spears filled her year with heavy partying, questionable mothering and a slew of courtroom battles (and head shaving, and a live meltdown on MTV, and attacking the paparazzi, etc.). In spite of it all, the troubled starlet, who lost both her kids and much of her credibility, still churns out chart-topping tunes.

Hilton violated the terms of her drunk-driving probation, and was sentenced to a 45-day jail term, later cut in half for good behavior. With much fanfare surrounding her entrance and exit, the celebutant served the sentence this past spring at a Los Angeles County jail. For her part, she claimed she was not aware her license had been suspended.

After rising to stardom with lead roles in "Freaky Friday" and "Mean Girls," struggling starlet Lohan now grabs more headlines for her hard partying ways than her box office performances. Her year included a couple of DUI charges and two stints in rehab. Still, she managed to remain working and will appear in 2008's "Dare to Love Me," a biopic about tango legend Carlos Gardel.

For these and other stars, it's not simply a matter of what they're doing--be it drinking, driving or doing drugs--but also where they're doing it. Rather than move away from the flashbulbs of Los Angeles, they continue to turn up in and around Hollywood hot spots where their picture is bound to be snapped.

The good news for the troubled set: Hollywood is a very forgiving place. With few exceptions, the media and its audience are willing to forgive and forget if a star offers an apology--and talent.

Let disgraced stars of the past serve as proof: Eddie Murphy was once found with a transvestite prostitute; Winona Ryder was once caught shoplifting; and Russell Crowe was once charged with assault when he threw a phone at a hotel concierge.

The way Ivens, a veteran of several U.K. publications, including Tatler, Daily Mail and the British OK!, sees it, America--unlike her native British audience--loves a comeback story. While British readers have more of a "build people up to knock them down" mentality and react better to a negative slant, she says cover stories with happy endings work best in the U.S. market.

"They love to follow the soap opera," she says of American readers, "but at the end of the day, they want a happy ending." How lucky for Lohan, Spears and their meltdown-tarred cohorts.


Source: http://omg.yahoo.com/