Ever looked on enviously at a celebrity lifestyle spread in your favorite magazine and wished you could live a life like that? Well, latest research reported on www.bbc.co.uk may give you reason to rethink and start to count your blessings as it seems the celebrity lifestyle doesn´t come with all of the benefits you might think.
Having a glittering career in the public eye may come at the cost of a shorter life, an analysis of obituaries in a US newspaper suggests. It showed performers and sports stars tended to die a few years younger than people successful in other careers. The researchers acknowledge the study does not provide any conclusive answers, but said it asked interesting questions about the cost of fame.
Researchers in Australia looked at 1,000 obituaries in the New York Times between 2009 and 2011. They showed that performers, such as actors, singers and musicians, as well those who made a career in sport died the youngest – at an average age of 77. While writers, composers and artists died at 79. Those classed as academics, including historians and economists, survived until 82 on average while those in business or politics made 83.
The researchers, at the University of Queensland and the University of New South Wales, said cancer, particularly tumours in the lungs, was more common in performers.
Honey Langcaster-James, a psychologist who specialises in celebrity behaviour, said so few people achieved star status that it made it difficult to scientifically study the effect on people’s lives.
She said: “The results are interesting of themselves as they suggest an inherent hazard of a public career and that all that glitters is not necessarily gold. They may be paying a high price for their career.”
However she said it was not easy to come up with a scientific explanation. On the one hand she said such a career “has unique stressors” such as “the pressure to live up to a public image, which can lead to risky behaviours”.
Yet she suspected that “particular personal characteristics predispose people to wanting a career in the public arena”, which may also lead to lifestyle choices affecting health.