Are there artists/authors/actors/musicians etc whose private life behaviour/interviews sours your enjoyment of what they produce?

[Earlybird]

Know that title is awkwardly worded, but hopefully the meaning is clear....

I'll start and say (fairly or not):

Hugh Grant - public persona too miserable for him to be believable in comedic/romantic roles
Salman Rushdie - not interested after the hoopla around his fatwah
Pete Doherty - no desire to hear his music
George Michael - sordid escapades leave me cold
Marco Pierre White - no interest in his restaurants after tabloid dirty laundry

This is the thing with uber talented people though, to be that talented requires a certain sensitivity and I think when someone is sensitive they are usually only sensitive about themselves, not other people's feelings.

The logic, such as it is, seems to be that they get to a certain point of critical acclaim/ income and think that they can do/have/be anything they want. And they are surrounded by people who don't contradict them.

I love George Michael no matter what he does.

But funnily enough I used to really like Paula Yates until she got 'Hutchenced'. All that hard drug taking and a mother. Didn't sit right with me, and I did get judgey.

Kate Winslett hacks me off the way she is always banging on about herself "Oh, my bum is so big it's like two puppies fighting" yak yak.
I never enjoyed any of her work after she dumped her first man so brutally.

Michael Cain. He has such a chip on his shoulder. Whinging and whining. Poor little enormously successful millionaire world famous actor. I feel so sorry for him.

gary linekar

UQD - I think that's spot on. In the Kenneth Williams R4 prog yesterday, one of KW's friends described KW calling him in the middle of the night to check the spelling of a word in the dictionary (apparently KW was an obsessive Scrabble player). A phone call at 3am with no apology for the late hour. Arrogant little shit.

Elton John.

I second Elton John. Overblown, money wasting, self congratulating - I just can't listen to his music without seeing him in a bad wig, fawning over Posh Spice and his other anorexic fag hag mates.

Again, quite like some of his early stuff - in fcat, pretty much most of the first "Greatest Hits" compilation from the early 90s - but these days I just can't listen to it without thinking of a chubby twat in a bad wig doing "Candle in the sodding Wind" at Westminster Abbey and various saddoes piling cellophane-wrapped flowers up in the August heat...

God, I don't have this at all. I'm not interested in their private lives if what they produce is good. It doesn't change my opinion of them. I mean I like T.S. Eliot and he was a terrible anti-semite, I like Philip Larkin too.

I think properly gifted authors/artists etc are a different breed of people. I wouldn't judge their private lives and try to read it into their art. I don't see the point, just enjoy what they produce. Isn't it an altogether better thing to read Midnight's Children than to fret over how many wives the man has had?

It's bad to slam them for being different - because we should be pleased they are different, that's what sets them apart from the rest of us.

Though those people are different to most of the celebs listed on here. Not interested in them either.

Actually, I'm not particularly interested in this obsession with 'hypocrisy'. I don't care if a politician is shagging someone he shouldn't be if he or she are good at their job. I hate all that moral puritanism.

Other horribly compromised people whose stuff I like:

Virginia Woolf
Picasso
Strindberg
Lawrence
Thomas Hardy.

It could be quite a long list now I'm thinking of it. Thomas Hardy wasn't nice to his wife you know. Not at all. But he could write some damn fine poems.

And how about all that awful slamming that Ted Hughes endured for so long about having been horrible to Sylvia. And then he publishes Birthday Letters, and you read those poems and think 'god, it's all much more complex and interesting and subtle than people painted it.'

I think people's private lives should be left to be private.

actually iam a compromised person that would be hated if i was famous and oir talented

But not by me Zip. See? You'll be grateful for my uncensorious and uninterested approach to your morality. I will simply admire your way with verbs.

thx 100

glad i can fek up with impunity afayc

there's a george orwell essay about this question, he focuses on salvador dali and says something like 'it should be possible to recognise that dali is an immensely gifted artist and a disgusting human being. one should not cancel out the other'. will hunt around and see if i can find the reference, it's a really thought-provoking essay.

Isn't it a bit true that, in order to be a really good writer, you have to be a bit of a shit in RL? Most of us would baulk at mining our personal lives, or those of people we know/love, for artistic material - but it's a large part of what professional writers do.

See. Good old George.

I'm all for disgusting human beings I think.

I always remember (a sign of good writing I suppose) that Hanif Kureishi quotation: 'There are some fucks for which a man would leave his wife and children to drown in a freezing sea.' (This might not be word-for-word.)

Great writing, utterly shitty sentiment.

I'm not sure you do have to be a total shit though. I mean I think it is a very selfish undertaking - and quite a hard one too perhaps. And I suppose writers do plunder, but they also exaggerate and think and imagine don't they?

It isn't necessarily autobiographical.

well what about jim morrison kurt cobain and river phoenix

all troubled and talented imo

i do have a fascination for people with mental health issues tho

so maybe i am not neutral

What about the children's novelist William Mayne, though? After the exposure of how he sexually abused kids, I'm not the only person to find his stuff deeply hard to read. (I mind this. I think he is a fabulous writer for kids.)

Not sure what I think about Lewis Carroll either. Taking naked pics of small girls is not IMO Nice Behaviour.

maybe its people who torture themselves rathetr than others i have no problems admiring

they have to have some sort of creative talent tho

a lot of people now are jus all round crap