I awoke one morning and found myself famous.
6th Baron Byron
Really, I've been working forever, just doing music, and then all of a sudden, out of the blue, everybody is just on it.
Most people who become suddenly famous overnight will find that they lose practically eighty percent of their friends. Your old friends just can't stand it for some reason.
When my career took off it surprised me, I was only 22. To have that much success so fast, I just wasn't prepared.
A man will work and slave in obscurity for ten years and then become famous in ten minutes.
After 2001, everyone in the Soulquarians blew up, which wasn't expected. We all got the success, and then everybody froze.
I was not prepared for fame. It hit me hard, and I did not have the capacity to cope.
The first thing that happens is that you're overwhelmed by so much attention. It's just so unnatural. Only people who've been in that position can realize what it's like. I mean, you have to be there.
I was famous overnight. I went from nowhere to being really big.
The first time I felt I was famous was when I went to the movies with my mom. I had gone to the loo, and someone in the bathroom said in a very loud voice, Girl in stall No. 1 were you in Mystic Pizza? I paused and I said, yeah that was me.
On Saturday, I was a surgeon in South Africa, very little known. On Monday, I was world renowned.
I awoke one day to find myself famous.
I don't know why it (stardom) happened-but it's kinda nice. Maybe it's because I'm someone off the streets. Maybe people relate to me.
It was a dreamlike time for me from December 1997 to March of '98. Before that, I was basically unknown. Then, bang! The starting gun fired, and everybody just started running. It was learn-on-the-job. And there were more opportunities for work than I had time to do them.
One dance had made me the most famous colored woman in the world.
Nobody prepares you for what happens when you get famous, and I didn't handle it well.
Shun, as you would the plague, a cleric who from being poor has become wealthy, or who, from being nobody has become a celebrity.
Celebrity hits like a bomb.
People newly emerged from obscurity generally launch out into indiscriminate display.
I had no agent, and I was getting approached by so many people that I tried to escape for a while because I couldn't believe that world. Photography is not an industry, and suddenly an industry came to me, so I sort of had to accept it in the end and get an agent.
I never had an ambition to go into modeling, originally. I still can't believe how quickly it all took off.
Becoming famous is a really shocking thing, especially when you don't have aspirations to it. It got to the point where I would try and avoid making eye contact with anyone. It was freaky, and it just happened overnight. I couldn't handle it.
I was thrown in the deep end at 18 when I got cast in a movie that I didn't audition for. The director just sort of found me and put me in a film, so the decision was really made for me.
Many people who gain recognition and fame shape their lives by overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles, only to be catapulted into new social realities over which they have less control and manage badly. Indeed, the annals of the famous and infamous are strewn with individuals who were both architects and victims of their life courses.
In 1919 I woke up famous. I'd never guessed it. If I'd known I was famous, I'd have stolen away and wept. I was stupid. I was supposed to be intelligent. I was sensitive and very dumb.
