Not like you and me

This piece by Dominick Dunne in the new Vanity Fair describing the time he attempted to produce a film with Elizabeth Taylor in 1973 sheds some light on the strange way stars behave and think. Taylor was with Richard Burton at the time. "At one point, Richard imagined an affair between Elizabeth and Helmut Berger that didn't exist. There was a terrible scene, excruciating for all of us, with screaming and tears, during a lunch break at a chalet on the top of a mountain. Their lives were so public that even when they fought in private Larry Peerce and I were often called into their suite to be witnesses. We never knew what to say, we were so embarrassed, but they weren't embarrassed at all."
There's some rather pompous talk in the papers this weekend about how the current travails of Britney Spears would be better if the papers would leave her alone. The truth is that for a star there is nothing more terrifying than the idea of being alone. They crave an audience in a way most of us will never understand.