Entertainment Daily: Young female stars - A feature on the pressures girls face growing up in the spotlight
TAPE: EF02/0003
IN_TIME: 14:28:33
DURATION: 9:46
SOURCES: APTN/Various
RESTRICTIONS: No re-use/re-sale of film/video/tv clips without clearance, music video/performance rights must be cleared
DATELINE: Buckinghamshire, UK. 15th November 2001
SHOTLIST
1. Clip Video - 'Baby One More Time', Britney Spears
2. B-Roll Christina Ricci - APTN footage Ontario, Canada, 8th Sept 2001
3. Clip Video - 'Baby One More Time', Britney Spears
4. Clip Video - 'Wave Hello', Charlotte Church
5. Clip Video - 'Baby One More Time', Britney Spears
6. Clip TV Trailer (Drew Barrymore ) - ET (Re-release 2001 version)
7. Clip Video - 'Baby One More Time', Britney Spears
9. Set up - Peter Gilchrist, Educational Psychologist
8. SOT Peter Gilchrist; "The difficulty is when you explode into fame and wealth and don't have background any more. The background is now managers and agents and other stars and certainly for a young woman a young girl of 14 which is probably very attractive as well she is now going to be sought after by people on whom she is going to rely when she should really have relied on her father or older brothers or whatever and and it is going to put a lot of pressure on them a lot of psycho sexual pressure and everything else on them . And there isn't that sounding board off which to bounce those middle years 13 to 16-18 years of your life.
9. B-roll Christina Ricci at Toronto premiere of 'Prozac Nation' (2001)
10.SOT Christina Ricci: "I don't know, when you are a kid you don't really think about coping. I think that I am just really lucky that my personality is really suited to this industry. I am the kind of person that, I don't take anything really that seriously, so I never felt any pressure or anything because this is something that I did because I wanted to, not because I had to."
11. Film clip - 'Prozac Nation'
12. SOT Christina Ricci : "I also they really hand out the child star title really easily, you can be in one movie and all of a sudden you are a child star. So there is not a lot of pressure that goes with...I don't think I really was that famous. "
13: B-roll Christina Ricci at 'Moulin Rouge' Premiere
14. SOT Peter Gilchrist, Educational Psychologist: "If you can imagine being 15 and suddenly extremely famous overnight ...signing contracts for million pounds or dollars, you can have anything you want, by definition you are moving away from home because your work is going to be in America or all over the world.You're still who you, where it doesn't matter where you find your rainbow - the one great truth, trite that it may be, is that at the end of the rainbow there may be a crock of gold but you are still going to be there and you are still the person you were, you are still only 14 or 15 and you now don't have your school pals around you in the same way ,, you haven't got that degree of stability, you haven't got your siblings, you haven't got your parents, and so now you have got to look for other people to fill that role and they are quite often going to be inappropriate peers. "
15. Clip TV Trailer (Drew Barrymore ) - ET (Re-release 2001 version)
16. B-roll Drew Barrymore at 'Charlie's Angel' Premiere, London
17. SOT Peter Gilchrist, Educational Psychologist: "Bearing in mind the sorts of pressures that they are actually under, they are under a lot more pressure than you or I at a dinner party because they are having to ape adulthood and they are not. So I think there is that kind of help me cope use of drugs and alcohol, but there is also the pressure of a peer group wanting them to abuse drugs too which is a very different kettle of fish. I mean plenty of cases of youngsters that have gone right off the rails and their careers... Jennifer Capriati had a terrible time with drugs and to her great credit she has fought her way back and is now in the top 3 or 4 in the world which is an amazing achievement , but I wonder how many people that have hit early stardom ever have the courage the strength and the support to get back in the rails again, I should think it is only one in ten. "
18. B-roll young looking Charlotte Church - APTN File
19. B-roll Charlotte Church shopping for clothes
20. Sot Charlotte Church - "I'm changing like every teenager does and the American public are growing with me and I am really grateful for that. In the UK it's a bit different. If I come out in something that looks more my age, I look like a 15, 16 year old, then people are like 'what happened to the 12 year old school girl we used to know?'. The 12 year old school girl is 3 years ago, she's moved on, get used to it, people. They can't really except that." - File - 29/10/01
21. Sot Peter Gilchrist - on Charlotte Church : "The world is not terribly fair in letting people change, I mean Charlotte Church has had this problem hasn't she, having been very much the Miss Prim and Miss Proper, she is being seen as a leather-panted hot panted girl, a hot bit of stuff. And what she is saying is go on, give me a chance, I am growing up. I want to have a more sexy image now thank you very much, and why shouldn't she. But she is coming to it awfully soon . But probably not if you looked at her peer group in the ordinary school system you would find a lot of them going out in the evening dressed rather the same way. It is just that people have trouble with people coming to terms with this rather innocent image suddenly becoming a sex object. becoming a sex object."
22. B-Roll - Britney Spears - APTN file - 1999
23. Clip Video - 'Slave 4 U', Britney Spears
24. Sot Britney Spears: "That is what I was going through. The album is just a reflection of what I am going through right now in my life and what I have been experiencing, and it is very therapeutic to go into the studio and just get that out like that. I am just in a transitional stage in my life where I am just figuring out what I want and who I am and so that is what the album is about."
25. Britney Spears on Bondi Beach, Australia - APTN file 17th September, 2001
26. Sot Peter Gilchrist : "I think she has had to keep the sexual issue at bay by making an almost political stand on it and saying I am sorry but women really are entitled to keep themselves until they get married, and make a major public issue out of it . And she became a major media target for a long time because of this and started a whole groundswell of attitude among other young women. I think it has been much more difficult for her. That's the extent she had to go to to say 'I'm not ready to have sex', I am only 14, leave me alone, and don't think of me being inadequate because I don't want to, philosophically I made a stand and that is a hell of a step for a teenager to take. It suggests that she is quite well defended really. "
27. Clip Video - 'Slave 4 U', Britney Spears
28. Sot Peter Gilchrist - How sexy videos impact on fans?: "It is a very mixed message really, in fact it looks like a lie, that is the trouble. It is hard to believe Britney Spears when she performs like that, and looks like that and dresses like that, the body language says 'I am a very sexual woman', and that is one of the big problems in it . Youngstershave that problem with body language. I often see girls of 14, 15, 16 who come in and say, 'Why is it when I go to a party and all the men want to do is get me into the back of a car.' And you look at the way they are dressed, and their make up and you say 'what signals are you giving, you are saying I am available, I am sexually aware and I want it'. And that is the trouble with the message that Britney Spears was giving, she looks and looked quite other from her political statement."
29. Clip Video - Slave 4 U, Britney Spears
I'M NOT THAT INNOCENT NOW
As Britney Spears makes the transition from flirtatious virgin to full time temptress, her fans, the media and celebrity watchers will carefully analyse her every move to detect whether the growing pains of stardom will put a curse on the pop princess.
The tragic lives of many a child star litter the road to fame, most notably Judy Garland. Beloved by millions she was hooked on drugs, exploited and eventually driven to an early grave by unscrupulous producers, managers, agents and greedy hangers-on.
Fifty years on in an age where a ravenous 24/7 media watches a young celebrity's every move, top celebrity psychologist Peter Gilchrist says the pressures on young celebrities is enormous. Many stressed out teenage performers, as well as sports men and women and the children of major stars, have sought help his at his exclusive practice outside London.
Fame and wealth can be a lonely business taking the young and vulnerable along way from home and security, he warns. "You are still only 14 or 15 and you now don't have your school pals around you in the same way, you haven't got that degree of stability, you haven't got your siblings, you haven't got your parents, and so now you have got to look for other people to fill that role and they are quite often going to be inappropriate peers. "
Britney, who shot to fame at only 16, was marketed as Lolita who never went all the way. While obviously a plus to the mums and dads of America, it was not merely a calculated gesture to increase sales, believes Dr Gilchrist. He believes it helped raise the issue of vriginity for teenagers who might feel under pressure to rush into a sex life.
But Britney's latest image move unveiled in the erotically charged 'Slave 4 U,' has transformed her into full time vamp sending confusing messages to her young fans.
Drew Barrymore was a classic example of a child star sucked into Hollywood's debauched underworld of partying, sex and drugs. The baby-doll blonde who won hearts as the sweet six-year-old in Steven Spielberg's E.T was in drugs rehab at the age of 14. By 19, she had a failed marriage behind her.In her autobiography, 'Little Girl Lost,' she admitted: "I had my first drink at age nine, began smoking marijuana at 10 and at 12 took up cocaine."
The perils of drug abuse are ever present days Dr Gilchrist: "I think there is that kind of help me cope use of drugs and alcohol, but there is also the pressure of a peer group wanting them to abuse drugs."
Luckily, Drew pulled herself out of the mire of drug addiction and stormed back on the big screen, a reformed character and serious actress.
Christina Ricci was another child star who was forced to grow up in front of millions of cinema goers. She told APTN: "I don't know, when you are a kid you don't really think about coping. I think that I am just really lucky that my personality is really suited to this industry. I am the kind of person that, I don't take anything really that seriously, so I never felt any pressure or anything because this is something that I did because I wanted to, not because I had to."
When singer Charlotte Church sprung into the spotlight with her angelic voice beloved by presidents, popes and legions of fans she was still young to wear gingham pinafores and girly curls. But now the15-year-old from Wales is a maturing and confident songbird.
"If I come out in something that looks more my age, I look like a 15, 16 year old, then people are like 'what happened to the 12 year old school girl we used to know?'. The 12 year old school girl is three years ago, she's moved on, get used to it, people."
CLEARANCE DETAILS
TITLE: Slave 4 U
ARTIST: Britney Spears
WRITER: WILLIAMS/ HUGO
PUBLISHER: EMI
LABEL: ZOMBA
(20) 8459 8899
TITLE: BABY ONE MORE TIME
ARTIST: BRITNEY SPEARS
WRITER: MARTIN
PUBLISHER: GRANTSVILLE/ZOMBA
LABEL: JIVE RECORDS
ET
UIP
(20) 8741 9602
Prozac Nation
Millennium Films