Stars on the scent of mega bucks

Mia Freedman ( Mia Freedman is editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan, Cleo and Dolly.)

Quick question: someone offers you millions of bucks to star in an ad for their product; an expensive watch or a posh fragrance…something classy. Not an impotence-curing nasal spray. The ad will be impossibly glamorous and will take a few hours of your time, max. Did I mention you’re a celebrity? You are. So what do you say? Here’s some thinking music while you mull it over…..oh wait, you don’t need the thinking music? Me neither. I’d be there faster than you could say “show me the money”.

Open a magazine, glance at a billboard, watch an ad on TV and you’ll see Madonna spruiking Gap; Jennifer Aniston for Budweiser; Robert De Niro for American Express; Natalie Imbruglia for L’Oreal; Elle for Sheridan; Dame Edna for Myer; Gwyneth for Estee Lauder; Halle Berry for Revlon; Charlize for Dior; Cate Blanchett for SKII….and that’s just this month.

If you’re a celebrity and you aren’t accepting obscene amounts of money to associate your face with something, you’re a freak.

There are three notable exceptions to this rule: Russell Crowe, Heath Ledger and Sean Penn, who are as violently opposed to celebrity ads as they are to paparazzi.

“It is kind of sacrilegious”, Russ sneered to GQ magazine. “It’s a complete contradiction of the social contract you have with your audience. I don’t use my celebrity to make a living. I don’t do ads for suits in Spain like George Clooney or cigarettes in Japan like Harrison Ford.”

Sean Penn backed him up :”I’m not happy that most actors are doing fashion shows and commercials for lipstick.”

Heath Ledger was more blunt. “I’m certainly not someone who wants to go out and sell f----ing TAG Heuer watches and all that whole stupid fashion that has come in right now. It’s whoring ourselves for millions of dollars.”

Orland Bloom begs to differ. He argues that doing ads gives some actors the financial freedom to work for small money in small, quality films instead of schlocky blockbusters.

“Otherwise you have to keep doing movies where you get paid millions and millions of dollars to maintain a certain lifestyle.”

Bollocks to that, scoffs Sean Penn, who insists: “All power to anyone who has bills to pay, but, you know, maybe it’s time to reduce the square footage of your house”. (This is from a man who lived for part of the 1990s in a caravan in a field.)

Kate Winslet insists she did her American Express ad for a different reason. “I always said probably not [to advertising campaigns], but when you have kids and want to spend time with them, short shoots are good.”

Perhaps spending more time with her kids was also Nicole Kidman’s motivation for starring in the Chanel No 5 ad. Who knows. But Russ was displeased. “She asked me about it”, Crowe confirmed. “I said, ‘Don’t do it’. She said, ‘It’s worth a lot of money’. I said, ‘Mate, don’t do it.’, and she did.”

Sarah Jessica Parker, rumoured to have banked $US38 million ($51 million) for her Gap ads, says “I resisted and resisted. I didn’t want it to affect my film career. I was always afraid it would it would lessen me, make me less substantial somehow, but the industry has changed now….I think all the rules have been thrown out the window.”

Indeedy. Perhaps Sean and Russ are showing their age because the words “selling out” are meaningless to Generation Y. None of this “cred” or “starving artist” nonsense. To them, fame and making money are inextricably linked. There’s no shame in exploiting your talent, your face or your fame to get rich. You’d be a fool not to.

Anyway, it’s not like we really believe that the celebrities actually use or even like the products they endorse. At last year’s Oscars when Nicole was asked what fragrance she was wearing, she didn’t even pretend it was Chanel No 5. She simply replied she was wearing her signature scent: a mix of essential oils she makes herself. “It’s what I always wear,” she said. Sorry Chanel, millions of bucks don’t even buy a small white lie. That’s extra.

I was asked to endorse a product once. Sanitary pads. They wanted a real person in an “aspirational job” to appear in the ad and I was invited to audition. I can’t remember what the audition involved but I do remember the fee being in the ballpark of $10,000. That helped me get over the cringe factor.

A pretty young actress called Lisa Lackey, who was on Home and Away, got the gig, and the ad appeared on TV a few months later. It was the one where she had to look at the camera and talk about going to a barbeque and the embarrassment of her other inferior pad leaking all over her clothes. “I had to leave with my jacket tied around my waist,” she noted gravely. Funnily enough, she couldn’t get any more work in Australia after that and had to flee overseas. Somewhere, Russ is smiling.

Thanks to Anne Fitz (and all who offered to type a transcript)