Are there also unfortunate stars who stop and have themselves re-educated? Take Kim Wilde, hot popstar in the eighties and musical star in the nineties, who traded in her microphone for gardening shears. When she was 30 she enlisted in the College of Horticultural and Countryside Studies.
These days she designs and keep gardens, and doesn’t shy from crawling through the mud in her wellies. She never regretted her move. “With the work the fun I had with it dried up”, she says. “I knew I had to stop when I realised that I was becoming a fake person. I remember seeing Siobhan from Shakespear’s Sister and saying “Congratulations with your great new record”, while I hated the song. I thought: “When you start acting like a fake celebrity it’s time to start doing something else. I regreat that so little was left of a career I’d invested so much in, also financially, but on the other hand I could forget Kim Wilde the popstar easier like that. I became fat, went from size 38 to size 46 as a result of my pregnancies and I felt good about it after having heard that every kilo could hurt my career so many times through the years. I earn less many than I used to, but I’ve never been happier.”