Top 5 Celebrities Famous for ... Nothing
Their talents? Questionable, but these 5 know how to make a name from partying.
June 5, 2009 — -- The job is enviable: parties galore, free-flowing drinks, comped clothing and hotel suites.
The qualifications? Strut the red carpet, smile for the flashing lights, repeat ad nauseam.
Members of Hollywood's fastest growing group of celebrities credit their fame to doing pretty much nothing of substance. Maybe they served a season on a reality show. Maybe they recorded a song way back when. Maybe they starred in a sex tape or two. Whatever the case, they accomplished enough to get invited to one C-list party and parlayed that into a career of publicity appearances.
Below, meet five faces who've turned 15 seconds of fame into a professional life of partying:
Don't know her by name? Surely you know Peaches Geldof by her type: tall and blond with a wardrobe that attracts both attention and questions, famous more for her family associations than for any of her personal projects (starring in a reality TV special about her teenage years). The 20-year-old London-bred wild child is the daughter of singer Bob Geldof and British TV host Paula Yates. She was questioned by security chiefs at a London store in 2006 on suspicion of shoplifting, and was photographed topless and showing off her nearly two dozen tattoos on a beach earlier this year. She parties so much, she gets paid for it. According to the Daily Mail, Geldof makes in the ballpark of 2,500 to 5,000 pounds to attend nightclub, restaurant and gallery openings.
Britain's got Geldof and we'll always have Paris -- Hilton, that is, the original purveyor of the do-nothing celebrity lifestyle. The would-be heiress to the Hilton hotel fortune went from rich-man's daughter to scandal-stirring socialite in 2004, when a sex tape starring her hit the online market. Hilton parlayed her first film role into several other, often regrettable, movie appearances. Her role as Paige Edwards in 2005's "House of Wax" won her a Razzie for Worst Supporting Actress. Her alleged apathy and failure to promote the 2006 flop "Pledge This!" landed her in court, in a trial set to begin June 8 -- investors claim Hilton's failure to abide by her contractual obligation to plug the straight-to-DVD sorority movie resulted in a loss of roughly $8.3 million.