Fame Might Actually Kill Me. I Want It Anyway.
On the addiction nobody talks about, the show I'm writing about it, and the daily work of waking up from the dream If you've ever wanted something you knew wasn't good for you and wanted it anyway, we
My chronically ill body couldn’t withstand the spotlight’s glare.
Before the interviews ended and the social media noise quieted, my health would collapse under the weight of attention. Fame, for me, isn’t just complicated or unwanted. It’s potentially lethal. My body has made that abundantly clear.
And yet.
Every lyric, every video, every play, every creative decision I make is haunted by the same question: will this get attention? At 49, I still haven’t learned to separate accomplishment from recognition. They’re fused together in my brain like inseparable twins, even though I know one of them threatens my survival.
My younger self chased anything that promised visibility. Jumping between passions, hobbies, business ideas, anything that might make me seen. My current self pretends to be wiser. Claims to focus solely on the art. But honestly? Most of the time I’m lying to myself.
The addiction to fame isn’t something I’m overcoming. It’s something I’m drowning in daily while pretending to keep my head above water.
So I’m writing a play about it.
What Fame Actually Is
The word comes from the Latin fama, which in ancient times meant both respected reputation and gossip simultaneously. It entered English in the 1200s and has kept that essential double meaning ever since. Widely known. For better or worse.
I use the word deliberately. It’s saturated with meaning we all instinctively understand.
And I’m not alone in this craving. If the desire for recognition weren’t a universal human condition, social media simply wouldn’t exist. We all want to be seen. Some of us more desperately than others. Fame, idolatry, the hunger for acknowledgment, these have always been woven into the fabric of culture, politics, entertainment, and history. This isn’t new. It’s just louder now.
Sometimes I question whether I even want it to disappear. The hunger for recognition feels like a fundamental part of my identity as an artist, toxic as it undoubtedly is. My current guru James Hollis talks about fear and lethargy waiting at the foot of the bed each morning. For me, and I suspect for a lot of us, fame is right there beside them. A close, dangerous cousin.
The Only Remedy I’ve Found
Redirection. That’s it. That’s the whole strategy.
For those one, two, maybe three hours when I’m actually creating something from nothing, when I’m fully inside the process, I can relegate fame to the background. Not banish it completely. Trying to do that only strengthens its grip. But background it, just enough to do the work.
The magic is in the making. It always has been.
Which is why I’m making a new show. It’s called Molly Bell’s Not Famous, a follow up to my show Molly Bell’s Hysterical, which explored my life with Common Variable Immune Deficiency and Bipolar 2. These shows require serious incubation. I hope this one doesn’t take five years but I’ve learned not to rush them. The previous show hasn’t sold yet but it has gained real traction, and I’m reminding myself that matters.
Something is trying to express itself. It always finds a way.
The only remedy that breaks the illusion, even temporarily, is forcing myself to wake up from it. Over and over again. Every single day.
Wake up. Create. Background the noise. Repeat.
That’s the practice. That’s all I’ve got.
And somehow, annoyingly, it keeps working.
A Note On How I Made This
For anyone curious about my process: I wrote this in the morning and recorded the voiceover on my dog walk, which is the only place I’m genuinely unselfconscious about how I sound. You’d think that wouldn’t be hard for me, being an actor, but delivering your deepest darkest thoughts out loud is a different thing entirely.
I imported it into Logic Pro, spliced and layered voices, added reverb, drone textures, piano passages in C major, and surrendered to whatever emerged. The visual is a photo of me at around age eight that sits beside my bed. I deliberately didn’t scan it professionally. The imperfection felt right. It’s my daily reminder that creativity once existed without ambition. That I once made things purely for play.
That’s the version of me I’m trying to find my way back to.
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