You have to be there not for the fame and glory and recognition and being a page in a history book, but you have to be there because you believe your talent and ability can be applied effectively to operation of the spacecraft.

My kids are not known, and I think that is very important. So far they have lived a normal life, and will continue to do so. I feel they should have the possibility to live a free life without the burden of fame I have created.

I am not so famous. I'm known in a few countries like Italy, Austria, Germany, Switzerland and around the Alps. Some climbers in Beijing know my name, and some in America, but I am not really famous. It's very relative, my fame.

The difference is that with fame comes a spotlight, one which has recently made it impossible to ignore the fact that more and more of those folks we place on pedestals aren't even pausing to consider an option other than lying.

Fame is such a weird concept. It's sort of intangible... Really, it's a bizarre process to be striving for something, attain it, then have the whole world around you change - but you're still kind of the same in the middle of it.

Fame can be very dangerous, because you can start to enjoy that part of it. And that's not the good part of what I do for a living. The good part is the making of films. The unpleasant part is the fame part, if you're not careful.

Whatever the opposite of regret is best describes how I've always felt about that decision - it opened me up to a million creative opportunities I needed to experience away from the bull and distorting mirrors that fame engenders.

You're only famous in the eyes of others. Inside, you're still the same, and not a hundred million records or TV shows can change that. I think the only pitfall of fame is believing that it means something, and behaving like that.

You know, watching Dan Marino and Steve Young get nominated to the Hall of Fame... those guys are unbelievable and they did it for so long. I'd love to play like those guys, but there's still a long way to go and a lot of growing.

Some actors learn the habit of promoting themselves as a brand - by dressing in a certain way, by going out with a certain person - it gives them what they obviously want, which is to keep a level of fame. I'm not putting it down.

The thirst for fame is much greater than that for virtue; for who would embrace virtue itself if you take away its rewards? [Lat., Tanto major famae sitis est quam Virtutis: quis enim virtutem amplectitur ipsam Praemia se tollas.]

Acting is a hard way to make a living, and there's a kind of dark, somewhat seedy side to the whole aspect of fame and celebrity that's not really something I would want for my child - or want him to want, if that makes any sense.

Here's my theory: If a person gets worldwide fame at a young age, they're emotionally frozen at that moment. For me, that's 15 to 18, so you find yourself in your mid-20s being a glorified 15-year-old. What could possibly go wrong?

When you find fame, or you get signed to a record label, it's not what you imagined - because you imagined they would have 100 percent trust or faith in you as an artist. Unfortunately, that's not really the case - it's what sells.

When you get into statistical analysis, you don't really expect to achieve fame. Or to become an Internet meme. Or be parodied by 'The Onion' - or be the subject of a cartoon in 'The New Yorker.' I guess I'm kind of an outlier there.

I absolutely refuse the fame part of my business. I refuse even the money side of my business. I try to do as good work as I can do, I try to grow in my art and reach for truth. That's what I want from my art, that's what I aspire to.

If I should get selected into the Hall of Fame, I'd be able to say 'thank you' to all the legends that are in the Hall of Fame. And also say thank you to my teammates, and also to all the fans. It's going to be like a dream come true.

I've wanted to be a professional actor for years and if you get any sort of success in that field then fame sort of comes along with it. But I don't know if I'm sort of media fodder like other people are. I'm essentially a family man.

Magic Johnson was in the seventh year of his Hall of Fame career when thoughts of his basketball afterlife led him to the office of uber-executive Michael Ovitz, co-founder of Creative Artists Agency, Hollywood's most powerful agency.

Fame is part of me and my life as an actor. I enjoy the creative aspects of my life as an actor. I enjoy directing and acting as well. But the bottom line for me is not prestige and power. It's about having an exciting, creative life.

I would love to do a musical. When I did 'Fame L.A.' for a year - all the singing, dancing and acting - I was in heaven. I cried so much when they cancelled the show. I mean, I loved going to work and I couldn't wait to get on the set.

Show me an actor who doesn't want to be famous, and I'll show you a liar. Later, you realise that there's more to it than just the acquisition of fame, and money and girls. But that is what drives them and was what drove me, initially.

Five World Series rings, 3000-plus hits, the fame, the fortune and playing for the second most historic franchise in baseball... These are just some of the reasons kids would always say they want to grow up to be just like Derek Jeter.

The clock has been turned back on racial progress in America, though scarcely anyone seems to notice. All eyes are fixed on people like Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey who have defied the odds and achieved great power, wealth, and fame.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is marketing. You've got a bunch of faceless people in a back room who trademark a name that sounds very official. Well, if you had thought of it first, you would have been the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

That has always seemed to me one of the stranger aspects of literary fame: you prove your competence as a writer and an inventor of stories, and then people clamour for you to make speeches and tell them what you think about the world.

I'm not a rock star. Sure I am, to a certain extent because of the situation, but when kids ask me how it feels to be a rock star, I say leave me alone, I'm not a rock star. I'm not in it for the fame, I'm in it because I like to play.

I always loved working as an actress, but I didn't understand why I couldn't just opt out of being famous. And then I realized you can, and I think I did. And eventually, I came to understand that you can do that and also keep working.

For professional athletes, the motives for cheating generally are more obvious: money, fame, and often a low likelihood of being caught. But why would a middle- or back-of-the-pack runner lie or cheat in a race that doesn't even matter?

Fame, do I like it? No. It has bought a lot for me in my career, but there are a lot of downsides to it. You give up your privacy. I did it to myself but not to my family and friends. You don't ask for it. You just have to live with it.

When Ted Williams was here, inducted into the Hall of Fame 37 years ago, he said he must have earned it, because he didn't win it because of his friendship with the writers. I guess in that way, I'm proud to be in this company that way.

I imagine like most of us that I'd like obscene amounts of money but the people I met and worked with who have those obscene amounts of money and have obscene amounts of fame have awful lives. Really. I mean hideously compromised lives.

The best incarnation of The Four Horsemen was undoubtedly the unit comprised of Ric Flair, Barry Windham, Arn Anderson and Tully Blanchard, along with talented manager JJ Dillon, which will be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2012.

I am already in a couple Hall of Fames, like the Michigan Hall of Fame and the Dan Gable Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame, so my accolades speak for themselves. Let's just say I'm not losing any sleep over any Hall of Fame induction.

Never underestimate the power of being popular in pop culture. You have to be able to do something. You can have a good seat at the restaurant, but you still have to pay for the meal. Fame is important, but to be rich is more important.

It's my whole life of being the little guy and having a little chip on my shoulder, from year to year trying to prove myself, and at the end of the day to be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame is a very special honor for me.

One of my goals is to be Defensive Player of the Year. One of my goals is to be Rookie of the Year. And one of my long-term goals is to be walking across that stage with a jacket on and a nice little patch on it that says 'Hall of Fame.'

Before the music and before the fame, I loved Apl for Allan Pineda, for being a brother that he is and for the inspiration - for him to actually come to the States from the Philippines and make something of his life. That's inspirational.

The Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame will provide a center where the lives and the artistry of the greatest jazz musicians will be celebrated, and where people will come to learn about jazz, something to which my brother devoted his life's work.

Bud Johnson, God rest his soul of fame, a tenor saxophonist. Bud was always a big, big, big booster of mine and he always when I first met Bud in Pittsburgh when he came through there, he heard me sing and he wanted me to come to Chicago.

In the beginning, we might have been focused on totally just music and being famous, just wanting to have fame and make hot music, but as we got older, we had to understand that this is a business and that our moves need to be calculated.

I have fame on the level of a Marilyn Monroe or an Elvis Presley, but part of the reason I didn't go the way they did was because of my beliefs. People make judgments about Scientology, but often they don't know what they're talking about.

I come from Paisley, the same town as David Sneddon, who won 'Fame Academy.' When he was late for his homecoming reception in the town hall, they held an impromptu talent show. I ended up singing some songs, and that's how I was discovered.

I think my level of fame will drop back down. I think it'll recede. In fact, I know it will. That's life on Planet Earth. And I'm okay with that. Besides getting tables at restaurants and special treatment at the airport, what else is there?

I like to be alone, I mean, I really love to be alone more than anything else, and I don't really like to talk about myself to death, and I don't like to share too much, and I don't really have dreams of extreme fame or even extreme respect.

It's a very nice kind of quasi-fame being a writer, because you remain largely anonymous and you can have a private life, which I really cherish. I don't like to be in the public light all that much. I don't crave the whole fame thing at all.

I'm still working! I think of all the other comics that didn't get the light shined on them, just because it's just how fame works, and it's unfortunate. But there are so many great comics out there who are still working, and I still see them.

I equate fame towards people who know your work, people who will see your work. But all that stuff, like with the Genies and stuff like that, it was so much fun. It's so much fun and it's nice when it comes, but that's not what it's all about.

A lot of the problems I had with fame I was bringing on myself. A lot of self-loathing, a lot of woe-is-me. Now I'm learning to see the positive side of things, instead of, like, 'I can't go to Kmart. I can't take my kids to the haunted house.'

It was never the fame or fortune that drove me to act. It was something I love and enjoy doing it. A lot of people identify who they are by what they do and that's not me. It's what I do but not who I am. Who I am is a parent. I'm a family man.

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