Interesting article...

I came across this article about Joan Crawford, the way she defined a movie star, and the contrast between that movie star and the actual person she was:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/19/movies/homevideo/19dvds.html?ref=movies

After reading this, I did a little research on Crawford and saw that, like many other stars, Joan Crawford was not her birth name. It is interesting to me that so many stars choose a name that sounds the way they want to be perceived: Marilyn Monroe sounds sexy and just rolls off the tongue, Carmen Electra sounds like a stripper name, Joan Crawford sounds strong, American, and commanding.... The more and more I pay attention to the construction of a star and not just the face I see onscreen, the more I see how manipulated the persona is, almost as if stardom is a lifelong role for a person, just another character they slip on that somehow sticks in the public's mind as reality.