Lily Allen claims fame became “an addiction in itself”
The British singer Lily Allen has admitted that her young fame became “an addiction in itself” when she entered the limelight as a teenager.
Allen recently celebrated four years of sobriety. As the daughter of actor Keith Allen, she was never destined for a life out of the spotlight, but after releasing her acclaimed debut album, Alright, Still, in 2006, her face became familiar to all.
She swiftly leapt head first into the London party lifestyle alongside famous friends in and outside of the entertainment business. Like her contemporary and friend Amy Winehouse, Allen struggled with abject exposure in the tabloid press.
During a recent conversation with The New York Times, Allen explained how press intrusion had “been my life since I was like 18 years old.”
“From 18 to about four or five years ago just feels like a bit of a haze because I was literally just off my face the whole time,” Allen said.
“I was using fame as well – that was an addiction in itself: the attention and the paparazzi and the chaos.”
In recent years, Allen has maintained her career as a pop star and even welcomed acting into her talent pool. She explained that this prolonged urge for productivity can be attributed to her decision to clean up.
On her two-year anniversary in 2021, Allen said giving up the party lifestyle was “the BEST thing I ever did (…) and I’ve done a lot of cool shit,” in a social media update.
Meanwhile, Allen recently revealed she was “incensed” by the reaction to the death of Sinéad O’Connor, and labelled the tributes as “spineless”.
“It’s hard not to feel incensed when there are so many people posting about Sinead and how fearless she was, people who would never in a million years align themselves with anybody who stood for something or had anything remotely controversial to say,” Allen wrote in a tweet. She continued: “It’s so spineless. If you can’t stand up for people in life don’t do it in death.”
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