Stress, Livinia? No it’s just the Logies.

Sorry Livinia, I agree with you that the Logies Red Carpet can be crazy -what else would we expect of media meeting celebrity- but I’m just not convinced we should be calling it stressful.

“I enjoy the Logies red carpet, but it can be stressful” Livinia Nixon writes in the Herald Sun today.

“It’s a very unnatural environment in that everyone is standing around being screamed at by photographers and journalists saying “Turn around” and “Where’s your dress from?”

“We start early because we’re on the red carpet at 4pm or 4.30pm so I’ll probably go into makeup at two, which makes it a long day. It takes longer every year, as Red Symons tells me!”

I’ve yet to meet a celebrity who found it so stressful they chose to avoid the night and stay home. Although Julia Zemiro once told me she didn’t see eye to eye with the way things were run and was staying home as a result. I admired her more for that.

But if this is stress then celebrities really need to get a grip.

Stress is not having enough money to pay your mortgage, or worse, your rent. Stress is hoping a loved one will make it through their next bout of chemo. Stress is worrying if you can ever live up to the ideals of a parent, or hoping your kid doesn’t get bullied at the next game of sports or worrying how you will get back home when your airline leaves you stranded in a foreign country.

Stress is not about spending time in the spotlight and answering inane questions from adoring fans or media behind a red rope.

They are the people that keep celebrities in employ and help keep them in the lifestyles to which they are accustomed. Whilst celebrity may not be all it is cracked up to be, there are plenty of out of work actors and aspirants who would readily swap places with any one of them.

It reminds me of celebrities in Reality shows who say they are out of their comfort zones. Yeah sure. In front of the cameras, fawned over by make-up and wardrobe, in the media spotlight -that’s really out of their comfort zone.

I have seen Publicists and organisers on the Red Carpet who have been stressed, and frankly I don’t blame them given the circumstances. But the stars are there to do a job like the rest of us and the skill of a celebrity includes being able to smile and make it all look so effortless. To her credit, Livinia meets that brief whenever I have met her.

I too will be amongst the mad media frenzy (hopefully not merely asking “who are you wearing?”) and while it is exhausting and manic I know it comes with the territory. It’s a once a year zoo. Sure, I’ll be tired the next day like everybody else. So?

At least I can agree on one point with Livinia.

“It can be a bit stressful but once it’s over, and you can relax, you just end up having a ball for the rest of the night.”

I’ll drink to that.