With Kiefer Sutherland poking fun at that Christmas tree incident, are Hollywood’s bad boys and girls more sinned against than sinning? Nah, we don’t think so either. Donal O’Donoghue reports
Charlie Sheen
It has been some year for the man at the top of Hollywood’s bad boy tree. From the ribbing by Ricky Gervais at the Golden Globes awards (watch clip here) to the eventual (inevitable) crashing out of Two and a Half Men in March, Charlie Sheen was on everybody’s front page this year. Going from the highest paid actor on TV ($1.8 million per episode) to the most talked about actor on TV, Sheen’s antics eclipsed all that had gone before in his dramatic off-screen life.
Married three times, he has fathered five children, been a rehab regular and in October 2010 was removed from his hotel by the New York police after trashing it (the incident referred to by Gervais in his opening Golden Globes monologue). The youngest son of actor, Martin Sheen, he was replaced on Two and a Half Men by Ashton Kutcher who also had an eventful 2011: but Charlie leaves everybody else in the ha’penny place.
Kiefer Sutherland
In 1996 Hollywood bad boy Kiefer Sutherland attacked an innocent Christmas tree in the lobby of a London hotel. Thanks to Youtube (the actor was being filmed for the documentary, I Trust You To Kill Me), the incident went viral (watch clip here). But it was just another scrapbook entry in a gliterring career (even if Sutherland has posted a spoof postcard of the incident on his Twitter page earlier this week) of the 24 star.
The son of Canadian actors Donald Sutherland and Shirley Douglas, Sutherland ran with the infamous Bratpack (yep, Charlie Sheen was there, too!) in the early Eighties. They got up to all kinds of hi-jinks and Keef found it hard to kick the habit. He spent 18 days in jail during the winter of 2007 and headbutted a fashion designer. But our favourite remains the Christmas tree – and the good news for the reformed bad boy is that 2012 will very likely see a big screen version of 24 going into production.
Nicole Richie
Popular singer Lionel Richie must have been dancing on the ceiling every time he heard of the latest escapade concerning his adopted daughter, Nicole. The Hollywood reality TV star – her biggest hit was The Simple Life opposite that other shrinking violet, Paris Hilton – has been through the tabloid wringer with tales of drug abuse (charged with possession of heroin in 2003), rumours of an eating disorder (denied by Richie) and two counts of driving under the influence (DUI) on her rap sheet.
In 2007 she was famously jailed for 82 minutes but since then the mother-of-two has got back on track and is seeminly living the simple life for real, reinventing herself as a style icon (or ‘boho babe’ as one magazine put it)
Carrie Fisher
In her day, Fisher, the daughter of Hollywood legend Debbie Reynolds, could hellraise with the best of them. Perhaps she got more coverage because of her demure image as Star Wars’ Princess Leia but during those wild and woolly Seventies, Fisher was in and out of rehab, addicted to drugs. She wrote of her experiences in the award-winning memoir, Postcards from the Edge (which she later adapted for the screen starring Meryl Streep).
Increasingly working as a screenwriter, Fisher battled bi-polar disorder and substance abuse. A survivor with a sharp pen who was nominated for her Emmy (a classic self-deprecating turn as a Hollywood veteran on 30 Rock) she remains one of the best chroniclers of the Janus face of Hollywood.
