The moment fame failed sad Mariah
Mariah Carey had not slept for about 20 hours when she sat down for a live Australian TV interview just a week before her nervous breakdown. It is now obvious that she was in the middle of the worst professional and personal crisis of her celebrated career.
Off-camera, on the Rove Live show on July 18th, a minder kept telling her to stop saying "freakin" because it did not fit with her squeaky clean image. It was a sign of Carey trying to find a way to rebel from the supposedly perfect pop-star life that millions of teenage girls idolised. "I have to be clam and normal because people don't understand I have a personality," she said. "They're trying to protect me. The problem is you're having the real me right now, but no one wants me to go there. It's a bit much."
Carey, 31, repeatedly voiced similar complaints in a hectic promotional schedule during the next week, searching for a way out of her private hell. "I just want one day off where I can go swimming, look at a rainbow or eat ice-cream," she told MTV.
But she never got a day off. Instead, the woman who has sold 140 million albums finally cracked. Whether Carey tried to commit suicide or merely cut herself in a cry for help is disputed. What is known is she became deliriously uncontrollable to the point where her mother had no choice but to bundle her famous daughter off to a psychiatric home.
Carey would normally be basking in the accolades of a hit single, the impending release of another spectacularly successful album and her approaching debut as a movie star. But several dramas converged to spoil those ambitions. The single, Loverboy, needed to be virtually given away at $1 a copy to ensure it made it to No 2 on the charts, record company executives are refusing to hand out pre-release copies of the album Glitter, and early reports of the movie of the same name are not good.
Her mantle as pop's reigning diva has been under serious threat from younger, hipper rivals and she recently hired a private investigator to find out whether her former husband - powerful music industry heavyweight Tommy Mottola, who discovered Carey when she was an 18-year old cocktail waitress - was privately trying to ruin her career.
Virgin recently signed her to a seven-album $560 million dollar deal. Thrown into the middle of this mix was the pain of being dumped by her boyfriend of three years, Latin singer Luis Miguel. All these issues came to head in Suite 704 of the Tribeca Grand Hotel in downtown Manhattan on July 25. In the hours before her rampage, Carey finally shook off the minders and handlers to sit down at a computer and talk directly to her fans. Never before has a singer used a fluffy official website to tell an adoring flock that being one of the world's most successful artists is not a lot of fun.
"Basically, I don't know what's going on with my life," one of her numerous rambling messages began. "I really don't feel that I should be doing music right now. I just can't trust anybody any more right now because I don't understand what's going on. I'm desperately trying to get out of this room. And I don't know if that makes any sense to anybody."
Then Carey began destroying her hotel suite's kitchenette. A guest directly across the hallway looked through her peephole and saw a hotel security guard asking her to be let in. "Go away, leave me alone," Carey shouted back. "Everybody's out to get me. Just leave me alone."
The guard called her minders who forced the star out of the suite. The witness said Carey had blood "streaming down her left arm, from her elbow down to her hand". Carey's publicist insists only the singer's foot was gashed and there was no suicide attempt. Carey was driven to her mother's place outside New York, but she realised her daughter needed urgent professional help.
Police classified Carey as EDP, an emotionally disturbed person, and left her with Dr Martin Kasofsky at the Northern Westchester Hospital Centre. He diagnosed extreme anxiety and exhaustion. A hospital source told the Daily News yesterday Carey had bandages on her wrists and arms. "The palms of her hands and both her wrists where bandaged," the source said. (The Sunday Mail - Australia) Many thanks to Mariah Buzz.
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