So you’re a Hollywood heartthrob with a hot new movie coming out and you decide to take a trip to your local baseball diamond to catch some games. You show up a little late and have to rush through the stands to make it to your seat. In the meantime, you notice a little girl with pigtails staring at you. You smile and nod at her, and then you see it. A big smile spreading across her face. You catch the eye of the people around you, and they all turn to look at you. You feel a tap on your shoulder and turn around to find the head of the security team from the ball game looking at you. He points to the front row and whispers, “That’s the paparazzi. Don’t stare at them, they’ll stare back.”
Then you realize that all eyes are on you, and you feel a little uncomfortable. It’s not like you did anything wrong, but somehow you feel like a criminal. You steal a glance at the little girl with the pigtails. She’s still staring at you, but this time her smile is a little sad. You feel bad and look away. Suddenly the head security guard is yelling at you, “Hey, Robinson! Get your hands off of those girls or you’re gonna jail!” You cover your ears and pretend you didn’t hear him. You tell yourself it’s none of your business, and you leave the stadium worried that you might be in trouble. When you get home, you Google the security guard’s name and see that he’s notorious for harassing celebrities. You feel relieved that it wasn’t your fault and decide to keep your distance from the public eye. You pull down the curtain in your bedroom, lock the door, and cry yourself to sleep. The next day you get a call from a newspaper, and they want to know if you’ll be interested in doing an interview. You laugh and ask them if they’ve lost their minds. Then you decide to play along and tell them that you don’t want to go down that road again. You feel like a changed man, determined to live a more private life. And that’s when the trouble really begins.
Your Ex-Girlfriends Start Having Babies
A month passes, and you’re on your way home from work when your cell phone rings. You look at the caller ID and recognize the number. You answer eagerly, anticipating a long overdue conversation with your one true love. Instead, you hear a young girl’s voice asking if this is Rob Pattinson. You feel a chill go down your spine and your heart starts racing. You hang up the phone without saying a word and rush home. Your girlfriend is terrified of losing her baby to stalking, so she agrees to meet you at the police station. She’s convinced that you’re about to be arrested for harassment. When you arrive, she’s pacing frantically, clutching her bag of belongings. You try to comfort her, but she doesn’t seem to hear you. She keeps talking about how the paparazzi are always following her, how they took a picture of her holding hands with another woman and posted it on Twitter, and how she knows it’s going to be even worse with your new movie coming out. You let her talk and try to calm her down. Then she sees the newspaper articles you’ve been ignoring, and starts yelling at you about what a piece of garbage you are. She calls you every name in the book, and for a moment, you think she may actually hit you. When she’s finished, she has tears in her eyes and calms down, but you feel completely destroyed. You were just trying to do the right thing, and for what? So some crazy bitch decides to have a baby instead. You’re a real man now, right? You must be strong enough to handle this. You can’t be weak and pathetic like before. You’ve got to be a real man.
The Attacks Increase
Four months pass, and you’ve started noticing a pattern. Every time you leave the house, you feel like you’re being watched. Everywhere you go, people want a picture with you or tell you that your smile lights up the room. You feel like you can’t go to the grocery store or the bank without someone trying to touch your arm or ask for your autograph. It gets so bad that you finally tell your agent that you don’t feel safe anymore, and ask for a new booking schedule. She assures you that your fears are unfounded, but you suspect that she’s hiding something. When you come home from work one day, you find a man with a ski mask standing at your front door. You ask who he is, and he tells you that your time has come. You try to reason with him, but he throws you on the ground and starts attacking you with a butcher’s knife. When the police show up, they find you lying in a pool of your own blood with two gunshot wounds to the chest. You’re still wearing your favorite baseball cap. They think it’s a death sentence, but you prove them wrong and go on to live a normal life.
The following year, you meet a girl at work and start dating her. She has a daughter who needs a father, so you agree to have children. When you have your first daughter, you realize how much you love being a father. You change your name to Ryan and decide to take on the responsibilities of fatherhood. Soon after, you meet the woman who would become your wife. She has sons from a previous marriage, and you decide to take them on as your foster children. You adopt a sibling group of three charming boys and bring them all up as your own. Your wife helps out, too, taking care of your infant daughters during the weekdays while you work. But at night, when you get home, she makes dinner and helps with the children while you sit and relax. In the meantime, the twins have started puberty, and it’s changed everything. The attacks come with more frequent and violent bursts, and it takes a lot of counseling to get them under control. One time, the older boy almost choked to death on a chicken bone. He started having violent outbursts too, and you and your wife decided that it was better for the children not to know about their father. So you kept the truth from them for as long as you could, but finally you couldn’t anymore and broke down and told them that their father was, in fact, John DeLorean. They didn’t seem bothered by the revelation at first, but eventually the attacks got so bad that you had to take them to counseling again. It was a tough time, but in the end, everything turned out okay. Your wife and kids believe in you, and you continue to be their hero. You sign a contract with Warner Bros. and get to work on your latest project. You decide to use a fake name, because you don’t want to ruin your momentum with the public. You change your name to Robert Pattinson again, and then one day you get a call from a music magazine. You’re happy to hear from a fan, and you meet them at a coffeeshop later that day to discuss the magazine and what they need from you. You realize it’s not a fan call when they ask you to go on tour with them. You politely decline, telling them that your work deserves more attention than you can give at this point. You’re not sure what’s going on, but you feel that your privacy is being violated, and it makes you angry.