Britney Spears announced the birth of her baby boy on her website. Wil Wheaton, of Star Trek Next Generation fame, has one of the most popular celebrity blogs online, sharing personal thoughts, writing, opinions, and looks at the Hollywood world. Barbra Streisand rarely spares words as she offers opinions and views on the war with Iraq and other political and governmental hot topics. For some comedy and political views, Dave Barry updates his blog several times a day with one liner punches or essays on current events seen from his unique and enjoyable twisted perspective. Rupaul (RuPaul Andre Charles) has turned drag queening into a fine art as an actress, talk show host, and singer, so who wouldn’t want to keep up with such a dramatic life through the diva’s blog? Moby, never far from media attention or controversy, tells about his life and travels around the world, keeping fans up-to-date.
Celebrity blogs are popping up everywhere. While they used to only have websites and fan sites, now they have something to say. The blogs of the stars run the gamut from very famous to the eccentric. Among the very famous, Rosie O’Donnell writes poetry and stories about her children and life, as well as about her career in a way that is fresh, fun, and addictive, not your normal blog. Among the delightful and borderline eccentric is Jamie Oliver’s blog which covers all things food, cooking, and the delightful and enthusiastic antics of the best selling author and TV chef.
There are various celebrity blogs that could also be grouped by genre. A group of celebrity bloggers that I found interesting is the Star Trek group. William Shatner, George Takei, Nichelle Nichols, Aron Eisenberg (Nog), Kate Mulgrew, and John Billingsley (Phlox) are among the actors who brought the various versions of Star Trek to life who share stories about their work and their lives through their blogs, often talking about how Star Trek changed their lives.
One of the group of celebrities blogs that fascinates me the most are the writers who blog. Writing is their job, their business, their life, and yet blogging gives them another writing outlet. We, their fans, can keep up with their stories and work, as well as having the luxury of getting to know the authors of the books 
we take to bed and bath. Peter David, long time science fiction, fantasy, and television writer shares his schedule, interests, and views with his fans. William Gibson, author of Neuromancer and Pattern Recognition, talks about his book research and the process of writing his books. David Gerrold, another sci-fi writer, must enjoy blogging as he has several blogs he fills with his writing. As do two of my personal favorites, Orson Scott Card, author of Ender’s Game and the brilliant The Tales of Alvin Maker series, and Alan Dean Foster, a world traveler and author of more than 100 books such as the first Star Trek Logs, Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, Carnivores of Light and Darkness, The Commonwealth series, Cachalot, the Flinx Series, and the Spell Singer Series.
Writers from other genres also enjoy writing in their blogs such as Anne Rice, Meg Cabot (Princess Diaries), Claire Cook (Must Love Dogs), Jennifer Weiner (In Her Shoes), and Neil Gaiman (Sandman). In fact, I could do a whole post on nothing but author and writer blogs! Stay tuned!
Some celebrity bloggers can’t write for nuthin’. Spelling is bad, and stream of consciousness essays are almost impossible to follow. Others, well, you know they didn’t write it themselves, though most do try. The writing sounds like a secretary or PR staff member, reporting more on the promotional activities of the stars than really talking about their lives. Few keep up daily or even monthly posts, often with three month to one year gap between posts. Or they will blog constantly for a few months and then other interests will pull them away for long periods of time, like many bloggers. After all, celebrity bloggers aren’t much different than the rest of us bloggers, they just have a larger and more enthusiastic audience interested in their lives than we do.
Why Celebrities Blog
Going through the websites and blogs of the rich, famous, infamous, and celeb, I was amazed at the diversity. Some like Barbra Streisand and Michael Moore are determined to change the world around them, even though their viewpoints may be drastically different. Others do it for the publicity, without a doubt, putting Pamela Anderson at the top of that list.
Others are in it for the art. Jeff Bridges Doodle Art is actually amazing, pushing web page design to new extremes as images tell the story through doodle, handwriting, and links within the graphics themselves on the various topics.
While there are many celebrity bloggers, there are even more bloggers blogging about celebrities, which we will look at in a future post.
Why are we interested in these celebrity blogs?
The fascination with the lives of people who have stepped out of obscurity has been around for thousands of years. Palace and political gossip was a way of spreading news, scandals, and even information, true or not. The lives of public figures has long been of interest to the masses, often with the mythology that we can look through the window on their world to see a better life than the one we are living. Or shake our heads and think, “Even with all that money, they still do stupid things.”
Either way, blogs written by the stars help people understand the person behind the stardom and help the stars share their story, their hope, courage, and opinion. Many stars use their fame to indeed help change and improve the world through their words and their efforts. And many of them use their blogs as one of their efforts.
Here are some famous star bloggers:
- Mariah Carey
- Bare Naked Ladies
- Gillian Anderson
- David Duchovny
- Bruce Willis
- Al Roker
- Gene Simmons
- Jenna Elfman
- Melanie Griffith
- Jamie Oliver’s blog
- Rosie O’Donnell
- Moby
- Rupaul
- Dave Barry
- Barbra Streisand
- Britney Spears
- Michael Moore
- Sheryl Crow
- William Shatner
- George Takei
- Nichelle Nichols
- Aron Eisenberg (Nog)
- Kate Mulgrew
- John Billingsley (Phlox)
- Peter David
- William Gibson
- David Gerrold
- Orson Scott Card
- Alan Dean Foster
- Anne Rice
- Meg Cabot (Princess Diaries)
- Claire Cook (Must Love Dogs)
- Jennifer Weiner (In Her Shoes)
- Neil Gaiman (Sandman)
- Pamela Anderson
- Jeff Bridges
Do you have any favorite celebrity blogs to add to this list? Tell us about them and why you like them.
Site Search Tags: famous, celeb, celebrity, famous+people, bloggers, actors, artists, movies, stars, movie+stars, favorite, fame, author, blogger, bloggers, writers, spotlight, television, tv, celebs, acclaim, brag, writing
Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, member of the 9Rules Network
Lorelle on WordPress 
15 Comments
Don’t forget Kevin Smith – http://www.silentbobspeaks.com/
Mike Shinoda from Linkin Park with his new side band Fort Minor – http://www.myspace.com/fortminor
His blog is linked off that page.
I wish Douglas Adams were alive =(. In that case, his blog would be the first on my daily visit list.
Here’s a few I’ve found…
http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/ – John Kricfalusi’s (Ren and Stimpy creator) blog
http://mchammer.blogspot.com/ – You guessed it- MC Hammer’s blog
http://gardenstate.typepad.com/ – Zach Braff’s blog
MC Hammer has a blog? Does anyone listen or pay attention? Isn’t he the past? Amazing what blogging can do for a career. 😉
Hammer’s not past! He’s the MacDaddy of the Mic…
😉
This is a nice list of celeb blogs. Some of the links are old though. I’ve collected some current celebrity blogs on my blog. Check it out and let me know if I missed anyone. http://bloggingsense.blogspot.com/2006/03/celebrity-blogs.html
I don’t know what you mean by “old”. I fixed two links on the page for some celebs who changed their website links. Old as in “out of fashion”? That depends upon your point of view and age. 😉
I’m not a fan of who is who in any world. I picked this list because they were blogging, writing about themselves and their lives. In other words, their blogs were not “I’m famous – here is everything you want to know” or written by someone else. I selected these as examples of famous people doing the actual blogging and having something more to say than “I’m famous – look at me.” For this site, that’s a very important distinction.
Hi – I actually meant that a lot of the links are Old, out-of-date, dead. Here are a few examples:
-Mariah Carey doesn’t seem to have a blog
-Melanie Griffith’s last post was a year ago
-Sheryl Crow’s last post was in 2001
-Bruce Willis’ site is gone (It mentions having a happy Thanksgiving
while it remodels or something)
-Britney Spears’ last post was a year ago
-Nichelle Nichols’ last post was October of 2004
I didn’t check all of them this time so there may be more.
I agree with you on your reasoning for picking certain blogs. Like I don’t consider it a blog if all they have is tour dates. But a lot of the links you have are not current.
Good point. Still, their blogs are there, and they might jump in and start up again, and readers can read past posts to get to know their celebs. Thanks for the info and for checking these out.
Others like Wil Wheaton, Rosie, and Streisand are blogging their hearts away with great enthusiasm, setting an example for those who may lapse, like a good majority of all bloggers, famous or not. 😉
Thanks for this Lorelle. I’ll be waiting your entry about writers’/authors’ blogs (if you haven’t written it already, I’m a newbie in your blog 🙂 ). I hope I could find tips about the writing process from them.
It’s hard to write about writer-author blogs as everyone who has a blog is a writer, but not all writers have been published in a book, and all writers of blogs are authors…see what I mean. I’ve been poking at such an article idea for a bit, but I keep coming up with “how to write” themes. For that, I have a whole category called Writing to cover a ton of things you need to know about writing, specifically writing on blogs. With more articles on that subject coming out all the time, including the new Blogging Challenges I just started. These will surely test your writing skills, whatever level they are.
To help you with writing in general, related to authors, here are some articles that may help:
Should Authors Blog – How?
Printing Out Your Blog in Book Form
Writing on the Web is Like Writing on Paper But The Rules Change
Lorelle is the Author of Lorelle on WordPress
Are You Prepared to Prove Your Life?
PhD Bloggers
Turning Your Blog Into a Book
Amazon Offers Author Blogs
Thanks for asking and I’ll put my thinking hat on and see what I come up with soon. Meanwhile, welcome and enjoy!
I like all the celebrity blogs because they are updated daily and we get the latest information on them.
Can anyone give me some links to direct celebrity blogs?? I have only seem fakes, and reviews OF celebrities, not actual blogs written by celebtiries! Last blog I came across was myspace.
Mantids, here’s a couple of official celebrity blogs:
Alison Sweeney: http://www.alisonsweeney.com/blog.php
Alyssa Milano: http://www.alyssa.com/blog/index.php
Carsten Norgaard: http://www.carstennorgaard.com/blog/index.php
Kyle Lowder: http://www.kylelowder.net/blog.php
Arianne Zucker: http://www.officialarizucker.com/blog/
Bill Duke: http://www.officialbillduke.com/blog.php
Gloria Reuben: http://www.officialgloriareuben.com/blogs.php
Joey McIntyre: http://www.officialjoeymcintyre.com/blog.php
Kelly Brook: http://www.officialkellybrook.com/blog/index.php
Lin Shaye: http://www.officiallinshaye.com/blog.php
Peter Ishkhans: http://www.peterishkhans.com/blog.php
Stockton Briggle: http://www.stocktonbriggle.com/blog.php
Some blog more regularly than others and they’re the official blogs of these celebrities, so they’re all written by the celebrities themselves (since they’re each on their respective official celebrity websites). You can comment on their blogs, but do note that all comments are first reviewed before being published. You can keep track of new celebrity blogs added by consulting the list of stars over at Celebrity Loop on this page: http://www.celebrityloop.com/stars.php
7 Trackbacks/Pingbacks
[…] Lorelle on listannut julkkisten blogeja syyskuussa. Celebrity Blog Watchin linkkipalkki on sekin pitkähkö. — Lööpeissä ryvetettyä olemusta voi osaava kohentaa tuottamalla itse sisältöä. Rosa Meriläisestä saa huomattavasti monipuolisemman ja fiksumman käsityksen hänen blogistaan kuin vaikkapa uutisista. En edes ollut tiedostanut omaavani Meriläisestä mielipidettä, ennen kuin huomasin hämmästyväni siitä miten terhevästi hän työtä blogin perusteella tekee. Lööpit ja uutiskuvat lipuvat tajuntaan vaikkei niitä aktiivisesti rekisteröisikään. Eräitä kölin alta uitettuja ei tosin oma-aloitteinen kirjoittelu ainakaan auta. Juoruista jorinaa? Peli on menetetty jo tuolla sivuotsikolla (Karpela). […]
[…] Not everything I’ve written with the intention to be hooks for this blog made it into the top posts that consistently bring in traffic. Conquering Site Validation Errors, Code Snippets – Help, Cheating, and Goodness, Whose Blogging – Celebrity Blogs on the Rise, and CSS and Web Page Design List of Resources were all written with the intension of being good hooks, but they fizzled. Sure, they bring in some traffic, but 10 visitors a day per post isn’t as good as 100 or more. Google’s stock has been dropping this week, so if something happens and the Google bubble bursts, you can bet that my articles about Google will drop from a hundred or more visitors a day to 10. Such is the risk when you play bait and hook games. Still, consistency wins. […]
[…] A lot of blogging is based upon gossip, conjecture, and ineuendo. There are a lot of blogs filled with nasty and gritty details, wondering about celebrities and their lives. We are entranced with the fiction we see on the screen and fiction created around the stars in the shows. In politics, we want to know everything about how evil and nasty a person is and how they used that to corrupt their position. If someone kills another person (or more), we become obsessed with the media circus that revolves around the action and the trial, creating a hero out of the criminal. […]
[…] Whose Blogging? Celebrity Blogs on the Rise […]
[…] Gedanken, blogging, Bloggen, Allgemeines, Gesellschaft, Internet Verweise zu Stars und Sternchen, Schauspieler, Sportler, Saenger, Bands – die alle fleissig bloggen! Wenn jemand von Heidi Klum oder Seal ein Blog finden […]
[…] there’s another huge group who says they write to be in touch in with their fans. Read celebrity blogs. In the Indian scenario, Big B has a blog, so does Aamir Khan and of all people/politicians […]
[…] Whose Blogging – Celebrity Blogs on the Rise […]