Keke Palmer has insisted fame makes "everybody" feel "lonely" and "alienated"
The 31-year-old actress has opened up about life in the spotlight and how she copes with how "weird" it can make her feel
9 December 2024
She told Self magazine: "It is lonely. How I deal with it is to not centre myself.
"I think about all the other people who feel weird in the world, because if we take all the glamour out of it, and all the specifics and uniqueness of what it means to be famous, it just means feeling weird.
"I think everybody in the world feels extraordinarily alienated, and we feel even more alienated when we alienate others. And that's what comes with fame."
The 'Nope' star insisted despite being "known around the world", she feels "less able to connect to the very people that I would want to use my fame to connect to".
She pointed to the way some celebrities "find cults" or simply family to help cope with the loneliness.
She said: "We all feel deeply, deeply alone. That's why many of us create families.
"That's why many of us find communities, groups to be a part of. That's why many of us find churches. S***, some of us find cults!
"We're all alone, and we're looking for a sense of shared aloneness. And I think that essentially as an entertainer, it's the same thing."
She argued that "there's a level of being ostracised through fame", although it's also simply "its own brand of the human experience" that everyone goes through.
For Keke, her own community is her family, and "people that have a sense of faith".
She added: "Not necessarily religious, but people who believe in boundaries and want to do good in the world, that have a moral compass."
Keke was just 12 years old when she became the main breadwinner in her house, and she previously admitted that it disrupted her family's dynamic.
Despite this, the actress still appreciates the values she was taught by her parents.
She recently told The Guardian newspaper: "Y'know, I look today at what the kids are saying online - and by 'the kids', I mean the folks, everyone - we have these weird ideas of what it means to be a man or woman, and it's so stringent. My parents bounced back and forth to play all different roles."
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