Celebrities who manage to have a private life in Hollywood
The shock that greeted the death of actor Kelly Preston was testament to the privacy with which she and husband John Travolta surrounded their family. We reveal other celebrities who like to keep their lives private while living in the public eye.
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When Hollywood legend John Travolta shared the devastating news on Tuesday that actor Kelly Preston, his wife of 21 years and mother to their three children, had died after a two-year battle with breast cancer, it came as a huge shock to both fans and many celebrity friends.
The couple had kept Preston’s diagnosis private with only the closest of family and friends aware of the cancer and the treatment she had been receiving. A scroll through the Jerry Maguire star’s popular Instagram feed revealed nothing in the way of a health struggle, with the eternally smiling Preston a beacon of positivity right until her final post just weeks before her death.
Despite its reach, Hollywood is a small town and those who inhabit its upper echelons invariably know each other, but there was genuine shock in the tributes that flowed as the tragic news spread. Not just that Preston had passed away, but that she had been suffering at all.
And while the news itself was heartbreaking, that only those closest to the couple were privy to it is testament to the fact the couple were able to live their lives, and fight their battles, with a level of privacy that has becoming increasingly rare for celebrities in the age of social media and the 24-hour news cycle.
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Of course, when you don’t feed the beast, it can sometimes lead to speculation and gossip, but as with others in the same boat, Preston and Travolta didn’t let it sway them.
When a celebrity is labelled as private, it’s easy to jump to the conclusion they have become reclusive, that they’ve removed themselves from the machine that gave them that fame. But neither Travolta nor Preston were reclusive in any way — they just shared with the outside world exactly what they wanted, when they wanted.
Preston regularly celebrated the many hats she wore — mum, actor, wife, woman — in her Instagram posts. But she and Travolta shied away from dragging the kids onto every red carpet that was rolled out, avoided Kardashian-style oversharing and you’d be hard pressed to find a bathroom selfie anywhere on their feeds.
In keeping with that guarded approach, Travolta has retreated to mourn with his two surviving children (eldest son Jett died after a seizure in 2009).
“I will be taking some time to be there for my children who have lost their mother, so forgive me in advance if you don’t hear from us for a while,” he wrote at the end of his post announcing Preston’s passing. “But please know that I will feel your outpouring of love in the weeks and months ahead as we heal.”
Celebrity is sometimes forced upon those who would have otherwise not chased it.
On the same day Preston died at a hospital in Florida, Benjamin Keough, the adored son of Lisa Marie Presley and grandson of Elvis, was found dead in his mother’s Los Angeles home. He was 27.
Not much is known about Keough as he made a conscious — and understandable — effort to put a curtain around his life. When you are come from a family with as much history as his, that’s not an easy thing to achieve. His social media accounts were private and his mum would only ever provide scant details about what he was up to, clearly trying to protect him from the perils of public life. The two shared a close bond and Presley is said to be inconsolable over his death.
Despite this, there are reports the musician was offered a $5 million contract by Universal Music as a teenager, although it is believed no music was ever produced from that deal.
Many in Hollywood will bemoan the loss of privacy their celebrity brings in one breath, while having their agents alert the hungry paparazzi of an upcoming outing in the next.
But a select few have nailed that same elusive mix of public and private that Preston and Travolta managed, proving you don’t have to surrender your entire life when you hit the A-list.
Adele is one of the most successful recording artists of her generation, but has managed to keep much of her private life just that. When she announced she was pregnant with her son in 2012, she was already just weeks away from welcoming Angelo into the world. The 15-time Grammy Award winner has always shielded her son from the public, going so far as successfully suing after a series of photos appeared showing Angelo’s milestones without the permission of his parents.
Her recent weight-loss posts were a rare insight into her private life but shared just when and how she decided.
Actor and director Matt Damon is another. The Good Will Hunting and Bourne Identity star fronts the red carpets when he needs to and is widely considered one of the nicest players in Hollywood. But the Academy Award winner does everything he can to lead a normal — albeit well financed — life as dad, husband and actor, even making his own trips to Kmart on his regular visits to Byron Bay.
His is a lesson for others who in a similar position who are looking to be left alone.
“They can try to stake me out, but they’re always going to get the same story — middle-aged married guy with four kids. So as long as that narrative doesn’t change too much, there’s no appetite for it,” he told Esquire in 2013.
Australian singer Sia and singer-songwriter Frank Ocean are two who stand out in the music business as artists who successfully separate their professional and personal lives. Would anyone even recognise Sia if they ran into her at Woolies?
Then there are Sandra Bullock, Kerry Washington and even George and Amal Clooney — two very public, global faces who lead very private lives. People often question the relationship status of Ryan Gosling and Eva Mendes — why? Because they don’t give anything away, they have no desire to cash in on their A-list memberships and instead prefer to just try and leave work at work, just like the rest of us.
Originally published as Celebrities who manage to have a private life in Hollywood