Melbourne might be one of the world’s most liveable cities but some celebrities can’t stand it
Melbourne may be one of the world’s most liveable cities, but some visiting celebrities have failed to grasp its charm. See which famous names have dissed our fair city.
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Melbourne might be one of the world’s most liveable cities, but for some celebrities it is a place with unhappy memories.
While most famous visitors to the Victorian capital talk it up, others have let fly on the way out the door and still others have dumped on Australia as a whole.
Stars who did not click with Melbourne’s urban sophistication, or who found Australia a place they looked forward to leaving, either ran afoul of local laws, were confronted by unpleasant fan behaviour or felt like they had stepped back into far more conservative times.
Jerry Seinfeld
He is due in Melbourne for a stand-up tour later this month, but back in 1998 the city did not tickle legendary comic Jerry Seinfeld’s funny bone.
He famously labelled Melbourne “the anus of the world” during a New York show following his 1998 stand-up tour of Australia.
It turned out what may have put him off Melbourne was the fact he had to wait for a table at Mario’s cafe in Brunswick Street, Fitzroy.
The cafe doesn’t take bookings and Seinfeld wasn’t going to wait for anyone.
Frank Sinatra
Legendary singer and actor Frank Sinatra made world headlines when his 1974 Australian tour went off the rails after he took offence at the reporting of his alleged mafia connections and womanising.
Not happy with the tone of the media coverage, Sinatra gave his assessment of Australian female journalists while on stage at Melbourne’s Festival Hall.
“The broads who work in the press are the hookers of the press. I might give them a buck-and-half, I’m not sure,” Sinatra foolishly said.
The Australian Theatrical and Amusement Employees Association, who controlled the lighting, staging and musicians for Sinatra’s tour, dug its heels in and declared it would strike until Sinatra apologised and then the Transport Workers Union got involved, refusing to fuel any plane Sinatra was travelling on.
The ‘chairman of the board’ was grounded, literally, and his second Melbourne show was cancelled.
Sinatra somehow made it to Sydney and Bob Hawke, then the president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, entered the fray.
Hawke and Sinatra managed to thrash out a joint statement of regret for the chaos and the New Yorker’s tour continued but it took decades until he was happy to return to Australia.
SZA
US pop star SZA was so disgusted by the behaviour of fans at her Melbourne concert in May 2024 that she threatened halfway through to call off the show.
Idiot fans threw items, including shoes and mobile phones, onto the stage at Rod Laver Arena with SZA having to dodge the missiles.
“I will leave. Do not throw up any cell phones, I’m a person. That’s crazy,” SZA told the crowd.
Meat Loaf
Like a bat out of hell eccentric American singer Meat Loaf could not wait to get out of Melbourne after his disastrous performance at the 2011 AFL Grand Final.
There is nothing good that can be said about Meat Loaf’s pre-game show and Meat Loaf had nothing positive to say about the AFL or the Grand Final.
He did however have plenty of negative things to say, describing the AFL as “the cheapest people I’ve ever seen in my life” and calling the league bosses “jerks.”
“All those people that think I’m done can put their head in an oven,” he said.
“I’ll tell you what, anybody that I hear announces that they’re going to play for them I’m going to write to that particular artist a letter and tell them not to.
“And I hope the AFL hears this and I want this everywhere, because I will go out of my way to tell any artist ‘do not play for them’.”
Abbie Chatfield
Bad things seem to happen to outspoken podcaster and TV presenter Abbie Chatfield when the Sydney-based star comes to Melbourne.
She has a love-hate relationship with the city.
“I hate Melbourne,” she only half joked in March 2024.
“I hate Melbourne because everything bad happens in Melbourne to me.
“My dog died, two of the lockdowns happened when I was here for a day, I almost got trapped here twice (because of the lockdowns), I got Covid in Melbourne for the first time.”
Azealia Banks
A chaotic tour in December 2022 saw US rapper Azealia Banks unleash on Australia, declaring she would never return.
Banks’s Melbourne show on that tour was cancelled after delays in getting her visa approved meant she could not get to Australia as scheduled. She then ended up in a public spat over fees with her promoters and called Australians “broke and racist.”
In May 2023 she fired up again, ranting on Instagram that the Australian music industry and Australian culture was “trash” and that Australia was “one of the most culturally stale white nations on the planet.”
She went on to describe the Australian arts community as “untalented, uncultured and unneeded”.
Banks’s anti-Aussie stance first appeared in 2015 when she blew up following her show at Splendour In The Grass and labelled Australian audiences as “terrible crowds to play for” and “violent and belligerent”.
Ava Gardner
Hollywood star Ava Gardner was claimed to have described Melbourne as “the perfect place to make a film about the end of the world” when she filmed On The Beach in the Victorian capital in 1959. For years the comment stuck with her, but it turns out the quip was invented by a journalist in a tongue-in-cheek piece about the making of the film. The piece included a line that the writer had not been able to confirm a third-party report that Gardner had made the remark. The quip however ran as a direct quote and quickly became a thing of legend.
Melissa George
Former Home and Away star Melissa George didn’t win any friends when she bucked at being asked about her Aussie soap past during a morning TV interview in 2012.
Fed up, she blasted Australian media as “disgusting” for constantly harking back to her Summer Bay roots and declared such reporting on her career meant she did not want to return to the country.
“I’d rather be having a croissant and a little espresso in Paris or walking my french bulldog in New York City,” she bleated.
“I don’t need credibility from my country any more, I just need them all to be quiet.”
Not surprisingly George was soon backtracking on her wild remarks. She has since filmed in Australia.
Ashton Kutcher
Hollywood star Ashton Kutcher had Melburnians rolling their eyes when he said the city was “basically closed” on a Wednesday night in 2010.
The star was in town to film his movie “Killers” and took to Twitter to complain that he couldn’t work out where to go for fun on a midweek winter’s night.
Radio host Fifi Box, who was tasked with interviewing Kutcher about the film, has since labelled the actor the “worst celebrity” she has ever met.
“He cut me off, blocked me, deferred to the director the whole interview. It was horrible, it was an awful experience,” Box said.
Joe Cocker
After getting arrested in Melbourne in 1972, you would think the British singer might be put off touring Australia but, no. Cocker, who died in 2014, was a regular visitor down under during his life.
In October 1972, Cocker was having a wild time in Australia. He was arrested in Adelaide for marijuana possession, pleaded guilty and was slapped with a fine.
Five days later, following his show in Melbourne, he was arrested after an alleged brawl with his then girlfriend in the foyer of the Chateau Commodore hotel. He was held overnight on charges of assault and resisting arrest and in the morning was given four hours to get out of the country resulting in the cancellation of the rest of his tour.
Lewis Hamilton
F1 Grand Prix great Lewis Hamilton must be a forgive and forget type of guy.
Hamilton had every reason to think that Melbourne was a nanny state when he was pinged by police in St Kilda for hooning when leaving the Albert Park Grand Prix circuit on the Friday of the 2010 Australian Grand Prix.
Hamilton was nabbed by police after doing a burnout in his silver Mercedes.
The car was impounded, the story went around the world, and Hamilton had to apologise for his exuberance behind the wheel.
He later pleaded guilty to intentionally losing control of his vehicle on the St Kilda street and was fined $500 without conviction.
Since then Hamilton has kept his lead foot confined to the racetrack at Albert Park, not the streets surrounding the circuit.
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