Which Celebrities Are Good at Being Famous?

Being famous sucks and most people are bad at it. We are not a species designed to have that kind of wall-to-wall attention, to be the sounding board for millions of people’s emotions and projections. And yet the idea of celebrity remains too enticing to ignore. It’s easy to become addicted to the adoration, or even be fuelled by the hate. Nowadays, anyone can become famous, even for a few days, but with that comes a hell of a lot of baggage. The kid who goes viral on TikTok or the cheaters at Coldplay concerts are not equipped for the weight of that infrastructure. Having all that fury directed at you but none of the monetary compensation of fame is pretty insidious. It’s no wonder so many one-Tok wonders end up embroiled in bullsh*t schemes (hello, Hawk-Tuah Girl.) As Bill Murray famously said: if you think you want to be rich and famous, try being rich first and see if that doesn’t solve all of your problems.

Being famous is hard work, and even a lot of people who actively sought it out aren’t good at it. They succumb to rage bait, have too thin a skin for the jokes, or are just a woman with boundaries. Some people are equipped to navigate safe waters but struggle once things get choppy. Other people are Elon Musk.

So, what of the celebrities who are actually good at playing the fame game? Who are the big names who have shown themselves to be savvy about their careers, images, and relationships with the public? It’s not a large number of people, I’d argue, and many of them got their start in traditional entertainment spaces that offered structures to maintain their aura. I wanted to look into people who I think are good at the work of fame, of navigating its ridiculous and ever-changing infrastructure, and of keeping people interested without disturbing a delicate balance of give-and-take. These are totally subjective, of course, but I think I have some good cases to present to you all.

Zendaya

I have an admittedly half-baked theory that performers who were child stars that successfully made the jump to sturdy adult careers have played the fame game on hard mode and are perhaps the best suited to teach us how to be famous. Consider Leonardo DiCaprio, who went from Oscar-nominated prodigy to heartthrob of the decade to serious actor and managed to keep all the Pussy Posse and young girlfriends stuff in their own compartments for decades. Or Jodie Foster, who had experience working with auteurs as a pre-teen and aged into an industry legend who keeps the lines between professional and personal highly defined. Miley Cyrus had a messier transition period but has always talked candidly about her experiences and the lessons she’s learned. But it’s Zendaya who, out of the current young millennial bunch of child stars turned adult A-Listers, I think has done it the most seamlessly.

Zendaya is an undisputed megastar. She turns up and people pay attention. That wasn’t a guaranteed thing for her. Most Disney Channel stars don’t go on to headline movies directed by Oscar nominees, and as a Black woman, the odds were stacked even more against her. But Ms. Coleman had a savvy eye towards the future, with fashion at the forefront. Her partnership with stylist Law Roach might be the most impactful of its type of the century. It’s become an event to see what she’ll wear on the red carpet, from the Met Gala to her own movies to the opening of an envelope. But she also knew how to get people to listen. When the E! Network’s Fashion Police had that weird racist tirade about her dreads, she responded so succinctly and shut that shit down so effectively that it pretty much killed off the show.

We’re seeing a lot of Zendaya in 2026 thanks to four massive movies, as well as her marriage to Tom Holland, and every interview she gives is another reminder to me of how expertly she plays this game. When Jimmy Kimmel asked her about the weird AI images of her wedding, she used it as a moment to tell a cute anecdote and then tied it all together to promote her movie, The Drama.

Indeed, she and Holland have been extremely clever in keeping their relationship as private as possible. In another era, or with another couple, having Spidey and MJ be a real-life couple would have led to endless sexy photoshoots and dual interviews and a total milking of the blurred lines between real and fake. They’d have hung Tom upside down and made him do that kiss over and over! And yet, here are two of the most famous actors working today, playing one of comic book fiction’s most iconic couples, and they are studiously private. They keep those lines clear, but aren’t afraid to give a few cutesy quotes about one another. I love it. Even while promoting two of the biggest films of 2026 together, being far more visible as a couple than they’ve ever been, you can feel the barriers between them and the rest of us.

Zendaya has said that, after this year of endless promotion (Dune Part Three comes out in December), she’ll go away for a bit and live her life. She knows that the overexposure backlash is real and will not stand for it. But her future is also bright. She was hand-picked by the late great Ronnie Spector to play her in a biopic, which will be directed by Barry Jenkins. I’m a biopic sceptic, but that is a combination of talent I want to see. Can you imagine her ‘60s girlband-inspired fashion tour?

Tom Hanks

Of course America’s uncle is good at being famous. He’s been doing this for well over four decades and has gone through it all. Have you ever seen Tom Hanks on an off day? Nobody would have blamed him for it. He’s dealt with the unbearable weight of being so beloved for a long dang time, and done it with such humour and charm. His interviews are always delightful, even when he’s promoting absolute dreck. He’s malleable across mediums too, being just as interesting in print as he is in a gimmicky YouTube interview. You get your money’s worth with Tom, and you always have.

There’s a remarkable consistency to his celebrity, a kind of professionalism that can only be found in that era of ‘90s/2000s icons who know the joys of a $20 million payday and a life without social media. But while Tom Cruise was always uber-intense and Schwarzenegger and Stallone bragged about their macho credentials, Hanks was the relatable one by comparison. He was humble, homey, not forever running away from explosions. It’s tough to make relatability your brand, especially for almost 50 years, and yet Hanks has pulled it off.

Nowadays, Hanks, in his 70s, seems ready for a new era of indie work and some truly weird shit. He’s attached to an adaptation of Lincoln in the Bardo, where he’ll play Abraham Lincoln alongside some stop-motion surrealness, and he’s reuniting with A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood director Marielle Heller for a movie about baseball. As long as he stays away from Robert Zemeckis.

Julia Fox

I feel like this is the one most people will disagree with me on, but hear me out. Julia Fox did not come to fame through traditional means. She was a dominatrix and It Girl who ended up in a breakout indie hit made by New York dirtbags, and she turned that into a platform for her own kind of self-aware shambolic performance that comfortably inhabits the B-List. Yeah, “dating” Kanye was messy, and “messy” is a term that comes up a lot with Fox, but of the generation that was moulded by perennially online “get your bag” ideas of self-branding, she’s a woman playing that game with a full deck.

Fox is a blend of performance art, cool aunt, party girl, indie actress, and documentarian of modern celebrity. There’s a candour to her that is frequently jumbled but always earnest. Here is a woman who is always in on the joke, and one who knows the exact rung on the ladder of fame she occupies. It gives her the freedom to be weird, be it through her always-unexpected fashion choices or her very good memoir, which is a level of raw most actresses would be discouraged from revealing. No Julia Fox, no Brat era.

She feels like the ideal celebrity for this weird era where even A-Listers are expected to be influencers, where there’s no longer embarrassment in doing ads and the hierarchy of celebrity is more malleable than ever. Fox’s knowing camp is a perspective that this moment demands. It’s a shamelessness that isn’t greedy or politically twisted. Really, she does some good work with that attention, like being a co-founder of the Rosebuds Reading Collective, which is dedicated to bringing book clubs and access to literature to incarcerated women.

Fox may have a very specific kind of fame in a niche occupied by few people, but that doesn’t make the work any less viable. It’s not just that she’s good at her unique celebrity style: it’s that she’s also clearly having a blast doing it. You see people like Kim Kardashian who act so seriously and never seem to be enjoying their obscene privileges, and you wonder why they bother being so ruthless in their ambitions. Fox is lower down the rung (or down the drain, as her book declared), but she’s where the party’s happening.

Dua Lipa

I’ve often seen it joked on social media that Dua Lipa is God’s favourite. She’s gorgeous, talented, has a hot husband, goes on holiday constantly, and has good politics. It does seem as though she’s living life on a far more fulfilling level than the rest of us. But you can’t even be mad at her about it because she does it so damn well.

Lipa is someone whose improvement as a celebrity has been well documented. People used to make fun of her awkward dancing and lack of stage presence when she first emerged, and she responded by putting in the work. The moves improved and so did her performances, allowing her to become a real pop threat in a crowded field. She became distinct, which is easier said than done in a business where homogeneity is encouraged by record executives and algorithms.

Dua makes being mega-famous seem fun. She goes on glamorous holidays but doesn’t smugly flex on her wealth. The parties seem more exciting when she’s there, dressed to the nines but not floating above the action. But it’s not just her chicness that is appealing (although it certainly is: her wedding ensembles were STUNNING.) It’s that Lipa has reached the upper echelons of fame and refused to sacrifice her beliefs, be it her support for Palestine or LGBTQ+ rights. So many people far less famous than her have stayed silent but she’s done the work, making many of her contemporaries seem, let’s face it, cowardly.

I’m also a sucker for a celebrity with an intriguing side hustle. Many celebs have book clubs now, but it’s Dua Lipa’s one, built around her excellent lifestyle newsletter Service95, that has proven to be the most intriguing. For one thing, she picks an exciting and highly literary series of works that aren’t usually found on, say, Reese Witherspoon or Jenna Bush Hager’s lists. And more importantly, Lipa has clearly done the work. You listen to her interview those authors, and you never doubt that she read the books, thought about them carefully, and wanted to compile a nourishing conversation with the writer. That sounds like basic stuff, I know, but admit it, you’ve seen some book club talks where nobody involved read the damn book. Lipa’s passion for literature and culture doesn’t feel like a shameless cash-in or stepping stone to some startup jackassery. She just really wants people to read good books.

Which celebrities do you think are killing it in the fame game right now? Let me know in the comments or on Bluesky!