This is hard for us to answer given all of us (or 99% of us) are not famous or incredibly wealthy. However, pretend like you are George Clooney, Michael Douglas, maybe even Sean Connery (he's a little too old).

At what age would you give up all your fame, good looks, fortune, for youth? If you were 45, 55, 65...and were offered youth - 20, 25, whatever - but you would be average looking, average wealth, average everything. That doesn't mean you don't have a chance of being very happy of course.

Basically, I wonder how many years of rich, good looking, and/or fame are equal to years of normalcy.

I think I'd take 50 years of rich and famous vs. 85 of normalcy. Alternatively, I think if I was approaching 60 and rich and famous, I would trade it all for a 25 year old with "nothing".

Did you post here instead of GD, hoping that the thread will be taken seriously?

Yah. Actually, I was going to address that but decided against it. Not only more seriously, but most of the "smartest" people on RM come to this forum so this is the place to post this.

I have no interest in wealth or fame. I actually turned down the chance to apprentice and take over my father's company, with which he currently makes more in two months than I do all year, to teach, so...

Nothing ordinary about living. Not ever.

To be fair, I'm not talking about making $200,000 a year. I'm talking about being extremely rich or extremely famous. And you shouldn't compare it to your current life, ie, kids wife etc. You need to assume you don't have those attachments.

I'll take the life I have thanks, whatever it will be.

*misses the point*

Also I didn't say you could trade your life for a 65 year old movie star. It would be the other way around.

I'd trade in wealth and fame for youth, in a heartbeat. Just as long as I didn't have to sign some sort of a fucked up contract with small print in order to do it.

I have plenty of interest in wealth so I wouldn't have to work but 0 interest in Fame. Youth is wasted on the young isn't it?

I'd give it away as soon as I had it. Fame and money comes with expectations. Giving it away gives you a greater sense of personal responsibility. Can't imagine I'd want anything like Vince's life in Entourage.

Youth to me means being able to pogo about for 16 odd GA shows over a month in crazy Euro and South American crowds without feeling particularly weary while it's going on. I'd do everything to preserve this vitality.

but you need some money to afford to go to those shows

thing is, you wouldn't be young forever, you'd grow old again.. being young and poor isn't too bad, but being old and poor?

Fame to me is a mostly inconvenient by-product of being really good at something.
I can't understand anyone wanting to be famous just to be (e.g. anyone on reality TV).

If I had known then... what I know now...

"Youth is wasted on the young" is based on the misnomer that you're less of an idiot now than you were back then. We're all just a little calmer and easier to scare.

misnomer=
1. a misapplied or inappropriate name or designation.
2. an error in naming a person or thing.


misconception=
an erroneous conception; mistaken notion.

So true.

Alex, I'll take "trading wealth and fame for youth with years worth of experience" for $1000 please.

I guess this question isn't for us. I'm wondering if actual famous people would make this trade. We have no idea what their lives are like.

When I'm rich, famous, and old I've got this thread bookmarked just so I can answer it properly.

Vocabulary is wasted on the atWork.

I also have no idea what my mailman's life is like. Does he use shaving cream or gel? Is he a cold breakfast kind of guy, or does he like some eggs and bacon to wake him up? These are things about which I wonder.

You know Bart D., you keep this up and I'm going to make you a bottom...