|
 Britney
Spears has a scraped knee, and she has Brad Pitt to thank
for it. On the prowl for some excitement one recent afternoon, the
20-year-old pop singer bought a star map of L.A. celebrity homes. Soon she
and a girlfriend were parked outside the Beverly Hills mansion Pitt shares
with wife Jennifer Aniston. "I stood on top of my car, trying to see in,"
says Spears, who fell off when she spotted the resident hunk in the
driveway. "I busted my knee open. I felt like the biggest dumbass ever." Did
Pitt see her? "No, and thank you, God," she says with a laugh. "I would've
been so humiliated." If Spears sounds like a bored young woman with plenty
of time on her well-manicured hands, she admits as much. "I honestly don't
know what to do with myself," she says. Which is just what she had hoped for
in announcing an indefinite hiatus
from recording and performing beginning this month. Of course, that won't
prevent her from reading film scripts and appearing Aug. 29 on MTV's Video
Music Awards. Still, says Spears, "I need this break to rejuvenate
spiritually and to just play." She may have playtime in mind, but tabloid
editors are working overtime on Britney breakdown stories. Following her
parents' divorce in May, her split from 'N Sync heartthrob Justin Timberlake
in March, sliding record sales and a spate of public relations disasters
from London to Mexico, she remains genuinely mystified by the public
impression that she's imploding. "I'm taking a break, so people are writing
that I'm having a meltdown," says Spears, in a midriff-baring T-shirt and
bebe hip-huggers slung low enough to reveal a hint of pink lace. "I don't
get it." As for hard living, Spears happily agrees to a spot check of the
G-rated contents of her purse: Juicy Fruit gum, Pinkie's mints, vanilla
perfume and a tiny bottle of the herbal supplement St. John's wort. Says mom
Lynne, 47: "My daughter is doing beautifully. She's never, ever been close
to a breakdown." Yet Spears admits that her fresh-scrubbed role-model days
are over. "I never wanted to hide who I was," she says, "but until about a
year ago I was trying to fit an image and trying to be someone I wasn't."
Translation: Sugar-and-spice Britney is out, fire-and-ice Britney is in. In
the past few months she has been photographed with a cigarette ("This may
sound really cheesy, but I was holding it for a girlfriend"), flipping her
middle finger at paparazzi who swarmed her car in Mexico ("We couldn't move.
They were shaking it") and cozying up to Leonardo DiCaprio at the Playboy
Mansion. ("He looks hot these days. But all I remember is seeing a bunch of
naked girls and thinking, 'I got to get out of here.' ") And despite her
famous 1999 remark that she intended to remain a virgin until her wedding
day, she isn't lobbying for sainthood. "Who really cares if I've had sex?"
she says. "It's nobody's business. Trust me, I'm not going to have a press
conference to announce it. If I mess up, I'm human. If I have a drink or I'm
with someone, I'm human. I'm no different than anyone else my age."
Big Million Bank Account
Um, not exactly. For starters, there's that $100 million bank account ("I'm
rich, freakin' rich. It's crazy") and the No. 1 spot on this year's Forbes
list of most powerful celebrities, ahead of Madonna, Steven Spielberg and
Oprah Winfrey. On Madison Avenue, though, some are worried that as a
pitchwoman, "any more outbursts like the one in Mexico could be damaging to
her career," says Jessrey Wolf, director of account planning at the firm
Deutsch Inc. Her three albums have raked in a combined $46 million
worldwide, even as '01's Britney sold a disappointing 3.8 million copies
compared to her 10.4 million-selling debut, Baby One More Time. "Yes,
there's a chink in the armor, but we won't know if she's no longer hot until
her next record comes out," says Rich Christina, a senior director at
Atlantic Records. The declining numbers don't faze her. "Selling 5 million
records is still good," says Spears. "I don't want to get jaded thinking I
have to sell 10 million every time. It's not about that."
These days it's also not about being in a relationship. It has been five
months since her split from Timberlake, 21, and Spears is adjusting to
singledom with a wide open calendar. Two weeks ago she visited a Sunset
Boulevard psychic ("which is kind of lame"), who advised that her aura is
blue ("That's why I'm filled with creativity") and "told stuff about my love
life that was hard to take." Such as? "He said I have a problem with
intimacy," she says. "When I get close to someone, it's like a defense
mechanism kicks in. I'll start an argument because I'm not good at being
vulnerable."
 For
the record, Spears says that "first Justin broke up with me, and then I
broke up with him." Why? "The two of us were always on the same page," she
says, denying that either side cheated. "If he was starting a tour, so was
I. But now we're doing different things." Although they "recently tried to
get back together," she notes that "right now in my life, it's not right."
For his part, Timberlake -- who told PEOPLE in April that he holds Spears
"in the highest light" but declined to comment for this story -- has since
been linked to dancer Jenna Dewan, 21, and singer Janet Jackson, 36.
"Justin's 21, and I would expect him to go out with girls," says Spears, who
first met Timberlake in '93 when the pair costarred on The Mickey Mouse
Club. Not that it doesn't sting. " (The breakup) was horrible. Very
upsetting and it took a lot out of me. He was my first real love, and I
doubt I'll ever be able to love anyone like that ever again," she says. "But
I'd rather spend two days with my soulmate than the rest of my life with
some guy who doesn't mean as much." Mom Lynne, who still talks to Justin,
adds, "I pick on him for going out with those other girls." As for her
daughter's next boyfriend, says Lynne, " Britney needs somebody into his
career, so he won't be jealous of her. I think someone older too. Britney's
very mature. Always has been."
Her maturity, and not junk food, she insists, is what helped her cope with
the split. "If anything, I lost weight," says Spears in response to reports
of her binge eating. "When I'm under stress, I do yoga. It's when I'm
happiest that I have a problem with junk food."
Ready to Start Dating Again
Spears admits she's just about ready to start dating again but isn't sure
how. "I suck at flirting," she says with a laugh. "There's one thing I don't
understand about Hollywood. How they have a relationship, end it, and go
right into the next." She adds, "It's hard for a woman in this industry.
Either the guy's going to be really intimidated, or they're going to kiss
your ass. I'm just a girl wanting a guy to love me."
At home, love is never a concern. Her family -- Lynne, who helps manage
Britney's career, dad Jamie, 50, a contractor, brother Bryan, 25, a
Manhattan businessman, and sister Jamie Lynn, 11, an actress on
Nickelodeon's All That -- has been struggling through an emotional summer.
Lynne's sister Sandra Covington, 55, is battling ovarian cancer and recently
underwent a bone marrow transplant. "Sandra's like a second mother to her,"
says Lynne. "This kind of thing makes you grow up. We've been separated a
lot -- I've been with my sister, and Britney's had to take care of Jamie
Lynn." Says Spears: "I pray every night about it."
Dealing with the breakup of her parents' 30-year marriage has been far
easier. "It's the best thing that's ever happened to my family," says
Spears. "My mom and dad, bottom line, do not get along. When I was a baby,
they argued. I wanted this to happen 10 years ago."
If things on the home front have been tumultuous, they haven't been much
smoother on the road. The first sign of trouble came last March in London,
where Spears stopped to promote her big-screen debut, Crossroads. Dashing
past a rain-soaked throng of 3,000 fans, Spears was soon doused with chants
of "Britney go home." Spears says her security team warned her that the
crowd could be dangerous. Besides, she says, "you can't make everyone
happy."
Perhaps that should be the motto for Spears's troubled new Manhattan
restaurant, Nyla, whose June opening was marred by a downpour and mostly
tepid reviews. Spears has visited only three times but says she plans to
stop in more often with the recent purchase of her four-story apartment in
lower Manhattan.
Mexico City
London and New York City seemed but a prelude to Mexico City, the last stop
on Spears's $18.9 million world tour, which ended on July
28. The bird-flipping incident, which took place prior to her concert,
didn't endear her to locals, who then jeered when she called it quits five
songs into her final stage show before 50,000 fans. "It was raining and
lightning," she says of her hasty exit. "Two of the dancers almost fell off
the stage. It wasn't safe."
Spears, who turns 21 on Dec. 2, acknowledges that when the tour ended, "the
first week, I was so excited I was off that I partied every night. I drink."
But, she adds, "everything in moderation. Smoking, drinking, sex -- why is
it such a big deal with me? As you get to 20, you grow up, you experiment.
You feel more comfortable in your skin." She certainly does: "I don't have
trouble with nudity or sex," she says. "When I was younger, honestly, I
walked around the house naked. Bottom line, I think it's the way you carry
yourself."
Given the hectic past few months, Spears says that "now I'm starting to be a
hermit," though she probably doesn't run into many fellow hermits at haunts
like L.A.'s Trashy Lingerie and Domaine, where she was tempted to buy a
$20,000 bed, or even Contempo Casuals, where she still hunts for bargains.
She crashes at the new $4.5 million Tudor estate in Kentwood, La., she built
for her mother and her own $1.7 million Spanish-style Hollywood Hills
mansion, where she relaxes by the pool, watches American Idol ("Tamyra is
amazing; she sounds like Whitney Houston") and reads film scripts. Spears
says she's hoping to do a romantic comedy that could start shooting in
October (so much for the hiatus). The music business, meanwhile, is waiting
anxiously. "Britney will have to deal with the fact that she won't sell as
many records when she reinvents herself," says producer Rodney Jerkins, who
worked on Spears's last album. "She can't do the pop candy stuff anymore.
She's going to have to sing songs that are edgy."
 Spears
is eager to do exactly that. "I need to find new influences, get reinspired."
She also wants to write more songs. Has she grown up? "In a sad way, yeah. I
feel like a totally different person than I was two years ago. I feel like
so much of my innocence is gone.
I'm still me, but this business makes you grow up so fast." As for the time
off, "I give it a couple of months," says Lynne. "For Britney, who's used to
running at 90 miles per hour, it's hard to slow down."
So, what does the future hold? Spears didn't ask her psychic about that.
"I'm at the state where I don't know exactly what's going to happen," she
says. "Everything's usually laid out for me. But I don't know what I'm going
to do next. This may sound weird, but I'm kind of the happiest I've been in
a really long freakin' time." |
Written by Michelle
Tauber - PEOPLE Magazine
Additional Reporting by Todd Gold in L.A and Dimitry Elias Leger in NYC.
Posted by Ruben
In Stores Friday August 23rd, 2002 ! Make sure you go and buy the magazine.
It's an amazing article, one of the best I've read in a long time. Britney
really stands up for herself and reveals a lot of things that so many fans
had been waiting to hear from her own words. The relationship with Justin,
her parent's final split, the Mexico City incident, the virginity issue
being finally settled as the smoking and the drinking. This article will
answer lots of questions that's been going through the minds of fans
for quite a while. Definitely recommended by us at WoB ! |
Big thanks to:
People.com
updated: 08-22-2002 22:05
Back to news archives index |
|
|
|
World
of Britney.com, Winner of the 2002-2003 and 2003-2004 Golden Web
Award
