4.2.12 WC: 191694 “waste” a good tea bag that has at least one more good cup in it. I’m not suggesting that reusing tea bags is in any way analogous cheating on one’s taxes or committing other financial or sexual crimes, but I am suggesting that people who have earned their money or fame by illegally cutting corners will sometimes continue to do so, even though there is no longer a financial or other rational need to do so. Old habits die hard, but they can also kill or at least wound those who can’t break the illegal ones. This is not in any way to justify such continuing misconduct. Indeed, quite the opposite, it is to condemn it—because celebrities have few excuses for their misconduct—while at the same time trying to explain why it persists among some celebrities. I have thought a great deal about what motivates famous and powerful people to act so self- destructively. The celebrities who I represented and advised have faced a wide array of problems, ranging from criminal charges, to loss of careers, to public humiliation, to custody fights, to defamations and to physical threats. Some of the most fascinating stories I can never tell because I learned them in confidence and helped resolve them without their ever becoming public. Most have become matters of public record, and I am free to write about those and to offer my insights about the famous people I have advised over the years and the problems they faced. The question I am asked most frequently is: does being famous help a celebrity who gets in trouble with the law? Or does it hurt? My answer is “yes.” Sometimes it helps. Sometimes it hurts. Always it matters. One of the most important jobs a lawyer who represents famous people has is to figure out how to turn his or her celebrity into an advantage rather than a disadvantage, or at the very least to neutralize it (which is a near impossibility in our celebrity-driven world.) I recall Claus Von Bulow once telling me that in England it’s all about “class and