Do you know the name Celine Cawley? Neither did I but there was an article online that started off with the headline “Former Bond Girl Murdered in Home Invasion.” I read that and I’m thinking whom this could be. When I got to the full article, the copy had her as a Bond actress and when you finally got to the meat of the story, it turned out she was nothing more than a gloried extra on “A View to a Kill.”

What I have a tough time understanding is why there is a beefing up on a celebrity when frankly there isn’t anything there. They had the scene this woman was in and it was more than a ‘blink and you’ll miss her’ moment. She has no line and she is part of a group of women by a pool. Even the still they showed of her from the film is blurry because the camera movement is so fast.

I know it wasn’t her fault with the Bond Girl moniker. It was the news sources way of getting people to read the story, but it’s so disingenuous to make her sound like the part she was in was more than what it really was. I’ve seen this so many times. When I was casting I would see resumes of these impressive stints on TV shows and movies, but once you really checked them out they were unknown actor number three that a camera happened to focus on for a split second. Yes, it sounds impressive to say you were in Daredevil, but if you were in a crowd scene behind Stan Lee when Matt Murdock holds him back from a passing car, sorry but Stan Lee got a better cameo than you did and saying you were in the movie isn’t really telling the whole truth.

Embellishment is the life blood of Hollywood and the internet makes a lot of things seem a lot more impressive than they really are. There are people, both infamous and under the radar unknowns, who will milk any minor appearance as a career making turn. The feel this is possible because we tend to elevate the Paris Hiltons and Kim Kardashians of the world as celebrities, and you start to wonder, when you try to look back, at what in the world did they do to deserve the star treatment. The thing is, many loom at them and don’t admire them but envy them. They see Kim Kardashian, with no real talent, faulting her sizable assets and connection to land a TV show, to get calendars made and to get celebrity press. They take a hard look and realize she has done NOTHING to get all of this. She made a sex tape and that is the extent of her celebrity.

We can try to blame the press for this puffery but we buy the magazines, we watch the talk shows when they come on. If Kardashian was a nobody she wouldn’t be on the third year of her bad TV show. It may not be my cup of tea, but enough people watch it her family can make money from it, and that’s not counting the side projects going on with her. All the while people in small towns with real talent are never going to be heard from. All they will see is a flawed map on how to gain fame and stardom, which in the end is a hollow reward for talent.