Beyonce controls her media moves like a total boss.
Shia LaBeouf decides when he is and is not famous.
And Bill Murray hides his true personality from inquiring minds in plain sight.
But why do these megastars hold so much back from the press?
Let's examine why these celebs rarely give interviews.
Joaquin Phoenix's reasons for avoiding interviews could be quite simple.
But there may be something more complex there, like a lingering distrust of the media that
turned the death of his older brother, River, into a sideshow of sorts.
With his 911 call leaked and the press hounding the younger Phoenix for a response, the actor
left Hollywood altogether for a while.
After such a long and celebrated career, Phoenix still isn't what you would call comfortable
in the spotlight, especially when he's not on set.
He told The Independent in 2018,
It seems that while Phoenix loves acting, he also loves the regular life.
He is not what he calls "a career actor," a person who never stops working.
So he leaves.
On at least two occasions, he's walked away from the industry.
Even when his brief retirement was a hoax for the film I'm Still Here, there was real
inspiration behind his departure.
"And, uh, Joaquin, I'm sorry you couldn't be here tonight."
Of all the true superstars in the world, Beyoncé may be the most inaccessible.
In her self-produced documentary, Beyoncé: Life Is But a Dream, the singer spoke of her
longing for a private life and her preference that fans not obsess over social media.
She cited Nina Simone as a forerunner who won fans over with just her voice and music
instead of brainwashing people with her "day-to-day life."
"It shouldn't influence the way you listen to the voice and the art."
It's likely because of this thinking that Beyoncé chooses not to give the public everything.
Well, that and the fact that she can get away with it and still be incredibly successful.
The New York Times reported that she went more than a year without answering "any direct
questions."
Furthermore, her 2015 Vogue Magazine cover was the first in at least five years that
the fashion mag allowed without an accompanying interview.
Rather than face-to-face interviews, Beyoncé often writes emails or releases edited or
pre-taped responses.
She also posts what she wants and when she wants to social media.
In these ways, she controls her voice.
While The Weeknd may have relaxed a little in his media restrictions, there was a time
not that long ago that he was virtually unknown, despite his massive hits and allure.
There seems to be two sides to this crooner's secrecy: one part strategy and the other insecurity.
It started with the latter.
He told Rolling Stone in 2015,
The singer also didn't trust his vocabulary.
But then something happened.
The mystery led to intrigue.
So The Weeknd decided to "run with the whole enigmatic thing," a strategy to keep fans
wanting more.
Yet, while he believes he can extend his career in this way, he knows there's an expiration
date to the secrecy and intrigue.
As he sings in the song "Rolling Stone" from 2011,
Adam Sandler has every reason to avoid doing interviews.
Over two decades, nearly everything the funnyman has been involved in has been picked apart.
The constant and often hurtful critiques of his work and his talents aren't lost on him.
But don't think that Sandler sits around and stews in the criticism.
He may feel that the wholesale hate is uncalled for and unjustified, but he doesn't let it
wear him down.
In a 2014 interview with The Daily Beast, he said,
The critical negativity that has followed Sandler throughout most of his career is probably
a good enough reason for him to second-guess the intentions of the press.
Furthermore, he has reason to believe that stories about him won't get all the details
right.
As he told ScreenCrush,
Compared to most of the celebrities on this list, Bill Murray does interviews and makes
public appearances all the time.
Yet, while he is visible, the man behind the mythic figure has always been inaccessible.
We've seen him awkwardly dodge interviews and heard many different stories about his
carefree and whimsical behavior.
But Murray's reason for his lack of true and manicured publicity seem to be that he just
doesn't care for it.
You may have heard this one before, but Murray doesn't have a publicist or PR people working
for him.
If people want to get a hold of him, they have to track him down through a friend of
a friend or call his 800 number.
This, as you can probably imagine, has led to some lapses in communication, and not just
between Murray and the press.
In an interview with Esquire, it was mentioned that Robert Downey Jr. wanted Murray for a
part in Iron Man, but they couldn't reach him.
According to Murray, this is a matter of practicality.
As he put it,
Dave Chappelle shocked the world when he walked away from his hit sketch comedy series in
2005.
He left behind the spotlight, the money, and nearly all the interviews.
For most of the public, he returned in 2014 to the The Late Show with David Letterman
promoting an upcoming Radio City Music Hall show.
While there were surely many contributing factors, one of the reasons that Chappelle
walked away was because fame was getting to be too much for him to handle.
On a CBS This Morning interview with Gayle King, he explained,
"Fame is a horrifying concept when it's aimed at you, you know.
At the end of the day, you don't have that much control over it.
You just try to conduct yourself as best you can."
Though he's back now, Chappelle found new appreciation for the smaller stage and the
dimmer spotlight.
"I found an altitude I was comfortable with."
For Chappelle, this new altitude means a quieter life.
"The way that I engaged the world was different."
Shia LaBeouf has had a tumultuous time in the public eye.
He's had a number of arrests and other unappealing moments that have been written about or captured
on camera.
Yet, while he's invited the public in on his life and performances, he has come to be perhaps
more withdrawn than he's ever been.
LaBeouf's descent from fame probably took its most dramatic tumble in 2013 when he was
accused of plagiarizing the work of comic book writer Daniel Clowes when making his
short film Howard Cantour.com.
Shortly afterward, LaBeouf went on an apology tour.
The fact that many of these apologies were plagiarized as well seems to suggest that
he was making a statement of some sort.
Then LaBeouf took to Twitter to write,
He then wore a bag over his head with the words "I am not famous anymore" scrawled on
it to the premiere of Nymphomaniac at the Berlin Film Festival.
He refused to participate in press conferences and conducted silent interviews.
This was 2014.
Since then, he's taken on few straightforward acting gigs and even fewer straightforward
interviews.
In August 2018, Lauryn Hill did something that she doesn't do very often.
She spoke out.
Spurred to action by musician Robert Glasper's controversial comments about her, Hill penned
a lengthy blog post to clear up some of Glasper's claims, as well as other prevalent rumors.
This broke up an extended period of silence from the singer-rapper extraordinaire, who
claimed at the time that her "last interview was over a decade ago."
Hill is no stranger to silence.
After the 1998 release of her celebrated solo album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, she
pulled back.
Though she released an MTV Unplugged album in 2002, it would be 12 years until she truly
came back in 2010.
She told FUSE that year,
This time away was not only healing for Hill, it allowed her kids to grow up quietly.
Away from the spotlight, they had what Hill calls "a real childhood."
For close to four years beginning in 2014, rapper J Cole stopped doing press.
Sure, there was the odd interview, but he largely cut all of them out.
Clearly suspicious about the function of interviews, he told Billboard that he was "through trying
to play whatever game is going on."
The rapper also told Vulture that interviews rarely hold substance.
As he put it,
Cole feels similarly about social media, which explains why he has such a low profile online.
He seems uninterested in creating a heavily edited persona in that way.
As he told Billboard,
When he does do an interview, however, people tend to listen.
According to radio personality Angie Martinez, who also spoke with Billboard,
For years, Frank Ocean has been one of the most publicly silent figures in the music
industry.
He was largely absent from social media and rarely gave interviews.
This didn't stop him from succeeding, though.
He's got gold and platinum albums and singles.
He's won a Grammy, all largely without the help of the traditional press.
When The New York Times asked Ocean about his insistence on retreating from the spotlight,
he spoke about how he was "super-envious" of how Daft Punk can be one of the most famous
bands in the world while wearing robot helmets.
Alas, he believed it was too late for him to ever have that stature.
That's partially why he made his long-private Instagram account public.
For Ocean, not controlling his own message risked becoming detrimental to him.
He told GQ in 2019,
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