A career in the public eye brings adulation, fame and fortune for those who find that they are successful in the movie or music world.However there are trappings of living such a public lifestyle with so many having to deal with the constant threat of obsessed fans.The most famous 'stalker' is mark Chapman who was arrested, tried and found guilty of the murder of Beatle John Lennon. Chapman shot Lennon five times in the back after the singer had autographed an album cover for him.Before his trial began, Chapman was allowed to plead guilty to second degree murder and was sentenced to a prison term of 20 years to life despite being diagnosed as delusional and possibly psychotic.Chapman has been denied parole four times and remains at Attica Correctional Facility in New York.
Film Chapter 27 is a play on JD Salinger’s classic novel The Catcher in the Rye, which ends on chapter 26.
Chapman related and modelled his life after the book’s main character Holden Caulfield, and it was the book he held onto at the time he infamously shot John Lennon. Chapman claimed the book held the reasons behind the heinous act.
There are a string of other stars who have suffered at the hands of obsessed fans.
Jodie Foster - John Warnock Hinckley, Jr.
After repeated viewings of the 1976 movie Taxi Driver, in which a disturbed protagonist, Travis Bickle, played by Robert DeNiro, plots to assassinate a presidential candidate, Hinckley developed an obsession with actress Jodie Foster, who had played a child prostitute in the film
When Foster entered Yale University, Hinckley moved to New Haven, Connecticut, for a short time to be nearer to her, slipping poems and messages under her door and repeatedly contacting her by telephone.
Failing to develop any meaningful contact with Foster, Hinckley developed such plots as hijacking an airplane and committing suicide in front of her to gain her attention.
Hinckley attempted to assassinate U.S. President Ronald Reagan at Washington, D.C. on March 30, 1981, as the culmination of an effort to impress the actress.
At his trial in 1982, charged with 13 offenses, Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity on June 21.
However the defence psychiatric reports found him to be insane while the prosecution reports declared him legally sane.
He has remained under institutional psychiatric ever since.
Madonna - Robert Dewey Hoskins
Hoskins, a homeless man, was arrested in 1995 after he sent a series of disturbing notes to Madonna, who he believed was his wife, at her Los Angeles residence proposing to her
After repeatedly being spotted outside her house, Hoskins eventually scaled the wall surrounding her home, where he was confronted by Madonna' bodyguard, Basil Stephens.
He told her assistants he would either marry her or slash her throat from ear to ear.
A bodyguard shot and wounded Hoskins the second time he scaled the wall.
He was sentenced to ten years in prison.
Brad Pitt - Athena M Rolando
Athena M Rolando, an aspiring actress from Billings, Montana, was arrested in 2000 after she was caught trespassing at the star's house.
Rolando climbed through a window of Pitt's house and was discovered by a caretaker dresses in the actor's clothes.
When talked to by police she revealed that she had been in the house for ten hours and had put on the blue hat, green sweatshirt, black tracksuit trousers and shoes because she had been cold.
She was placed on three years probation and ordered to undergo psychological counselling in connection with the incident.
Police found her carrying a book on witchcraft along with a note to Pitt and a large safety pin decorated with ribbons that she said was a doll.
Catherine Zeta-Jones - Dawnette Knight
Due to an obsession with actor Michael Douglas his wife Catherine Zeta Jones was subjected to a string of threatening letters by Dawnette Knight.
Zeta Jones received nineteen threatening letters from Knight who vowed to slice her up like meat on a bone and feed her to the dogs.
Knight believed that Zeta Jones was a gold digger out for Michael Douglas' money.
She was sentenced to 3 years in state prison as well as a 10-year restraining order barring Knight from contact with Zeta-Jones and her family and ordered her to pay $200 US in restitution.
Sandra Bullock - Marcia Diane Valentine
Marcia Diane Valentine, aged forty six, was arrested in 2007 and charged with felony assault and stalking.
The Sandra Bullock fan was charged with stalking the actress and trying to run down her husband, TV motorcycle maker Jesse James, outside their Orange County home before getting out of her Silver Mercedes and lying down in the Bullock-James driveway, refusing to move.
Chapter 27 is released 28th April
Female First Helen Earnshaw