Daniel Radcliffe Newest Young Celebrity to Struggle with Addiction (ContributorNetwork)

Jonathan Rhys Meyers

Jonathan Rhys Meyers made headlines just days ago after what many initially believed to be a suicide attempt. He has battled addiction for years, checking in and out of rehab facilities numerous times. After nearly overdosing on pills, he has entered rehab for the fifth time. According to the Huffington Post, his last stint in treatment was just this past May. The "Tudors" star has yet to make any public announcement regarding this most recent incident.

Prince Harry

Prince Harry, the youngest son of Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana, has a reputation for his hard-partying ways. The UK Daily Mail reported that Charles sent Harry to a treatment facility after he admitted to smoking cannabis and drinking liquor back in 2002. His stay lasted one day and seemed to serve more as a warning and punishment than anything else.

Considering that Prince Harry still makes headlines for late nights at London clubs, it seems doubtful that he has stopped drinking, but his behavior has toned down a bit over the years.

Haley Joel Osment

Actor Haley Joel Osment gained instant stardom after appearing in "The Sixth Sense" next to Bruce Willis back in 1999. Just seven years later, he was arrested for drunk driving and drug possession. He suffered a broken rib after crashing his car into a mailbox in California. According to the Associated Press, Osment was ordered by a judge to enter a treatment facility and attend 26 Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

Kirsten Dunst

Another celebrity who found fame at a very young age, Kirsten Dunst, found herself in rehab in 2008. She didn't discuss it publicly until 2010, avoiding the question in many interviews. According to The Huffington Post, Dunst insists that the treatment she received was for depression. She did admit that she had nights where she drank too much, but insisted that she did not have an addiction problem. She has not gotten into any trouble recently, so it appears that even if she did have a problem, the "Interview With A Vampire Star" is doing well now.

Seann William Scott

"American Pie" star Seann William Scott announced in April of this year that he successfully completed a 30-day treatment program for undisclosed personal and health problems, according to the Los Angeles Times. Scott is best known as Steve Stiffler in the three "American Pie" films. He was out of rehab in time to start filming yet another movie in the series, which will feature much of the original cast and focus on the group's 10-year high school reunion.

Celebrities who gain fame quickly at a young age are particularly vulnerable to addiction. The younger the star, the greater the odds they will end up in rehab at some point. Some enter rehab once and seem to straighten out, as in the case of Kirsten Dunst. Others, like Jonathan Rhys Meyers, face a more difficult road on the path to recovery. Hopefully Daniel Radcliffe is able to enjoy sobriety for a long time to come.

Sources:

Us Magazine " Daniel Radcliffe: I Became So Reliant on Alcohol During Harry Potter Filming " Via Yahoo! OMG

Huffington Post " Jonathan Rhys Meyers Overdoses, Hospitalized "

Daily Mail UK " Harry Sent to Rehab Clinic "

USA Today " Haley Joel Osment Pleads No Contes t"

Huffington Post " Kirsten Dunst Talks Rehab for Depression "

LA Times " Seann William Scott out of rehab in time for American Pie Sequel "

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Young Brits, Hollywood legends to meet Will and Kate (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – "Larry Crowne" actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw and "Game of Thrones" actor Harry Lloyd will be among the up-and-coming British talent meeting Prince William and his new wife Kate Middleton at a black-tie gala in Los Angeles next week.

But the royal couple also will get a chance to chat with Hollywood A-list stars at the event, seen as the highlight of their three-day visit to southern California, organizers said on Friday.

About 250 people, including senior executives at Hollywood's major movie studios, are expected at the sold-out event which is intended to promote young British talent in film, television and videogames.

But one source involved in organizing the July 9 evening told Reuters that the guests would also include "a very nice celebrity list, from hot young things to legends".

The celebrity names are not expected to be released in advance.

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) on Friday announced the names of the 42 "Brits to watch" who will take part. They include "Flight of the Conchords" writer and director James Bobin; Jessica Brown Findlay, who appeared in the period TV drama "Downton Abbey"; Juno Temple who played a young teen in "Atonement"; and Owain Yeoman, who has appeared in the TV crime series "The Mentalist".

Mbatha-Raw has a character role in the Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts romantic comedy "Larry Crowne", which opened in the United States on Friday. She also starred in last year's short-lived U.S. TV series "Undercovers".

The rising British stars were selected by a BAFTA panel and will join industry executives at their tables for dinner, as well as meeting William and Kate, formally known as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Prince William is the president of BAFTA.

The Duke and Duchess, who are currently visiting Canada, arrive in Los Angeles on July 8.

(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Bob Tourtellotte)

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Young Brits, Hollywood legends to meet Will and Kate (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – "Larry Crowne" actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw and "Game of Thrones" actor Harry Lloyd will be among the up-and-coming British talent meeting Prince William and his new wife Kate Middleton at a black-tie gala in Los Angeles next week.

But the royal couple also will get a chance to chat with Hollywood A-list stars at the event, seen as the highlight of their three-day visit to southern California, organizers said on Friday.

About 250 people, including senior executives at Hollywood's major movie studios, are expected at the sold-out event which is intended to promote young British talent in film, television and videogames.

But one source involved in organizing the July 9 evening told Reuters that the guests would also include "a very nice celebrity list, from hot young things to legends".

The celebrity names are not expected to be released in advance.

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) on Friday announced the names of the 42 "Brits to watch" who will take part. They include "Flight of the Conchords" writer and director James Bobin; Jessica Brown Findlay, who appeared in the period TV drama "Downton Abbey"; Juno Temple who played a young teen in "Atonement"; and Owain Yeoman, who has appeared in the TV crime series "The Mentalist".

Mbatha-Raw has a character role in the Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts romantic comedy "Larry Crowne", which opened in the United States on Friday. She also starred in last year's short-lived U.S. TV series "Undercovers".

The rising British stars were selected by a BAFTA panel and will join industry executives at their tables for dinner, as well as meeting William and Kate, formally known as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Prince William is the president of BAFTA.

The Duke and Duchess, who are currently visiting Canada, arrive in Los Angeles on July 8.

(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Bob Tourtellotte)

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Neil Young heads to the country on 'A Treasure' (AP)

By CHRIS TALBOTT, AP Entertainment Writer Chris Talbott, Ap Entertainment Writer – Fri Jun 17, 7:38 am ET

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Neil Young entered the mid-'80s under fire from his record label for making music it said it couldn't sell and under attack from the IRS for having "too much artistic control."

He was making a rockin' kind of country music that didn't resemble his greatest records and his label said didn't appeal to radio programmers. Those things didn't matter to Young, though. He was having the time of his life, playing 85 shows across North America in 1984 and `85 with The International Harvesters, and you can hear it on his new live album, "A Treasure."

"I don't like boundaries," Young said in an interview at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum this week. "They don't really work. They do for some people. It all started when they started formatting radio and separating things into different little areas that they could talk about and then restricting who would play what. That was very counterproductive, when they took the decision-making from the individuals and gave it to the corporate heads. That was destructive to music. But we're coming back."

"A Treasure" doesn't just hold up 26 years later; it fits right in and again shows Young for the pioneer he is. It arrives at a time when roots music is on the rise and artists like Taylor Swift, whose music and spirit Young says he enjoys, are erasing boundaries that were created decades ago.

Young helped define the folk-rock movement as a solo artist with Crosby, Stills & Nash and with the newly reunited Buffalo Springfield. With bands like Crazy Horse, he helped push rock `n' roll into the 21st century through his influence on artists like Kurt Cobain, Jeff Tweedy and Jim James. And his ideas about country- and folk-rock still resonate, in part inspiring a thriving indie scene that feeds such cultural touchstones as Bonnaroo.

Young gathered reporters and some of The Harvesters at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum on Monday to talk about the release of "A Treasure." He said he was exposed to all kinds of music growing up. He got his country from popular Canadian acts like Hank Snow and Ian Tyson and lesser-known acts like Bluegrass Bob & The Bobcats.

"Nobody ever heard of them, but I grew up with them," Young said. "So that's always been around. And I love Jimmy Reed. He's not country. He's blues. But I don't see the difference. I just see real music. So I'll take a little wherever I can get it."

And that sometimes includes present-day country music.

"Yeah, I like Taylor Swift," Young said. "I like listening to her. I kind of like watching her respond to all the attacks. I like the ways she's defining herself. So I keep my eye on it."

Young focused on Nashville early in his career, coming to town in 1971 to record his iconic album "Harvest." That's where he met bassist Tim Drummond, who would serve as his tour guide and "architect" for assembling The Harvesters.

Players joining them on tour included the late pedal steel player Ben Keith, keyboardists Spooner Oldham and Hargus "Pig" Robbins, the late Cajun fiddler Rufus Thibodeaux, drummer Karl Himmel, multi-instrumentalist Anthony Crawford and bassist Joe Allen.

Each had made waves in the music world before joining Young. Drummond had played with artists as diverse as Conway Twitty and James Brown. Himmel laid down a defining shuffle for J.J. Cale that's still imitated, and he played with Bob Dylan and George Jones. Keith had been an influential figure in Nashville for two decades before Young came along. And Oldham was busy writing and playing on some of the most iconic recordings of our time, Young noted, including Farfisa organ on Percy Sledge's "When a Man Loves a Woman."

"That's a defining moment there when someone plays an instrument that everyone relates to around the planet," Young said. "That's the kind of musician he is and the kind of musician all of these guys are."

Young set them free on the songs that make up "A Treasure." "Are You Ready for the Country?" and "Flying on the Ground Is Wrong" are well-known Young staples. But five unreleased songs will be new for fans who don't obsessively trade bootlegs of live performances.

The album-closing "Grey Riders" might be the song that best showcases Young's ability to meld sounds. It opens with Thibodeaux sawing a haunting melody over a simple 4/4 beat as Young sings of ghostly riders who pass in front of his window. There's a haunting synth sound building the tension, and Oldham helps pick up the pace with a tinkling piano section before Young launches into a powerful guitar solo.

It's not unlike a song you might hear at one of today's arena rock-influenced country shows. At the time, it was too far out for country radio and even Geffen Records. But Young's band recognized it for what it was.

Oldham, like Young, is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He's a key architect of the Muscle Shoals and Memphis sounds and has worked on some of the songs that define modern music. Yet his time with The Harvesters ranks among his favorite.

"This sits right at the top, in the top five, because of all these people in the band," Oldham said. "Rufus, Neil, Anthony, Karl, it was like a family on the road. And we got to know their wives and girlfriends. The music on stage every night was a thrill. It kept elevating our minds. Even though we sort of knew the songs, you could sense the freedom to step further if you wanted to. It was challenging. It was fun. It wasn't boring in any sense of the word for a player."

Young called The Harvesters the greatest single collection of players he's ever joined on stage and said he thought he was the weak link in the group.

"They should be in the Country Music Hall of Fame and I really hope they are someday," Young said. "And I think this record really displays why."

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Online:

http://www.neilyoung.com

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Contact Chris Talbott at http://www.twitter.com/Chris_Talbott.

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Chris Young hits big stage at CMA Music Fest (AP)

By CHRIS TALBOTT, AP Entertainment Writer Chris Talbott, Ap Entertainment Writer – Wed Jun 8, 10:01 am ET

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Chris Young's been waiting 15 years for his shot at the big stage during the CMA Music Festival.

He first came to the festival as a skinny young kid after winning a pair of tickets in a singing contest. He got his career kick-started in the exhibition hall where he sold independent albums as a teenager, and he's spent the last four years performing in sight of LP Field on a smaller stage.

So when Robert Deaton, executive producer of the CMA Fest television special, told Young he'd made the cut this year, it was one of the more emotional moments of the 25-year-old singer's rising career.

"I honestly thought he was going to cry at first," Young's mother, Becky Harris, said. "He was so excited. His face got red and he said, `I'm going to finally get to play LP Field. This is the coolest thing ever.'"

Young earned his spot Saturday night through hard work and perseverance. With a deep baritone, a traditionalist's taste in material and boyish good looks, he's been steadily rising through the ranks. He's had three consecutive No. 1 singles. A fourth, "Tomorrow" from his upcoming album "Neon," out July 12, has reached the top 10 with the help of a steamy video. And he'll be the middle act on Jason Aldean's wildly popular tour later this summer.

All of that is great. But right now Young is focused on CMA Fest, which runs Thursday through Sunday in downtown Nashville.

"That's been a big deal and the fact that it's happening on the 40th birthday of CMA Music Fest makes it even more special," Young said. "This is probably the 15th year I've been at it, whether it's as a fan (or an artist). I've been going there for a long time. It's a really big deal for me."

The festival draws 50,000 to 60,000 fans each night to LP Field, the home of the Tennessee Titans. Country's biggest stars play there and the concerts are filmed for an ABC special that airs later in the summer. Before all the glitz and multimillion-dollar glamor, the festival was known as Fan Fair and the big concerts were held at the much more intimate fairgrounds grandstand.

That's where Young, then 9 or 10, first fell in love with the festival and got his first look at the mysterious world behind the songs that spilled out of his radio.

Country music stars tend to be open to the average fan and the festival has always been one of the places where artists of all levels of popularity are most accessible.

Young Chris' head was on a swivel as he waited in line for autographs from stars like Vince Gill, who he idolized, haunted the freebie tables with his sister, Dot, looking for buried treasure like a CD single of John Anderson's "Seminole Wind," and soaked up the performances of just about everyone.

"You'd get a bag of free stuff, just random stuff," Young said. "Fans, signed photos, CDs from people we'd never heard of before. We would always come back to the house with a bag of stuff, dump it and go get another bag of stuff."

Around the age of 12 or 13 Young joined a friend's band on stage at a bar-restaurant in his hometown of Murfreesboro, about 25 miles south of Nashville. He sang two songs in his professional debut.

"They gave me a free coke, something like that," Young said. "I thought that was it. It built from there. Once I started playing guitar and writing songs, it was everything I could do."

When he next returned to the festival it was with an eye toward figuring out how he could attend as a featured artist rather than a guest.

He enlisted Harris, who so believed in her son's dream that she began to take music business courses at Middle Tennessee State and eventually started a new career as a business manager. By 17 he had recorded his first independent album and wanted to join the stars in the festival's exhibition hall, hawking CDs and T-shirts.

They paid $125 for a booth and Young sold $250 in records.

"It was like, `This is awesome! I want to do this every year!'" Harris said of Young's reaction. And they did: "The next year we built light boxes and put these pictures in them and everybody started coming up and standing in line because they thought he really was somebody. The booth looked fabulous."

Each year they returned to build, stock and staff the booth with Young working right alongside his family (this is the first year he's too busy to help out). A second independent record came when he was 19. He quit college shortly after he started and took a job as a singer in a bar band in Texas and eventually caught an important break. A fan suggested he try out for a new show called "Nashville Star." He auditioned for it and eventually won the reality contest show in 2006.

That got him his deal with RCA and he's tirelessly built an audience since, releasing two albums and touring relentlessly.

Looking at photos of his teen years spent in that booth, signing autographs, taking pictures with fans, Young said he's finally reached the goal that kid in the ill-advised shirt was so starry-eyed about.

"I'm not sure the kid in that picture had any idea what he was doing when you look back," he said. "But that's six years of experience. He wanted it really bad, and I still want it really bad every day I wake up."

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Online:

http://www.chrisyoungcountry.com

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