Paris is Burning by Stephen Rebello Someone could make a chart of Paris Hilton's dizzying rise to fame and practically use it as a Rorschach test to measure American attitudes toward celebrity. To some, Hilton's speedball ascent on the 21st century fame-o-meter might be viewed as an inevitable outcome of being born famous, as great-granddaughter and heiress to one of America's wealthiest men, hotel baron Conrad Hilton. Others watched Hilton, now 23, as she grew into young adulthood and soared higher and higher in the public consciousness, undoubtedly shaking their heads and uttering cliches like "poor little rich girl," as she emerged bearing all the earmarks of a relentless post-Madonna-style self-promoter. Until very recently, one might well have asked, "Who is this Hilton girl, anyway, and why are we always hearing about her?" Is she a model? A celebutante? Just another float-rider in the passing parade of interchangeable and transitory "It" girls? Or could she possibly be the real thing, a genuinely absorbing personality that Hollywood will catapult to new levels of fame and fortune? "It's not about fame, really," says Hilton, in the currently fashionable style of those who pretend not to want it even if they do. "Years from now, I would just want people to say, 'She was young. She was a crazy girl for a while or whatever, but then she married and had a great big family. She was good to people and did a lot for the world. And that she was a nice person.'" She certainly appears primed for the big time when we meet at a red-hot Los Angeles photographer's studio during long breaks between a photo session. Although she has been up since the very wee hours, not partying but completing work on "The Simple Life 2", and is preparing to jet to Australia in a matter of days to shoot a movie, she couldn't be more on her game. She appears acutely aware that being famous is a full-time, all-consuming undertaking, a pursuit more obsessively intoxicating than partying, globe-hopping, even sex. And, as she talks about her past, present and plans for the future, she practically invites one to look closer, to see her as a person in transition toward becoming more focused, tamed and, frankly, a lot more interesting than her public image to date would lead one to suspect.

"A lot of people think I'm playing myself on the show, but I'm not. I'm a lot smarter than I act on TV," says Hilton, who just finished shooting the second season of the series, which begins airing June 16. In other words, she knows exactly what she's doing. She says she's exerted more muscle in shaping the show, thereby helping polish her own image. She happily describes the new season as "like a thousand times more funny" than last year. "They wanted us to travel on road trips with the same family as on the first season, but I was like, 'That's going to be boring.'" Hilton is confident greater things lie ahead as an actor, something she hopes to prove when she becomes a movie star, the next step in her march toward big-time fame. In a way, she's been rehearsing for her close-up since childhood. Her mother Kathy is a former actress who occasionally appeared on The Rockford Files and Happy Days. "My parents would have parties and my sister, Nicole Richie and I would dress up and do karaoke and film ourselves singing and dancing. I just always knew that being an actress was what I wanted to do." By now, it should be apparent that Hilton is not merely dabbling at acting, anymore than she dabbles at anything else. For the past four years, she has studied as often as four times a week with sought-after acting coaches including Janet Alhanti and Howard Fine. "Right now, I'm giving people what they want to see, and the obvious thing people think of me for is the ditzy blonde. Later, I'd definitely like to surprise people, like Cameron Diaz did in Being John Malkovich. Doing something with brown hair, glasses, being a total nerd would be really fun. Or like Charlize Theron did with Monster. I've been training and I think I'm getting better and better." Excerpted from Movieline's Hollywood Life, June 2004

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