A hitman was hired to kill me at the height of my fame, reveals Robbie Williams
ROBBIE Williams has revealed a hitman was hired to kill him when he was at his most famous.
The former Take That pin-up made the shocking revelation, admitting he has never told the public about it.
“I’ve never, ever said this, but I had a contract put on me to kill me. I’ve never said that publicly before," Robbie told the .
“It went away. I have friends. That stuff is the unseen stuff that happens when you become famous.”
Robbie, 47, also opened up about the toll being a music megastar took on his mental health.
“At one point in my life I was ridiculously famous, Michael Jackson-style famous," the Angels singer explained.
“I became famous when I was 17, doing a boy band when I was 16, the boy band took off. When I was 21 I left and then I had a solo career, sold 80 million albums, held the record for the most tickets sold in a day for a tour and blah, blah, blah…"
He added: “Extreme fame and extreme success meets with anxiety and depression and mental illness.
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“There’s a few levels of fame and what it does to you. The first one is ‘f**k’.
“There’s a couple more I can’t remember but the fourth one is acceptance. You sort of rally against your privacy being taken away from you and you rally against it by trying to be normal, trying to be normal but also I’m gonna be small so people don’t beat you up. Like, ‘I’m a d**khead, don’t hurt me.’
“I want to go to the all the normal places I can’t go because people want to kill me. It takes a while to get to acceptance."
Robbie, who now lives in Los Angeles and has four children with his wife Ayda Field, 42, described how his anxiety was made worse by his fame.
“I have anxiety and don’t like meeting strangers, but strangers want to meet me, and I feel really uncomfortable about it. Thinking about it actually gives me anxiety. It’s a trigger," he said.
“Also, you’ve got to be the mayor of the best town people have ever visited, or else people go, ‘He’s one of those famous people that are a d**k.’ Actually, I hate having my picture taken.”
But it was while travelling in the US trying to 'break into the scene' there that he realised he had a chance to live in a place where no one knew him.
"I came to America to promote an album," he described.
“And I’m in Milwaukee and doing a radio station to eight people at seven o’clock in the morning and I already have millions in the bank and a huge following and I’m depressed and I’m anxious. So I’m going around America doing all this stuff and I’m going, ‘Hang on, all of this fame is making me anxious and depressed and if I go to America then I’m famous in Papua New Guinea if I’m famous in America…’
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“This realisation is happening as I’m travelling through America trying to break America. 'Why am I trying to break this? Why don’t I go and live there and live in anonymity and then have a nice life'."
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He added: “So I moved there and turned everything down that I was offered in the States.
“Basically, what happens is I live in anonymity here and really enjoy that, then I try to move back to my home country and remember that I have no anonymity there and that makes me feel anxious and depressed and then I move back to the States.”
