"THE wait is almost over" Perez Hilton breathlessly wrote on his online gossip blog last week. No need to elaborate; his readers knew exactly to which cosmic event he was referring. It was, of course, the arrival of the fifth and six members of the Brangelina tribe; Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's twins. Not since a Middle Eastern virgin announced she was expecting has a pregnancy been the subject of so much attention, and now, after weeks of speculation, the great event has finally
One wonders whether Hilton spontaneously combusted when he heard that Jolie gave birth to the twins – a boy, Knox Leon and a girl, Vivienne Marcheline – on Saturday – with Pitt on hand to cut the umbilical cord.
Their birthplace was no modest sta
ble, but rather the Lenval hospital on the exclusive Promenade des Anglais in Nice. Members of the paparazzi made pilgrimages from every corner of the earth – guided by the dazzling star of the couple's celebrity – in the hope of catching a glimpse of the babies, or more specifically, their very own multi-million dollar Kodak moment.
And, following a bidding frenzy, exclusive rights to the first photographs of the Jolie-Pitt twins have reportedly now been sold for a record breaking $11 million (£6 million) to an unnamed US magazine, in a deal that was done when the babies were just a few hours old. The famous couple intend to donate the fee to charity.
Celebrity births have become big business, with paparazzi shots offering the first glimpse of an A-lister's new child selling for eye-watering amounts of money, and celebrity magazines entering bidding wars to secure that exclusive first photoshoot. This is no ordinary family photo album.
"To a certain extent there's always been a lot of interest in the children of famous people, going right back to the Queen's children in the 1950s. However, in recent years, huge amounts of money have been thrown around for those exclusive first pictures and interest in celebrity babies has really increased," says Katie Banks, a showbiz writer at Closer magazine.
"Magazines featuring new pictures of the babies of A-list celebrities tend to fly off the shelves. It's probably because it's such a happy occasion. It's something that helps people to relate to celebrities. Plus, in this case, we're dealing with two people who're often hailed as the most beautiful couple in the world, so I think everyone's more than a little curious to see what their children will look like."
However, it really is only in the last couple of years that bidding for celebrity babies pics has reached such frantic proportions.
When the actress and singer Jennifer Lopez gave birth to twins in February, US-based People magazine was reported to have paid $5m for the rights to the first pictures of the new family. The birth of Nicole Richie's daughter, Harlow, in January provoked a similar bidding war, while gossip blogs and magazines were so desperate to get their hands on a photograph of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes' daughter Suri, born in 2006, that when one didn't appear there was speculation that she must be made up. Perhaps it was these wild rumours that forced the couple to take part in a cover shoot for Vanity Fair to prove the existence of their daughter.
Cruise's ex-wife Nicole Kidman and her partner, Keith Urban, last week celebrated the birth of their first child, a daughter, Sunday Rose, but turned down picture deals worth millions of dollars, because, they said, they did not feel that it was right. However, they may regret the decision. While they probably don't need the money, and no doubt want to protect their daughter, they may find themselves hounded by members of the paparazzi desperate to get that first image and retire on its earnings.
It was that fear which led Pitt and Jolie to sell the exclusive first photographs of their first biological child, Shiloh, to US-based People magazine in 2006 for $5-7 million, an attempt perhaps to quell the media's interest in the baby. And by choosing initially not to release images of their new baby, Cruise and Holmes found themselves in the eye of a paparazzi storm.
It's quite an introduction to the world. But then this is an age where celebrity babies seem to go straight from the birth canal to the photographer's studio. And with the current heightened interest in celebrity children, they have to get used to the constant presence of flashbulbs pretty quickly.
While once the children of celebrities were immune to vilification in the media, today they're fodder for gossip blogs such as perezhilton.com, which repeatedly referred to two-year-old Suri Cruise as an "alien", even drawing antennae on photographs of her, while other gossip blogs have happily mocked the appearance of celebrity children who haven't even reached their teens.
Too young to give their consent, they become style icons and are scrutinised for the way they dress almost as much as their parents. They become celebrities in their own right and set trends for baby names – Shiloh entered the top 1,000 list of most popular baby names in the US the year after Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt was born, while Maddox, the name of the son adopted by Jolie in 2002 entered the list in 2003.
Life's a rollercoaster for these celebrity babies and growing up in the limelight like never before, they've become the new child stars.
"Because they can't always do normal family activities like going to the beach or just going out for a walk, the children of celebrities are often cut off from huge swathes of normal life and can find it difficult to relate to other children as they get older," says Edinburgh-based child psychologist Margaret McAllister. "As they enter middle childhood, the media intrusion gets more difficult, and can cause serious problems as they enter adolescence and require privacy and anonymity. Unlike their parents and most other children, it's difficult for them to enjoy a normal childhood, and that can't be substituted for fame and material possessions."
Still, like it or not, the Jolie-Pitt twins are already celebrities. A press conference was called before their birth simply to say that their mother was "doing fine" while the mayor of the French town in which they were born arrived suited and booted and in full make-up to display their birth certificates for the international media. And the world now waits, breath baited for those all-important first pictures – a little odd frankly, when you consider that all babies look pretty much the same anyway.
Unlike their parents, Knox and Vivienne didn't choose the limelight, but while they can barely open their eyes, they're being blinded by it.
