[新聞]Much more to Maria than just brand Sharapova
The 2004 champion enjoys her fame but still seems surprised
by it, she tells Eleanor Preston
In a world of instant and transient fame Maria Sharapova is
a bona fide star, nowhere more than at Wimbledon where over
the next fortnight she will attempt to recapture the title
she won three years ago as a 17-year-old. Yet the same
young woman who seems so at home amid all the flashbulbs
and camera crews also appears a little bemused by her own
celebrity.
"I never think that I'm the most famous person in the room.
That never crosses my mind," she says. "I don't think I
will ever get accustomed to the celebrity thing. It's a bit
cliched. I still get amazed when I see myself in a
magazine, even if it's just the mention of my name. It
still amazes me and even three years after Wimbledon I
still get excited about little things. Little things make
me happy."
Some would dismiss this as false modesty, given that she
endorses everything from cameras to her own perfume and
that, by 20, she had already amassed at least ￡13m in
off-court earnings. Unlike her predecessor as tennis's
favourite female pin-up, Anna Kournikova, Sharapova does
not do badly in her on-court earnings, either. She added
last year's US Open winner's prize money to her 2004
Wimbledon title, narrowly missed out on ending 2006 as the
world No1 and was runner-up to Serena Williams at the
Australian Open in January.
Sharapova can be disingenuous when she chooses to be but
her take on fame seems genuine enough. Perhaps it stems
from being an outsider. She may live on Manhattan Beach,
talk with an American twang and drive a car that is
standard issue in Los Angeles - a Range Rover with
blacked-out windows - but Sharapova is still Russian. When
she talks about going to a post-Oscars party earlier this
year, it is clear she enjoys brushing up to the glossy
world of Hollywood but unlike, say, Serena Williams she has
no yearning to be part of it. Sharapova is content just to
air-kiss it and move on.
"It's a really different world," she says. "That's probably
one of the biggest parties of the year because it's the
Oscars and everyone is made up and everything's gorgeous,
everything's amazing [and] there's more make-up at that one
place than at a M.A.C [cosmetics] store.
"I felt it was really like a made-up world. I felt like it
was, like, way too glamorous for me, from what I'm used to.
It was one of those times when it was, like, 'This is
pretty surreal'. I was overwhelmed. It's not my type of
scene, but it's very cool to see Madonna on one side,
Gwyneth Paltrow on the other and then Gwen Stefani. You're
like, 'I'm not used to this'."
Much of Sharapova's time this year has been taken up with
recovering from a recurring shoulder injury, which she
admitted was still troubling her at the French Open
recently. She went straight from Paris to the grass-court
event in Birmingham, where she lost in the final to Jelena
Jankovic, and will begin this Wimbledon, where she is
seeded second, in reasonably good form - good enough, one
must assume, for her first-round opponent Yung-Jan Chan of
Chinese Taipei.
Sharapova was beaten in the semi-finals at Wimbledon a year
ago by the eventual champion Amélie Mauresmo but, having
won her second grand slam title since then, she will begin
this campaign with more self-confidence. She needed that US
Open success to remind her that her Wimbledon vwin was not
a fluke, just as she required that Wimbledon triumph as
reassurance that all the hype around her as a junior was
justified.
"When I was young, growing up, a lot of people said I was
going to be good but at the end of the day those are just
words," she says. "It's up to you to change that. When I
started winning tournaments, and when I won Wimbledon, I
actually appreciated when they said I was good or I was
going to be good, because before that it was a little weird
- I didn't think I deserved it."
Being talked about can also be useful, and not just for the
endorsement deals. Sharapova has used her name and face -
as well as $100,000 (￡50,000) of her own money - to launch
a campaign to help victims of the Chernobyl nuclear
disaster, which caused her parents to flee their home in
Belarus when her mother was pregnant with her. She was born
in Nyagan, Siberia. "When you think about it, and think
about the numbers of people who died and still die, then
you think that you were somehow part of that and survived,
it makes me feel lucky and it makes me feel that I want to
help," says Sharapova. "Money can only buy you so much -
buying a car, buying a house, is cool and it's great to
have that stuff but it's nothing to helping people live and
survive. There are a lot of benefits of being famous and
that's one of them."
She may be bemused by fame but Sharapova is well aware of
its value.
這篇看到別人貼的，抱歉找不到原出處：
http://www.wtaworld.com/showpost.php?p=11037383&postcount=1064
不過有些句子，應該是從以前的訪問來的，
談的內容也是莎娃與溫網淵源、車諾比的事…
因為真的很多，還是希望有人認養，也許擷取翻譯一下也好
不然就是大家練英文吧XD
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◆ From: 59.117.49.70
※ 編輯: jcshie 來自: 59.117.49.70 (06/23 15:25)
※ 編輯: jcshie 來自: 59.117.49.70 (06/23 18:55)
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