6

What do you call a person who craves fame and fortune, or wants to be recognized for something?

Improve this question
3
  • 1
    Perhaps 'insecure'?
    – WS2
    Commented Dec 18, 2013 at 9:46
  • ‘Paris Hilton’?
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Commented Dec 18, 2013 at 11:30
  • Penny the actress :D
    – Dog Lover
    Commented Jul 17, 2015 at 1:07

6 Answers 6

Reset to default
4

vainglorious

someone who seeks fame and glory to aggrandize themselves, instead of encouraging others to perform noble, difficult and worthy deeds.

Improve this answer
3

You could call them an attention-seeker or fame-seeker.

Improve this answer
2

I don't know if you can use these, but they mean some aspect of what you have asked.

yearning: feeling a powerful desire for something. Yearn stresses the depth and passionateness of a desire: to yearn to get away and begin a new life; to yearn desperately for recognition.

ambitious: having or showing a strong desire and determination to succeed.

aspiring: directing one's hopes or ambitions toward becoming a specified type of person.

desirous: longing or craving, as for something that brings satisfaction or enjoyment; a desire for fame.

Improve this answer
2

Many associate fame with fortune, thinking that both go hand in hand. The concept of instant stardom bringing wealth, notoriety, photos on magazine covers and automatic access to red carpet events still holds strong despite the various flops of winners on so-called talent shows.

Therefore, I would argue that many of today's younger generation are mostly concerned with becoming celebrities themselves. A fairly recent coinage, 1981, is the expression wannabe, a person who either wants to be or imitates someone famous.
Merriam-Webster provides this definition

a person who tries to look or act like someone else (such as a famous person) : a person who wants to be a particular person or type of person

Taken to its extreme a person, usually a woman, obsessed with being famous at any cost is said to be a famewhore (sometimes spelt as two words). I looked online but this expression isn't listed in any online dictionary with the exception of Urban Dictionary.

An individual who is willing to do anything, regardless of how humiliating or demeaning, to achieve notoriety.

More often than not, this involves appearing on multiple reality television shows and/or having "private" sex videos "leaked" to the press.

There's a Youtube video; safe for work but you probably wouldn't want your boss to know you were watching it, entitled "I'm a Fame Whore", and there the young man gives his own interpretation of the word.

Improve this answer
1

It seems that it is easier to find suggestions that offer something towards fame or fortune but the one word that I think describes both is:

Megalomaniac

  1. A psychopathological condition characterized by delusional fantasies of wealth, power, or omnipotence.
  2. An obsession with grandiose or extravagant things or actions.
Improve this answer
0

A more idiomatic term for what you've described would be a glory hound (or glory hog, though the use of hound connotes the active pursuit of acclaim over simply hoarding it all for oneself).

The Dictionary of American Slang (via dictionary.com) gives the definition for glory hog as:

glory hog noun phrase

A person who blatantly seeks adulation; glory hound

Improve this answer

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.