BYE BYE BRA HANDLERS: ARE CELEBRITY ENTOURAGES A THING OF THE PAST? (LAT)

By Nancy Vialatte

Are the days of celebrity entourages over? Today�s Los Angeles Times asks the question noting that folks who once traveled in packs are opting for a more demure do-it-yourself attitude.

Jessica Simpson, once known for trailing family, friends and hairdressers along the red carpet, now demurely stands alone by her down-to-earth boyfriend, singer-songwriter John Mayer. Brad Pitt, who can't leave the house with Angelina Jolie without a phalanx of security, cruises alone through Los Angeles on his motorcycle. Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis hailed a London cab with their young daughter, Lily-Rose, sans assistant, sans nanny. Jennifer Aniston often vacations with just her hairdresser. Even the ubiquitous Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton usually club-hop in pairs, without bodyguards.

The LAT notes that our culture has become so steeped in celebrity that flaunting it really looks like overkill.

Still, there�ll always be a phalanx of handlers that some celebs can�t do without. Oprah Winfrey has a bra handler, Metallica had a life coach and Mary-Kate Olsen had a meal-minder while Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, Sting and Trudie Styler, Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony, David Beckham and Posh Spice �routinely test the bounds of excess.�

But a shift in perception seems to be taking place. Big entourages are now widely seen as the sign of a neophyte, a has-been or a wannabe. "American Idol" reject Sanjaya Malakar, for instance, prompted eye rolls from gossip bloggers when he showed up at Paramount Pictures recently with an entourage of stylists and agents in tow. When Britney Spears arrives at a club with half a dozen "friends," she warrants more pity than envy. The new code dictates that bona fide success doesn't demand a traveling chorus.

"There are two types of celebrities," TMZ.com managing editor Harvey Levin tells the paper. "There are the Posh Spice types that want everybody around them to think it must be the president. Then there are the Tom Hanks types who just would like to blend, and they don't make a fuss. The smart celebrities are the ones who realize that a true sign of stardom is somebody who doesn't have to act like a star."

Image, of course, is key. Even if someone has a bevy of folk to do their bidding at home, many celebrities want to be perceived as low-maintenance.

For some stars, grocery shopping with the kids or strolling through the park without staff creates a rare sense of normality. For others, it can mean an important paparazzo shot that burnishes their persona as a good father, a happy couple or a sober, law-abiding citizen.

"You have certain celebrities who are in the au naturel mode," American Media EVP Bonnie Fuller notes. "It's like their badge of honor not to have an entourage. Like Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck, and Jodie Foster and Julia Roberts � they seem to revel in being able to walk the streets without being bothered. You see them out with their babies, kids, husbands, living their lives."

OK magazine senior reporter Courtney Hazlett termed it the "Angelina effect." Jolie has so shifted the public's expectations of celebrities that extravagance that was once expected and accepted is now seen as unseemly. The public largely forgives Jolie her multiple nannies and a formidable swarm of bodyguards as a balance against her role as a U.N. goodwill ambassador. "When you read the things she's done and then you see another celebrity who's got three friends holding all her shopping bags, it looks bad," Hazlett said.

But with all those paparazzi out there, having an entourage can simply be a way to run interference for some. Veteran photog Frank Griffin says that when there are 50 photographers assigned to your life, as is the case with Jolie and Pitt, how else would a celebrity manage if not for a team of bodyguards and nannies?

Other downsides to traveling in packs include gossip leaks and huge expense. Generally, the on-set entourage is the most costly of all. But as movie profit margins shrink, only the top-tier box office stars are indulged, notes the LAT. And, in an era where many of the A-list talent are also sharing in a film�s profits, they are less likely to pad the budget with extravagant "asks" like flying friends and stylists and yoga instructors to press junkets or premieres. Which in turn forces the B- and C-listers to scale back as well too.

"You're not hearing from middle-level celebrities with outrageous requests as much as you used to," said one studio executive. "The middle used to ask you for crazy and with an entitled attitude about it � a private plane, flying a stylist, a makeup person, an assistant to New York to do 'Letterman' or a press junket. It's just harder to win at the box office, and it feels like talent and those representing them understand that."

A recent turning point was Morgan Creek Productions Chief Executive James G. Robinson's letter last summer to Lindsay Lohan which blasted her for behaving like "a spoiled child" on the production of "Georgia Rule."

When Lohan went to rehab a few months later, she got even more flack from celebrity media for bringing along a manicurist, a massage therapist and a hairdresser. "I felt like it sent a message to a lot of A-listers and to people hovering in the middle," OK�s Hazlett tells the LAT, "that this gig is up."

BYE BYE BRA HANDLERS: ARE CELEBRITY ENTOURAGES A THING OF THE PAST? (LAT)

By Nancy Vialatte

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