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David Bowie, a.k .a. Ziggy Stardust , poses for the cover of his 'Pin Ups' album in 1973.
J U S T I N D E V I L L E N E U V E / H U LT O N A RC H I V E / G E T T Y I M A G E S

E N T E R TA I N M E N T

The Bizarre Alter Egos of 11 Major Celebrities

BY KENNETH PARTRIDGE
MAY 3, 2021
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 In showbiz, personality goes a long way.
Personalities go even further. Artists
throughout history have used alter egos
as a means of stepping outside of
themselves and communicating ideas
they otherwise cannot. It can be
cathartic and creatively liberating—and
it’s a great marketing gimmick. Below,
we celebrate 11 performers who’ve
given us strange alter egos.

1. GARTH BROOKS // CHRIS GAINES

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 CAPITOL

In the 1990s, nobody sold more records

than Garth Brooks. So it was a little
surprising when, in 1999, the country
mega-star ditched the hat, grew a soul
patch, and reinvented himself as
fictional Australian rocker Chris
Gaines. Brooks was developing a movie
about Gaines called The Lamb that
never came to pass. He did, however,
release a Gaines album, Greatest Hits,
and promote the CD in character on
Saturday Night Live. He even appeared
as Gaines in a faux episode of the VH1
series Behind the Music. The Gaines era
is generally considered a giant fiasco,
but Greatest Hits still went double
platinum. The public may get another
chance to decide, as Brooks announced
in March 2021 that he’s bringing Gaines
back for a new album.

2. BEYONCÉ // SASHA FIERCE

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 2. BEYONCÉ // SASHA FIERCE

SONY LEGACY

Beyoncé has always seemed supremely

confident and in control. But for a little
while in the late 2000s, she required an
alter ego, Sasha Fierce, to express the
sexier and more aggressive sides of her
personality. As Bey told Oprah, she
would transform into Sasha Fierce right
before she went on stage, when she
needed to become the boldest version
of herself possible. But by 2010—two
years after releasing the album I
Am...Sasha Fierce—Beyoncé had
outgrown the character. “Sasha Fierce is
done. I killed her,” Beyoncé told Allure.
“I don’t need Sasha Fierce anymore,
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 “I don’t need Sasha Fierce anymore,
because I’ve grown and now I'm able to
merge the two.”

3. DAVID BOWIE // ZIGGY STARDUST

David Bowie - Ziggy Stardust…

Although David Bowie only played Ziggy

Stardust for a short while, from 1972 to
1973, the character will forever be
synonymous with the legendary
musician. Maybe it’s because Ziggy—an
androgynous alien with a red mullet
sent to Earth to warn humankind of an
impending apocalypse—embodies much
of what people love about Bowie. The
outlandish and messianic Ziggy was
apparently inspired by everything from
Japanese Kabuki theater to early British
rocker Vince Taylor. In the end, playing
the character became suffocating, and
Bowie famously retired Ziggy onstage at
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 London’s Hammersmith Odeon on July
3, 1973.

4. DONALD GLOVER // CHILDISH

GAMBINO

Childish Gambino - This Is A…

Donald Glover got his start writing for

30 Rock and later appeared on the
ensemble comedy Community. He’s a
sharp, insightful comedian who’s
similarly skilled at music, and in 2011,
the singer-rapper began recording as
Childish Gambino, a name he got from
the Wu-Tang Name Generator.
Gambino scored a No. 1 hit with 2018’s
“This Is America,” a complex look at
racism and other issues facing the
country. While he's never been shy
about challenging his audiences, he's
also not afraid to have a little fun; in
2019, Gambino appeared on Australia’s
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 Triple J radio and performed a version
of “Lost In You” by—get this—Chris
Gaines.

5. LADY GAGA // JO CALDERONE

Lady Gaga and Britney Spear…

Lady Gaga does pop music as

performance art. She’s into provoking
audiences to make larger points, and
that’s what she did in 2010, when she
created the male alter ego Jo Calderone,
a potty-mouthed Italian American
greaser-type from New Jersey. Gaga
first portrayed the character in a 2010
fashion shoot for Vogue Hommes Japan.
Even though fans were wise to the ruse,
she reprised the role in the 2011 music
video for her song “You and I.” Less
than two weeks after the clip
premiered, Gaga embraced her inner
Andy Kaufman and attended the 2011
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 Andy Kaufman and attended the 2011
MTV VMAs in character as Calderone.
Gaga-as-Calderone delivered a
monologue that left Britney Spears,
Justin Bieber, and other attendees
puzzled, to say the least. She then
performed “You and I” with some help
from Queen guitarist Brian May.

6. EMINEM // SLIM SHADY

Eminem - The Real Slim Sha…

An unholy trinity of personalities

comprise the rapper Marshall Mathers,
a.k.a. Eminem, a.k.a. Slim Shady. It
breaks down like this: Marshall is the
real person, Eminem is the quick-
spitting master lyricist, and Shady is the
outlet for all of the artist’s angriest,
most violent impulses. When parents
and politicians would get mad at
Eminem in the ’90s and early ’00s, it
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 was Shady they really had beef with.
“Slim, Em, and Marshall are always in
the mix when I’m writing now,” the
rapper wrote in his 2008 memoir. “I’ve
found a way to morph the styles so that
it’s sort of all me.”

7. PRINCE // CAMILLE

BERTR AND GUAY/AFP/GET T Y IMAGES

Prince thrived at the intersection of

masculinity and femininity. Never was
this duality more explicit than when he
started electronically pitching up his
vocals in order to portray Camille, the
feminine alter ego he created in the
mid-’80s. Prince planned on releasing a
full-length Camille album that made it
as far as the test-pressing stage. Alas,
Warner Bros. shelved the record shortly
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 Warner Bros. shelved the record shortly
before it was set to arrive in 1986, and
Prince recycled much of the material for
other releases, including his 1987
landmark Sign O’ the Times. Some Prince
scholars believe the Camille character
was based on Herculine Barbin, a 19th
century intersex individual from France
who was raised as a girl but used the
name Camille later in life, while living
as a man.

8. MADONNA // MADAME X

INTERSCOPE

In some ways, Madonna’s whole career

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 has been about alter egos. Part of the
fun is seeing how she’s going to look
and move with each album cycle. But
for her 14th studio LP, Madonna took
the extra step of actually naming a
character, Madame X, a secret agent
who travels the world fighting for truth
and justice. “Madame X is a dancer, a
professor, a head of state, a
housekeeper, an equestrian, a prisoner,
a student, a mother, a child, a teacher, a
nun, a singer, a saint, a whore, and a spy
in the house of love,” she says in a
teaser video. “I am Madame X.” The
move was pure Madonna: Even her alter
ego has alter egos.

9. BONO // MACPHISTO

19 U2 MacPhisto's Phone Ca…

On the American leg of U2’s 1992

Zooropa Tour, Bono portrayed a
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 Zooropa Tour, Bono portrayed a
character called Mirror Ball Man. He
was a glitzy, greedy cross between a
used-car salesman, a televangelist, and a
game show host, and he was supposed
to represent the devil for Yankee
audiences. When the tour went to
Europe later that year, Bono mothballed
the shiny suit and cowboy hat and came
up with a new bad-guy alter ego:
MacPhisto, Satan reimagined as an
aging rock star. Complete with gold
lamé jacket, red lipstick, platform
shoes, and horns, MacPhisto was meant
to conjure up old-world European
decadence. Throughout the tour, while
playing the character, Bono would
phone up various politicians and use
MacPhisto’s approval of their policies to
make a point. “When you’re dressed as
the devil, your conversation is
immediately loaded, so if you tell
somebody you really like what they’re
doing, you know it’s not a compliment,”
Bono said.

10. JANELLE MONÁE // CINDI

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 10. JANELLE MONÁE // CINDI
MAYWEATHER

Cindi Mayweather (Janelle M…

Very much a disciple of Prince—with

whom she was good friends—Janelle
Monáe spent the first decade of her
career playing Cindi Mayweather, a
funky android fighting to save mankind
from a secret society called The Great
Divide. The complex story plays out
over the genre-bending artist’s first two
albums, The ArchAndroid (2010) and
The Electric Lady (2013). These
conceptual works allowed Monáe to
obliquely address issues of gender and
sexuality that she wasn’t ready to write
about directly. With 2018’s Dirty
Computer, Monáe powered down the
Cindi character and focused on the real
star attraction: herself.
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 11. ANDY KAUFMAN // TONY CLIFTON

Tony Clifton Letterman 02 18…

With comedian Andy Kaufman, it was

never clear where the joke began and
ended. He was a master of messing with
audiences, and in that respect, his Tony
Clifton character might have been his
ultimate achievement. As played by
Kaufman in the late ’70s and early ’80s,
Clifton was an ornery Vegas lounge
singer and comic always seen in dark
shades and a gaudy tux. In interviews,
Clifton would deny allegations that he
was Kaufman and accuse Andy of
profiting off his name. To really sell the
gag, Kaufman would sometimes enlist
other people to play Clifton, thereby
making it possible for him and his alter
ego to be in the same place at the same
time. Clifton has continued to perform
since Kaufman’s death in 1984. He even
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 since Kaufman’s death in 1984. He even
went on tour in 2008, though just who
was playing Clifton is part of the
character's unending mystery.

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