What would you say to your 16 year-old self apart from buy shares in Google, go easy on the recreational drugs and avoid stonewashed denim. Dear Me is a collection of letters by celebrities to their teenage selves. Journalist and former editor of GT magazine, Joseph Galliano has edited this book with a foreword by JK Rowling. Celebrities include Alan Carr, Alice Cooper, Gillian Anderson, Emma Thompson, Stephen King, Hugh Jackman, James Woods and James Belushi.


 

Emma Thompson

 

 

Dear Jimmy,

Don’t change a thing really.

Just enjoy the fruits of life and take the hard knocks. One has no meaning without the other.

You have been blessed with a simple trick to make the best of life. It is a Woods family secret: treat everyone with respect and demand it of them as well. If someone abuses you more than once, you deserve it.

Call someone in your family every day of your life. You may think it is tedious to do so, but a time will come when you would give your life to make that call one more time.

Hug your mother often and tell her how much you love her.

Do good work and do it because it is a gift to the world. No matter how inconsequential others may feel about the value of your contribution, it is the giving that matters. The surprise here will be that the beneficiary who gains the most when you give is you.

Be proud, but humble. Be strong, but caring. Listen more than you may be inclined to do. Talk less.

And most importantly, call your brother on July 26, 2006 and tell him he must go to a different hospital.

It is okay to fall, but not okay to stay on the ground.

Cherish the dead you once loved so carelessly.

They still live in your heart.

James Woods

Great idea, but perhaps they still wouldn’t listen, even to themselves…