Question Celebrity

"My life is far from a 'boulevard of broken dreams,' " the entrepreneurial and now litigious Niki Taylor announced several weeks ago, which is why she decided to sue the E! cable network for featuring her (with her unwitting assistance) in a new show titled just that: "Blvd. of Broken Dreams." According to wire reports, Taylor's federal lawsuit alleges intentional infliction of emotional distress, fraud, breach of contract and invasion of privacy. The suit claims the network "neglected their journalistic obligations to report truthfully and accurately; they violated express promises they made to the plaintiff, supermodel Niki Taylor; and they demonstrated a reprehensible disregard for the substantial harm their actions would cause to Ms. Taylor."

Let's set aside the lack of sympathy one might have for a plaintiff who refers to herself in a legal complaint as a supermodel, no matter how true it is. It's okay to feel a little sorry for a faded star who welcomes a return (however momentary) of film crews into her life, only to slowly discover that they have come to document the ways in which she has become one of those celebs who, as the show describes, "risked everything . . . and lost."

Taylor, who turns a horribly passe 32 tomorrow, began modeling as a teenager and by the mid-1990s had achieved newsstand ubiquity and received several cosmetics endorsements. She was everywhere, as supermodels tend to be. She gave birth to twins and graced magazine swimsuit issues afterward -- a feat that may no longer be achievable in the size-0 era. Sounds good so far, up until the divorce and the rehab stay for a painkiller addiction. But even that is too routine to qualify her for a special guest appearance in Washed-Up World. Taylor barely survived a car crash in 2001, which required a hospital stay of many months and numerous surgeries; there the boulevard was arguably closed for repairs. Today she and her children live outside Nashville with her new hubby, a NASCAR driver, and she runs her own clothing boutique and charitable organization-type thingy. One would think that in Tennessee having a store and being married to a race car driver is a darned good life, so you can understand Taylor's mystification at being trotted out as a cautionary tale.

Then again, she said yes to E! Everyone knows (or should know) that when cable documentaries come calling, no matter how solicitous they seem, it's best to simply let them work from the clip file or call your high school nemeses and estranged relatives for fresh sauce. The cablescape is littered with plenty of actually desperate former celebs willing to do anything for a morsel of attention. Niki Taylor just believes she wasn't one of them, yet.

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