Underwood’s fame phobia

Carrie Underwood isn’t well suited to her celebrity, said Allison Glock in Marie Claire. The country singer, who is American Idol’s most successful graduate, hates big crowds and being touched by strangers. “At the beginning of my career, I used to have panic attacks,” says Underwood, 30. “People were touching me, screaming—it made me really nervous. In public, I just get nervous. It’s a physical reaction, feeling like the walls are closing in.” Critics have accused the small-town girl from Oklahoma of being cold and distant, but Underwood insists she’s just “awkward.” “We were never a huggy family, or a ‘let’s talk this out’ family,” she says. “Technically I have siblings, but they are quite a bit older than me—I was the accident—so I have the only-child syndrome going on. I’m a little more selfish, a little more independent, a little closed.” Underwood shrugs. “I do wish I were softer [and] able to form relationships better. But hey, I mean, I’m not a sociopath.” Her family is unimpressed by her fame; the last time she played her home state of Oklahoma, her father didn’t even attend, since it was hunting season. “My parents are really great people,” she says, “who want nothing to do with any of this.”

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