While the rest of us might spend Christmas congratulating ourselves for simply making it through the year, some celebrities can claim rather more lofty achievements.
There was far more to the world of showbiz this year than break-ups and meltdowns, with records smashed left and right and a sense that we might be firmly in the era of the megastar. We at The Week have rounded up the top celebrity winners of 2023. It's their world; we are just living in it.
Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift has been in the news so much this year that USA Today was obliged to hire a dedicated reporter just to cover the singer.
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Time magazine's "Person of the Year" has spent much of her time setting precedents that are unlikely to be topped anytime soon. When her re-recording of her 2014 album "1989" debuted in October, Swift became the first artist to have five albums on the Billboard 200 chart's top 10 at the same time.
Its July predecessor "Speak Now (Taylor's Version)" was her 12th to debut at number one, breaking Barbara Streisand's record for the most number one albums by a female artist. At the end of November, Spotify revealed that she was the most streamed artist of the year.
Her Eras Tour, a 151-show extravaganza that kicked off in March and will continue until the end of next year, is set to become the most lucrative tour in history. It is already the highest grossing ever by a woman and second highest grossing overall.
It could make nearly $6 billion overall, estimates The Washington Post, single-handedly boosting the entertainment industry after the Covid-19 pandemic. Not only did Swift herself become a billionaire in October, but her concerts have already added nearly $5 billion to the US economy overall in travel, hospitality and other costs – an impact so significant that it has been named Swiftonomics.
Barbie
If aliens were to fall to Earth this Christmas, they might be forgiven for thinking they had landed in a Barbie world. In fact, the set of the highly anticipated "Barbie" movie was drenched in so much pink that it caused an international run on a fluorescent shade of paint made by Rosco.
The eponymous live-action movie starring Margot Robbie blew almost every expectation out of the water with one of the most stunning box-office runs in history. "Barbie" smashed the $1 billion mark at the box office worldwide in August, making Oscar-nominated arthouse director Greta Gerwig the first woman with a sole directing credit on a $1 billion movie. The fact that it opened on the same weekend as Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer" biopic became the year's most memorable cultural event, known as Barbenheimer.
Tackling subjects like feminism and the patriarchy, "Barbie" didn't win many fans among US conservatives, and it brought the legacy of the problematic doll back under feminist scrutiny. Nevertheless, it is 2023's highest grossing film.
Ncuti Gatwa
By any definition, "Sex Education"'s Ncuti Gatwa is having a great year.
The Rwandan-Scottish actor took his place among the star-studded line-up in "Barbie", playing the artist version of Ken alongside his "Sex Education" co-star Emma Mackey. The 31-year-old also came out as queer this summer, having previously avoided the topic of his sexuality.
This Christmas, Ncuti will make his debut in the hotly anticipated new season of the BBC's "Doctor Who", making him the hit show's first Black Doctor.
Britney Spears
Although her 13-year conservatorship was officially terminated two years ago, 2023 will be remembered as the year that pop sensation Britney Spears was able to take back control of her narrative with a tell-all memoir.
Spears reportedly signed a $15 million deal to write "The Woman in Me", one of the most lucrative of all time, to share how she became one of the biggest stars of the last half-century. The memoir, released in October, generated headlines for its bombshell claims and sold more than a million US copies in its first week.
On the UK side, it became the second bestselling memoir of the year after Prince Harry's "Spare". According to Forbes, the memoir "changes the conversation" on mental health and child fame.
Bad Bunny
Puerto Rican singer-songwriter Bad Bunny has spent the last few years smashing records. But this year, the trap and reggaetón phenomenon (real name Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio) hit a historic high, with his 2022 album "Un Verano Sin Ti" becoming Spotify's most streamed album of all time. In just one week after its release in May, it racked up more than 356 million on-demand streams.
He also found time to headline Coachella music festival (the first Spanish-speaking artist to do so), champion Puerto Rican culture, defy traditional gender norms, decry political corruption and speak out about the use of AI to replicate his voice.
He has reached "a new stratosphere of stardom", said Rolling Stone; he is "virtually everywhere".
