There seems to be an endless supply of nutters who’s obsession with people they see on the screen or TV drives them to daft and potentially dangerous behaviour. Sex and the City film star Kim Cattrall’s stalker, ‘asking for an autograph’ is yet another example. Although the incident seems over-hyped, the guy is clearly a jerk and should stop harrassing ‘old pro’s’ (as an insider referred to her) like Kim. She was shaken up by the affair, or since she is American the term ‘freak out’ is used because it is just WAY so much more dramatic…

Kim Cattrall and the cast of the Sex And The City film were reportedly “freaked out” after a fan breached security at the film’s London press junket, Metro reports.

A man posing as a foreign journalist managed to move past security at the Claridge’s hotel and enter a room with Cattrall while the actress wasdoing interviews for the film.
An insider said: “He was alone in a room with Kim Cattrall and began pestering her for autographs. She was very flustered, and it was lucky someone walked in and spotted him
as his behaviour was getting more and more erratic.

Perhaps he was saying please please please give me an autograph you old pro, it’ll make my day - you said you would when you were speaking to me from the TV

“Hotel staff ordered him to leave but he didn’t go quietly. They bundled him out as
quietly as possible but Kim was pretty frightened. The other girls found out what had happened and were also freaked out. But they’re old pros and they didn’t let it affect their schedules,” said the insider.

‘old pro’s’ is an unfortunate term to use for the once young naive stars and one can’t help but get the impression that this isn’t really the worst case of celebrity stalking. - perhaps celebrity pestering would be more appropriate. This pales into complete insignificance compared to a list compiled on Yahoo’s Top 5 Scariest Celebrity Stalkers:

1. High Fidelity star John Cusack, 40, had a restraining order granted against stalker Emily
Leatherman in 2006 who had her mail sent to his house and then used to deliver
them to his house with bags full of rocks and screwdrivers.
2. Tween star Hillary Duff has two stalkers, but one is so dedicated the 19-year-old moved to the U.S. solely to meet and get involved with Hillary. ‘Max’ shared his intentions of
‘removing’ his ‘enemies’ to get closer to Duff. He even visited her mother.
3. Dessarae Bradford, 32, was the woman who thought she could be Colin Farrell’s BEST FRIEND! He called the police when she handed him copy of her self-published book Colin
Farrell: A Dark Twisted Puppy.
4. Basic Instinct, starring Michael Douglas, saw Douglas’s character pursued by a murderous lover. In real life, stalker Dawnette Knight was sent to prison after threatening Douglas’s wife Catherine Zeta-Jones and planning her funeral. “Catherine is going to
be sliced up like meat on a bone and fed to the dogs.
5. A passionate Naomi Robson fan dated, drugged, raped and filmed his victims and went
to court just this week. The Melbourne man has been charged with 33 counts of rape and more of indecent assault after police seized videotapes allegedly showing him raping women whose faces had been covered with images the former Today Tonight TV host.

When obsessions with people become criminal acts there are some serious pathalogical brain disfunction going on. Why do these people end up ‘going a bit too far’ - to put it mildly?

Carissa Vaughn discusses the psychology behind stalking and writes:

Most stalkers are what Zona (1993) and Geberth (1992) call “Simple Obsessional” or, as Mullen and Pathe put it (1999) – “Rejected”. They stalk their prey as a way of maintaining the dissolved relationship (at least in their diseased minds). They seek to “punish” their quarry for refusing to collaborate in the charade and for resisting their unwanted and ominous attentions.

Such stalkers come from all walks of life and cut across social, racial, gender, and cultural barriers. They usually suffer from one or more (comorbid) personality disorders. They may have anger management or emotional problems and they usually abuse drugs or alcohol. Stalkers are typically lonely, violent, and intermittently unemployed – but they are rarely full fledged criminals.

It certainly is not just a phenomenum isolated to celbrities: Dr. J. Reid Meloy, author of Violent Attachments and editor of The Psychology of Stalking, writes:

The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that every year over a million and a half people are stalked, over two-thirds of them women. Ninety percent of women killed by husbands or boyfriends had first been stalked. One in 12 women and one in 45 men in the U.S. - about 10 million people - has been or will be stalked sometime in the future.

The problem with those ’stalking’ are that they are so caught up in their obsession that they cannot see that their behaviour is anti-social or even psychopathic:

While many stalkers view their actions within a delusional framework and therefore see no need to get help, a few do actually approach professionals.

A querky website with a related article that is possibly the longest URL i have seen: Gives further extracts from a Dr Moore and ends with some advice for People who may think that they themselves are prone to stalking behaviour:

“Unless a stalker wants to change, you can’t stop them,” Moore tells WebMD. “They will only change when their world around them starts crashing around them.”

Here’s something else to consider: Are you a stalker? If you see this obsessive pattern in yourself, see a therapist or join a support group like Co-Dependents Anonymous, he says. “A lot of times, stalkers have addiction issues. They may be drinking or doing drugs. It’s important for them to reach out. But they also have to reach in — admit something is going on, get to a therapist or support group so they don’t feel all alone.”

Far better to confront and deal with anti-social behaviour before it turns nasty. One minute you’re preoccupied with getting signatures from ‘old pro’s’ like Kim Cattrall, the next you could be behind bars with blood on your hands.