Just can't Carey on
Just a few weeks before the premiere of her first movie, singer Mariah Carey has been hospitalized for "extreme exhaustion", her spokeswoman said yesterday. Pop superstar The 32-year-old pop star checked herself into a New York-area hospital Wednesday, her rep said. The illness was precipitated by months of working on two movies, "Glitter", set for release Aug. 31, and "Wise Girls", as well as the "Glitter" soundtrack album.
Carey made a personal appearance at the Roosevelt Field mall on Long Island last Friday to promote her new single, "Lover Boy", and sign autographs at the local record store. Onlookers said she appeared to be behaving erratically. During one interview, Carey began complaining about the constant drubbing she had been receiving on "The Howard Stern Show". But witnesses said her comments were vague and didn't make much sense.
Spokeswoman Cindi Berger, who had accompanied Carey, pulled the microphone from the singer's hand and asked a TV crew to stop filming, which they did, witnesses said. "I knew she was very tired and not focused," Berger told the Daily News yesterday. "I put her attention back on task."
Carey was hospitalized five days later "because she just reached a point where she was physically exhausted," Berger said. The past few months have been a pivotal period in Carey's career and in her personal life. In April, Virgin Records signed her to the biggest per-album deal ever given to a recording artist, agreeing to pay her $23.5 million per CD for five albums.
The label has a lot riding on Carey's success because it was thrown into turmoil recently by the pending divorce of two company executives, artist development head Nancy Berry and husband Ken Berry, who runs the entire EMI group of labels, which includes Virgin, EMI and Capitol.
In the past few weeks, Carey's three-year relationship with Spanish singer Luis Miguel, 31, has gone awry amid reports that she had struck up a close friendship with rapper Eminem. In an interview with a British newspaper earlier this month, Carey hinted at the pressure. "Right now, I'm so busy I don't even have time for me. I don't even have time to talk to my mother and I usually talk to her five times a day. This is more of an intense time than I've ever had, because of the changing of labels and the films and the soundtrack," Carey said.
Carey was previously married for five years to Sony Records chief Tommy Mottola. The couple divorced in 1998. Her "Glitter" album is due out Aug. 21. No date has been set for the release of "Wise Girls", an independent film that co-stars Mira Sorvino. (New York Daily News)
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