30 Famous People Who Received Public Condemnation Even Though They Did Not Deserve It, As Pointed Out In This Online Thread

On the whole, perhaps, in human history, there is not a single more or less well-known personality who was always, absolutely, one hundred percent received positively. Even, for example, Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa or Pope John Paul II - all of them, at certain stages of their lives, sometimes faced massive disapproval from certain social groups.

But there are people about whom the public steadily formed an attitude - and this attitude just as steadily turned negative. For example, the famous composer Antonio Salieri was innocently harmed by a completely false and far-fetched accusation that he had poisoned his longtime friend Mozart. Well, or at least weaved vile intrigues against a brilliant colleague.

In reality, of course, it wasn't like that. As a twist of fate, during his lifetime, Salieri was much more successful than Mozart. And the talent of the Italian composer was also more than outstanding. And, by the way, it was Salieri who helped Mozart more than once in arranging his concerts and finding customers for musical works.

Why is this happening? In fact, discrediting someone's good name is quite simple - both in the old days and today. Fact-checking has never been the forte of most people, and we readily believe in various gossip, no matter how dirty it may seem. In addition, we often do not know all aspects of celebs' life, as well as the reasons that encourage them to commit one act or another, which seems completely unsightly to us from the outside.

"In the old days, of course, it was much easier to discredit the image of any person - after all, information, already incredibly scarce, was almost always transmitted verbally, and at the same time inevitably distorted," says Valery Bolgan, historian and editor-in-chief of the Ukraine-based Intent news agency. "People's rumors spread very quickly, and people had neither the opportunity nor the desire to verify the accuracy of the information."

"Today we are, however, at the other extreme - there is a huge amount of information around us, and we are faced with a lot of fakes and partial fakes, created both by someone's order and out of ignorance. In addition, the authority of leaders of both the mass media and public opinion is gradually falling. It is enough to convict some source of lying at least once for its information to be regularly called into question. In such a situation, it is not surprising that many people are prone to self-deception," Valery Bolgan concludes.

It is sad that young celebrities often become targets for public censure, although their actions are de facto controlled either by their parents or other members of their environment. From Shirley Temple to Macaulay Culkin, from Mickey Rooney to Rebecca Black, just about everyone who achieved big fame at an early age went through it, and not everyone managed to cope with such pressure. Perhaps Shirley Temple did it best of all - but she had to completely change her occupation, leaving Hollywood for big politics.

History is actually an incredibly flexible science, and the nature of modern society is such that we constantly receive new portions of information that can completely change our view of what we took for granted only yesterday. And who knows - maybe one of the people mentioned in this collection will rightfully receive a change of heart from the public in the nearest future? In the meantime, please feel free to scroll the list to the very end and maybe add some celebrities who you think should also be featured here.