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Well known individuals whose private life is incredibly secretive

Last posted Jul 30, 2021 at 08:11PM EDT. Added Jul 08, 2021 at 07:32PM EDT
12 posts from 11 users

A random topic that got me super curious mainly thanks to three specific individuals. First is Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes. One thing I'm aware of regarding Watterson is he's very protective of his most famous creation, refusing TV and merchandising deals when it's clear he's not going to have full say over what's done. When looking up pictures of the man I can only find one , and information about the dude's personal life seems pretty scarce too. Just interesting to me that the creator of one of the most famous newspaper comics in the world is kind of a mystery with really only one known photo of him.

Similar to Watterson, there's the recently passed Kentaro Miura of Berserk fame. This is like the only photo of the man I can find online (and even then I mostly see people using it to joke about similar he looks to Filthy Frank), and while it is sorta well known that one aspect of his personal life is the dude loved Idol Master, it does look like not a whole lot is known about his personal life when compared to some other well known manga creators. Hell his death wasn't even reported until two weeks after it happened, that's how secretive this man's life was.

And finally there's Bansky, a prolific artist who has somehow managed to never be photographed in his entire life, and I can't help but find it kinda odd but fascinating that that's the case.

Until a lawsuit a couple of years ago the band Ghost was incredibly secretive about their identities. The band had gone through dozens of roster changes without anyone being the wiser, even Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters played with them at least once.

I personally love when art is created under a guise of anonymity. It adds a layer of intrigue and a meta-character to the artist.

You've also got Stefan Burnett, aka MC Ride. His name is more or less all anyone knows aside from his stage alias. Whatever else we know comes from like, one interview. Hell, just about all of Death Grips is super secretive as well. I know nothing about Zach and Andy.

If you know Ghost, well known internet broadcast host from “The Ghost Show” formerly True Capitalist Radio, you’d know that his identity is pretty confined. After all these years of trolling and doxxing, Ghost himself still hasn’t been seen.

I think people forget that most celebrities don't have that much presence outside of their bubbles. Kanye West and Nicki Minaj, the Kardashians, Britney Spears, they are the exception, not the norm.

But I guess to stay in the spirit of the question, some of the most notoriously difficult to reach / no info given celebrities:

Peter Dinklage : Highly secretive about his personal life, has not even revealed his children's names to the public.

For a while, both Rowan Atkinson and Bill Murray were nearly unreachable. Famously, if you wanted Murray in your movie, you had to call a number and literally pitch your film at the answering machine. If he thought he wanted to do it, he would randomly show up at the set.

Kraftwerk : Already in the 70s, they were notorious for this. They rarely gave interviews and when they did, they would do them "remotely" through custom made dummies/robots of themselves. At one point, to even contact them, they would instruct you to call a number at an exact time to a phone that had no ringtone (because they considered it "noise pollution") where Hütter would answer.

And let's not even get into most of the black metal scene where most don't even perform with their faces uncovered (i.e. Mgla)

As for mangakas, literally nearly all of them are social recluses and we would be here all year listing all of them. And let's not start with doujinshi artist because they're even worse. The most notorious are probably Masamune Shirow (Ghost in the Shell) due to his past as a hentai artist and school teacher (yes really), Akira Toriyama (Dragonball, Dragon Quest) was at one point even rumored to be dead and Itagaki Paru (Beastars) does all of her interviews wearing a chicken mask.

And on that end, Yoko Taro (Drakengard, Nier) does the same with his No.7 "Emil" mask as he considers that authors should stay out of the public perception as much as possible and let their work speak for itself.

And then there's V-Tubers. Literally all but two of them can be listed here. Calli and Coco are the exception as they were already doing other media stuff before taking on their characters. Hell, it's only very recently that Nozomi Kasuga finally outed herself as the original Kizuna Ai (due to a controversy following the "multiple Ais" arc she had, you can thank the Chinese bilibili viewers again for that one).

You could list most japanese media here. There's a reason why most events involving japanese authors expressly forbid pictures and recordings.

Oh, Shigeru Miyamoto is a bit of an interesting case. On one hand we know a lot about his professional life, and the dude has reveal how some elements of his life translate into his games (Zelda was based on exploring caves in his hometown as a child, and the Chain-Chomp enemy in Mario was based on an encounter with a chained up dog), but he's not open to talking about his family life much. Only time I can recall him ever mentioning anything about his family is he had his son be a play tester on Mario 64, and became concerned about his intelligence when he couldn't figure out how to proceed in a level. There was once an urban legend flying around that in that one photo of developer Dylan Cuthbert at a wedding where Miyamoto is in attendance, a rumor flew around that the woman Cuthbert married is "Miyamoto's daughter," but eventually Cuthbert revealed "no, Miyamoto doesn't even have a daughter."

Juki Nuki wrote:

You've also got Stefan Burnett, aka MC Ride. His name is more or less all anyone knows aside from his stage alias. Whatever else we know comes from like, one interview. Hell, just about all of Death Grips is super secretive as well. I know nothing about Zach and Andy.

Zach was a famous drummer in the 2000s math rock scene, he played Hella, classic band.

The only person that I always remember that has manage be one of the people to change the VN industry forever, and is responsible to have so many doujins (and hentai ones) from other manga artists made in one series because one of his VN contains eroge content which leads all up to Fate/Grand Order, is none other than Kinoko Nasu himself.

Although he does made his appearance 2-3 times, and even done in interviews as he done Q&A many times, people don't know what his whole actual life is many times. As always he have his avatar as this. Just a mushroom. It's to the point that the mushroom has made cameos in Type-Moon series.

Still, I find it pretty bizarre

Last edited Jul 15, 2021 at 02:12AM EDT

Steve Ditko, the late comic book artist who created/co-created Spider-Man, Dr. Strange, Speedball, Captain Atom, Hawk and Dove, The Question, and Mr. A.

There's very few photos of the guy circulating around, there's only one known recording of his voice, he usually didn't do interviews or make any public appearances, and the only thing we know for certain about him is his Randian politics, which we only even know about because of Mr. A.

Nox Lucis wrote:

Tommy Wiseau is a personal favorite human enigma. A clearer picture has gradually formed over the years, but a lot of it is still based on conjecture and Tommy's word.

And with what Greg gave us in the Disaster Artist, we only get an idea of Tommy's life before coming to America. Most we got that's definite from what I heard and read is Tommy being from Poland which could make sense with what Greg said about Tommy coming from the Iron Curtain. Poland was more open to outside things than Russia was during the USSR or at least had things smuggled in more easily so it would make sense Tommy would see a Disney movie and end up wanting to go to America.

Skeletor-sm

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