Britney Spears has known the highs and lows of how the US treats its celebrities, traveling from Mickey Mouse club child actor to teen pop icon, to global superstar – and then more than a decade under legal conservatorship after a mental health crisis before winning freedom, for the first time perhaps, to be herself.
But now there are fears of a new chapter in Spears’s saga, or the return to an old unhappy one, after she reportedly had a late-night fight with her boyfriend at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles resulting in paramedics being called and pictures of a barefoot pop princess, mostly naked save for a pillow and a blanket, appeared in the tabloids.