Fame occasionally alights overnight. Other times it takes a lifetime. But celebrity can clog the arteries of creative people. Sometimes they overcome it and sometimes they don’t. Fame can be a seductive mistress or a metastasizing cancer, depending on how you handle it.

Stars cope in different ways. Kevin Costner, whose hit “Yellowstone” returns Nov. 10 on Paramount, insists he refuses to be ruled by it. “You can get caught up in this thing, and I'm as guilty as anybody,” he says.

“You're embarrassed by it, and you're hurt by it. But I've also had a lot of great things said about me. I've had my share. The media doesn't create me, and it also doesn't tear me apart. It's really up to me.”

As for Nicole Kidman, who is starring in Netflix’s “A Family Affair,” she thinks it's part of the tuition she pays to do her job. “Being an actor is something that you get paid a lot of money to do, and you have a very, very privileged and lucky life. And with it comes being recognized. I mean, it's not something you go, “Ohhh, this is fantastic. I love it!' It's something that you have to put up with.

“But it's not something that I would sit and go, ‘What a bummer, what a terrible life I have,’ and complain and complain.’”

It does make you more mindful, she thinks. “You're being watched all the time, but you have to be aware of that, so it doesn't alter your life experiences. I think that's so important — especially if you have children.”

Sylvester Stallone, back again in “Tulsa King” on Paramount+, uses his fame to great advantage. But, he warns, “You'll never be related to as a normal person. No one's ever going to tell you really what they think. It's always going to be kind of heightened -- either they're going to be extremely standoffish, cold, or they're going to be smug because they think that's the best way. Because no one wants to be obsequious. I say, ‘Just be YOU always. Right, man?”

Jennifer Lopez (upcoming “Kiss of the Spider Woman”) says you need to develop a thick skin to cope with fame. “You do at the beginning when it starts happening, and then you have to develop a way to deal with it. And my way of dealing with it is to not even know what's going on. I don't know half the things they say, or half the things they write, or half the rumors that are out there ... don't care, don't care to know, don't ask anybody what's going on.”

Nicolas Cage (“Longlegs”) says he used to fret that renown would prevent him from scrutinizing people. “The process of acting was, in my opinion, observation,” he says.

“That is true of anything — if you're a writer, director, photographer, you observe. I do get a distorted reality. It's not normal. Because of that, it becomes not something that is totally accessible or easy to touch. I don't know what to do with it. I have waves where there's more recognition and more contact and waves where there is less. I think as long as you can keep aware, it's OK if you can be objective. Sometimes I get confused. I admit sometimes I'll wonder, ‘Why is that person treating me like that?’ And you forget you're famous or people know who you are.”

Julia Roberts, who’s streaming “Leave the World Behind” on Netflix, takes all her prominence in stride, emphasizing she always wanted to be an actor, not a movie star. “You need to understand that it is a balance and knowing the priorities of your life,” she says.

“Work is important to me, and it's something that I nurture and take care of in my life. But, at the same time, what is the ability to work and the happiness that comes from that if you don't have people to share it with? If you don't have a home life and family?”

Keira Knightley says she avoids the tincture of fame. “To tell you the truth, because I’m working so much, and I’m on film sets, they are like a little protective bubble, so I’m not really aware of it. I learned pretty early on never to read anything written about you, so I don’t do that, so I mean actually I can safely say very truthfully, I don’t know about most of it, and that’s the way I like to keep it.”

Tom Hanks seems to have mastered fame with uncommon grace. “I get asked, ‘How do you stay such a regular guy with your feet on the ground?’ I say it's because the streets of my town are littered with the corpses of people who let everything else get away from them,” he says.

“Life is one damn thing after another anyway, and the most important thing you can do for yourself is maintain an even strain.”

But he's been more fortunate than most, he thinks. “I've been lucky. I've been able to travel as much as I have and to climb those golden stairs at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and the Shrine Auditorium (for his two Oscars). But I always have been very lucky that I've had that guy in the back of the chariot that followed Caesar into Rome and warned that all fame is fleeting. I've been able to pretty much understand that.”