The early 2000s gave rise to a particular cultural phenomenon: the celebrity whose fame derived less from a single craft than from the perpetual performance of visibility itself. Paris Hilton, born on February 17, 1981, in New York City, became one of the defining figures of that moment — a socialite who parlayed an inherited name into a sprawling, self-constructed public identity.

A great-granddaughter of Conrad Hilton, the founder of Hilton Hotels, she attended several schools during her youth, including the Dwight School, The Buckley School, the Professional Children's School, and Marywood-Palm Valley school, among others. Rather than following a conventional path into a single profession, she moved across multiple fields simultaneously. She worked as a model and fashion model, a singer, a musician, a disc jockey, a fashion designer, a film and television actor, and a businessperson — occupations that, taken together, describe someone less interested in a single discipline than in the accumulation of platforms.

Her public profile intensified considerably in 2003. That year she began co-starring with Nicole Richie in the reality television series The Simple Life, which ran until 2007 and placed the two women in deliberately unglamorous situations as a sustained comic premise. Also in 2003, a sex tape involving Hilton and Rick Salomon was leaked; it was subsequently released in 2004 under the title 1 Night in Paris. Both events, arriving nearly simultaneously, fixed her at the center of tabloid culture for years to follow.

Her work as a film actor drew formal, if unflattering, recognition from the Golden Raspberry Awards, which granted her the Worst Actress award, the Worst Supporting Actress award, the Worst Screen Couple/Ensemble award, and the Worst Actress of the Decade award. These honors, issued in earnest mockery, nonetheless confirm the extent to which she was a sustained presence in the popular imagination during that period.