The actor has become the latest celebrity to retire less than gracefully, joining Shia LaBeouf in his very public break-up with fame

The actor has become the latest celebrity to retire less than gracefully, joining Shia LaBeouf in his very public break-up with fame

No one wants to be a celebrity any more. Alec Baldwin has retired from public life. He's done with it. Indeed, he has so emphatically had enough that he has penned a break-up letter to his own fame for New York magazine. His 5,000-word farewell concludes with an expression of sympathy for Shia LaBeouf, who announced his own desire to leave the limelight by donning a paper bag bearing the words: "I am not famous any more." Even Jennifer Lawrence might be sacking it off for a while, according to Harvey Weinstein. But is it possible to just disappear? Well, actually, yes. Here are four proven ways to ditch the burden of being famous:

Find religion and denounce your former work
You are always going to be playing second fiddle when you share cast space with mid-meltdown Charlie Sheen, but Two and a Half Men child star Angus T Jones ensured his inevitable slide into the Where Are They Now? file by becoming a Seventh Day Adventist and roundly slagging off the only notable thing he had ever done. "Stop watching it," he urged fans of the show, as his agent "cleared his schedule" for the rest of his life.

Go a bit weird and open a ridiculous business
When you are a footballer who retires at the age of 29, with a good half-decade left in you, it's usually due to persistent injury. The former Leeds United and Sweden midfielder Tomas Brolin, however, retired for the simple reason that he had become irreparably bad at playing football. His retirement saw him helming a company that made vacuum cleaner parts, owning a restaurant that, according to Swedish press reports, repeatedly got done for allowing underage drinking, and lots of people laughing at him for both of the above.

Document your messy demise via the medium of song
When you are the most famous band on the planet, it is difficult to execute a complete vanishing act, but Abba, and in particular the female half of it, made a pretty good fist of it in the aftermath of the release of the album The Visitors, quite possibly the most depressing record ever made. Wrought in the midst of the two couples' divorces, it culminates in the overwhelmingly bleak Like an Angel Passing Through my Room, of which the underlying message is: "This is effectively the end of your life as a pop star, ha ha." To hammer it home, the record ends with the sound of a clock coming to a stop. There's a reason why they don't do reunion gigs.

Just generally be an awful human being
To be more specific, adopt the public persona of the singer Steve Brookstein, or at least the bitter, prejudiced-against-everything underling who apparently tweets on his behalf. As recently as last week, Steve described depression as "lazy sadness", and in the past he has suggested that the showbiz journalist Dan Wootton should contract HIV. He does not get a lot of bookings these days.