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Paris Hilton has become, in a relatively young life, one of the most photographed women in the world. As a social media trailblazer, she transformed her personal world into a very public business. And as a reality TV pioneer, she let cameras follow her into every aspect of her life. So, try this on for size: she’s quite … shy?
“I’m actually very shy,” the 44-year-old DJ, designer and businesswoman confesses. “When I tell people that, they’re like, ‘you are not shy’, they don’t believe me. But I’ve always been a very shy person. And before I did my first concert, I was so nervous, I was freaking out having anxiety because I had never done something like that before.”
On stage with music collaborators Miley Cyrus and Sia, the spotlight aimed at the trio, Hilton’s nerves surfaced again. “They both looked at me, and they’re like, ‘Paris, it’s so normal, we’ve been doing this our whole lives and we get nervous every time we go on stage too’,” she says.
“Being nervous is a good thing,” Hilton adds. “It just means you care. Now every time I get on stage, I’m like, this is my happy place. I love it so much. Seeing the excitement in the room and this love and energy. It’s indescribable, the feeling in the room.”
At one point, Hilton told her husband, entrepreneur Carter Reum: “This is what I was born to do, this is what I love to do, this is the best night of my life. And he said, ‘what about our wedding?’”
She replied: “That was amazing, but this is the best night of my life. Because [being on stage] was a dream I’ve had my whole life. To be brave enough to do it has been amazing.”
Hilton’s latest project is titled Infinite Icon, a documentary film which accompanies her 2024 studio album of the same name, produced with Australian-born pop star Sia. Released 18 years after her debut album Paris, her second studio album folds her work as a dance-pop DJ into an electro-infused pastiche of French house, synth-pop, nu-disco and electroclash.
Music is a big part of the mosaic of Hilton’s life, in part because she says it saved her life. As a teenager, she was sent to boarding schools which were, in many cases, reformatory institutions with polite branding that ranged from “wilderness therapy” to “boot camp”. Aimed at “troubled teens”, Hilton recalls the experience now with profound pain.
“The one thing that would be an escape for me, that would just make me forget about any intrusive thoughts or any trauma, would be music,” Hilton says. “Music has such power, where you can hear a lyric and a song, and it can change your mood or even change your life. That is so powerful for me.”
In 2021, Hilton testified before the Utah State Legislature to campaign for increased government oversight of youth residential treatment centres. In 2022, she took her campaign to Washington DC, appearing before the United States House Committee, advocating for measures to improve child welfare in the US. And in 2023, Hilton played a key role in pushing the Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act through the US Congress.
“I hope that people remember me not just for beauty or fashion or things like that, things that are more superficial, I hope people remember me for using my voice to make a difference,” Hilton says. “It’s important when people can use their fame to make the world a better place, to do something good [with fame] rather than something only for themselves.”
Hilton describes her advocacy work as “the most meaningful work of my life. It’s been so healing, and it’s just transformed my life in so many ways. It was so painful and traumatic, where I didn’t want to think about it any more. That’s when I knew that I had to use my voice and say something.
“It was something that I locked away, and had severe nightmares about for so many years. I was so scared because the world thought of me as this caricature,” Hilton adds. “I was just overwhelmed with love from people who had experienced the same thing. And hearing from so many survivors, it changed my life.”
The great-granddaughter of Hilton Hotels founder Conrad Hilton, the New York-born, Los Angeles-based star has enjoyed an extraordinary trajectory: first as a fashion model, then a reality TV star, author of Paris: The Memoir, the podcast I am Paris, and lately a DJ and singer.
In a sense, the emergence of Paris Hilton – the character – was provocative. Very blonde and seemingly flighty, she enjoyed poking the entrenched misogyny of people who have an opinion on women who have opinions. Her rising star was both a result of and a reaction to the notion that being young, rich and female was perceived as some kind of cultural sin.
“For so long, I was playing the character I thought the world wanted and it was entertainment for people,” Hilton says. “I was just a young girl discovering who I was, but with the whole world watching and judging and picking everything apart.
“In my mind, I would just always be thinking, I just felt very misunderstood and that I didn’t even have time to reflect because my life was moving so fast and so much was being thrown at me,” she says. “Doing the memoir was a time where I could step back, look at it all and see how myself and other young women were treated back then.”
Unleashed, she has transformed that blonde brand into a multimedia business worth an estimated $US400 million, tapping into everything from branded lifestyle goods to cosmetics, including a signature fragrance line which has notched up US$2.5 billion in sales. The shy girl who has at times struggled to find her voice, suddenly had her hands on the volume control.
I look at my daughter, and I just wanted to give her the best life where … she’ll never feel the way that I did when I was little.
“The power of being vulnerable and being real, even when it’s scary, even when it’s hard, it really has a domino effect,” Hilton says. “I was at Brittany’s wedding, Selena [Gomez] came up to me and she told me that she watched my documentary and she’s like, ‘I’m so grateful to you for doing that documentary because it made me feel like I could tell my story too’.
“For so long, a lot of us were taught just project this perfect life – you don’t want anything negative,” she says. “That’s just not how real life is. People are going to go through things in life. And even though it’s a difficult conversation, it’s important.”
In an era where digital fame is fleeting and ubiquitous, Hilton remains the poster girl for the social media generation. It’s certainly hard to imagine her without a phone camera in her hand, taking a selfie. It’s easy to dismiss as frivolous, but it’s also a dialect of a sort, a means of communication between teenagers who use social platforms in the way some us grew up using rotary-dial phones.
“I feel lucky that I grew up as a teenager when we didn’t have any of this,” Hilton says. “I thought that was great because we were able to just build real friendships and not just be stuck on a phone or online all the time.”
Social media, for Hilton, became a tool to tell her story without filtration. “For so much of my life, my story has been told by other people,” she says. “When social media came, I felt like it was the first time I could actually tell my story, and it wasn’t controlled by some gossip columnist. The power, and taking back my voice, was something that was really important to me.”
And yet, as much as she has both hands on the steering wheel, the real Paris Hilton – the girl who takes her business and brand very seriously, dotes on her children Phoenix, 3, and London, 2, and deals with stage fright – still shares the stage with the girl on the billboard, the one with the blonde hair, the designer shades and the mic-dropping one-liners.
“I just see a woman who has been through so much in life and is so resilient and strong and has such a huge heart and has empathy and compassion for people,” the real Hilton says of her seemingly unreal alter-ego. “I feel like my inner child has been healed in so many ways, especially just in the past few years, discovering who I really am.
“When you play a character for so long, you sometimes get lost in the character,” Hilton adds. “I look back at that little girl, and now I look at my daughter, London, and I just wanted to give her the best life where she feels so loved and supported, that she’ll never feel the way that I did when I was little, just going through so much.”
Infinite Icon: A Visual Memoir is in selected cinemas from January 30.
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