Once the loudest, proudest fame whores around, Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag lived a fake life for the sake of cameras for years and reaped the benefits.
Nowadays, however, things are a bit different.
They’re broke and living in a beach house in Santa Barbara owned by his folks, who let them live there rent-free. Few other family members speak to them.
Heidi Montag’s plastic surgery binge has marred her face and body. They are largely unemployable, both on camera and off, victims of their own success.
Pratts Play with Guns
Three short years ago, they were at the top of their game with The Hills, working every lever of the celebrity industrial-machine to their advantage.
Speidi. One word said it all. You knew them. You hated them. But you ate up their antics and the celeb culture they embodied. They knew it. Worked it.
But things turned dark as The Hills wound down. By the end of 2009, their lives grew increasingly insane ... not to mention financially unsustainable.
Lavish spending on useless crap - cars, clothes, her music career - killed them.
“We were getting paid to be people we weren’t for so long that there’s no line,” Spencer Pratt says. “What we learned is, you can be too famous.”
"Obviously I wish I didn't do it. I would go back and not have any surgery. It doesn't help. I got too caught up in Hollywood, being so into myself and my image."
The Hollywood vortex sucked them up good, according to their accounts. They blew through money for Montag's music career and to look the part of Tinseltown stars. Pratt says he "probably spent a million dollars on suits and fancy clothes. My million-dollar wardrobe -- I would never wear that again. They're props."
They now refer to themselves as "broke" and are living in a beach house in Santa Barbara because Pratt's parents don't charge them rent.
As for the reality TV game, Pratt is particularly discontent about making up a "fake" life for the cameras and seeking fame: "We were living each other’s mistakes -- everything we were doing, in retrospect, was a mistake. The second we continued on our quest for fame was a mistake.
"This isn’t a business. That was the big thing I didn’t get: Reality TV is not a career. Anyone who says, ‘Oh, you can have a career in reality’—that is a lie.”
Another sore spot? Being asked to hit your own sibling. Pratt alleges that a Hills producer tried to coax him into pressuring his sister and cast mate Stephanie to "hit rock bottom." He claims a producer specifically told him to hit Stephanie to generate buzz similar to when Snooki was punched in a bar on Jersey Shore.
Pratt said, "That's when I snapped. To the point when I said -- and this is when producers got scared of me -- 'You want me to punch my sister in the face? Are you trying to get me to kill you?' I didn't say, 'I'm killing you,' If I did, MTV would have had me arrested."
