Hollywood's Most Vandalized Star Says More About America Than Hollywood

Tourists arrive on Hollywood Boulevard looking for celebrities, and the first place they head is the yellow brick road of stars stretching down the sidewalk. The first stop is usually Marilyn Monroe's star at 6774 Hollywood Blvd, the most visited on the Walk. James Dean, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, Walt Disney, and Muhammad Ali come next.

But in Hollywood, foot traffic drawn by notoriety and vandalism counts as 'popular' by the same metric.

Few pieces of real estate in America have absorbed as much public anger as Donald Trump's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Since the 2016 presidential campaign, the terrazzo monument has taken a pickaxe, paint, miniature border walls, protest signs, and repeated repairs. Each restoration revives the same debate about one square of sidewalk.

The Hollywood Walk of Fame recognizes achievements in entertainment, nothing more. The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce established the landmark in 1960 and still owns and administers it today, and the Chamber has rejected every demand to remove a star over a controversial figure. A star marks professional accomplishment. It says nothing about character or conduct that surfaces later.

Trump's star has tested that policy harder than any other.

Trump earned his star in 2007 for his work on NBC's "The Apprentice." After he entered politics, the star became the Walk's most expensive maintenance project. In October 2016, a man dressed as a construction worker attacked it with a sledgehammer and pickaxe. Two years later, a man pulled a pickaxe from a guitar case, destroyed the star again, and turned himself in to police. In October 2020, the original 2016 vandal returned, this time dressed as the Hulk, and took a pickaxe to the star a second time. Graffiti, stickers, paint, mock border walls, and demonstrations filled the years around all three attacks, often timed to elections, court appearances, and major political moments. Workers have rebuilt the star after every attack.

No other star on the Walk carries anywhere close to this many documented attacks.

Rebuilding costs money, and celebrities do not foot that bill themselves. Trump has never paid to replace his own star, and neither Bill Cosby nor Kevin Spacey has covered repairs to theirs. That job belongs to the Hollywood Historic Trust, the nonprofit tied to the Chamber that maintains the Walk and pays for every repair no matter whose name sits on the sidewalk.

Every honoree or sponsoring studio pays an $85,000 sponsorship fee before a star goes down on Hollywood Boulevard. Part of that fee covers fabrication and installation. The rest funds ongoing maintenance, including repairs after vandalism. New stars effectively subsidize the old ones.

Courts have ordered restitution in two of the Trump cases, though the figures rarely capture the full cost. The 2016 vandal paid $4,400 in restitution, and the 2018 vandal paid $9,404.46. Those numbers cover the monument alone. They leave out police investigations, prosecutions, cleanup crews, traffic control, and the labor needed to reopen one of Hollywood's busiest tourist stretches.

The Chamber has never published a running total for what Trump's star has cost to fix since 2016. After three attacks, repeated graffiti, and routine maintenance, nobody outside the Chamber knows the real number.

Bill Cosby's star turned into its own flashpoint after dozens of women accused him of sexual assault and a 2018 criminal conviction followed. Vandals scrawled "serial rapist" across the star in marker and spray paint, first in 2014 and again in 2018. The Chamber refused calls to remove it, citing the same policy that governs every star on the Walk: recognition does not disappear when public opinion turns.

Kevin Spacey's star followed a similar arc after multiple misconduct allegations surfaced in 2017. Demonstrators gathered at the site and vandals left graffiti behind, but the star stayed put even as Spacey's career collapsed.

Political anger accounts for some of this, but not all of it. Anti-fur activists spray-painted "Old Fur Hag" across Sharon Stone's star. Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen's star got "Fur Hags" scrawled across it in the same wave of protest. Vandals hit Jenni Rivera's star two weeks after its installation, making it one of the fastest targets in Walk history rather than one of the most frequent.

The Walk of Fame now doubles as a protest stage. Calls to pull controversial stars surface after nearly every major scandal, and the Chamber has turned down every one of them, whether the name involved is Trump, Cosby, Spacey, or someone else. Officials argue the Walk records contributions to entertainment, not moral standing, and public opinion can't erase that record no matter how far it shifts.

Trump isn't the only president with a Hollywood star. Ronald Reagan also has one. Reagan earned his before he entered politics, from decades as a film actor in the 1930s-50s. In 1981, animal rights activists circled Reagan's star to protest his environmental policies, but that was a peaceful demonstration, not vandalism. Reagan's star has stayed physically intact.

Several blocks away, Trump's star has taken a very different beating.

@Santitos

@salinasmariasantos

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