Paris Hilton is used to simply standing in front of cameras for her fame, but now there is apparently some substance behind the pose. The world's most famous socialite now has another claim to fame - jail time - and has revealed her personal changes to "Larry King Live."
While she has been criticized for being fame hungry and talentless, the Hilton Hotel heiress says that doing time behind bars has changed her. Now, according to Paris, she is going to help those less fortunate than her.
As far as the starlet is concerned, it only took just over three weeks to change her outlook on life. She said, "I feel like, you know, being in the spotlight, I have a platform where I can raise awareness for so many great causes, and just do so much with this, instead of, you know, superficial things like going out. I want to help raise money for kids and for breast cancer, multiple sclerosis and..."
Paris violated her DUI probation on numerous occasions and wound up with a prison sentence. While she now has a criminal record, "The Simple Life" star says that she doesn't regret anything she has done. She told Larry King, "I think in life, everyone makes mistakes and you have to learn and grow from them. And I've been a little immature in the past and made some wrong choices. But I learned from them, and I think that makes me the person I am today."
The Paris of yesterday involved a club-hopping party animal who courted the paparazzi around Los Angeles. But the Paris of today is apparently going to be much more mature.
She said she is retiring from the partying lifestyle, revealing, "I'm frankly sick of it. I've been going out for a long time now. Yeah, it's fun, but it's not going to be the mainstay of my life anymore."
While some people spend years in jail and others are fighting battles at war, the wanna-be singer milked her 23 days in solitary confinement. She said, "It was a very traumatic experience, but I feel like God does make everything happen for a reason. And it gave me, you know, a time-out in life to really find out what's important and what I want to do, figuring out who I am. And I'm - even though it was really hard, I took that time just to get to know myself."
Paris' legal woes have been compared to O.J. Simpson's in terms of media focus. She was met by hundreds of photographers and camera crews when she emerged from the Los Angeles County Jail.
While on the surface nothing has changed - the paparazzi, the blonde hair extensions, the nice-girl persona - only time will tell if jail really had a long-term effect on the celebrity everyone loves to hate.
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