Famous people die earlier than the rest of us, says study

One more reason the rock and roll lifestyle of binge drinking, late night parties and recreational drug use isn't all its chalked up to be.

A new study out of Australia says famous performers tend to have shorter lives than the rest of us. But it isn't just performers who experience shorter life spans, athletes also die around the same age.

The study -- conducted by Dr. Richard Epstein at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney and his partner Catherine Epstein -- analyzed 1,000 consecutive obituaries published in the New York Times during 2009 and 2011, which took into account gender, age, occupation and cause of death.

Also see:

The results? People who were both successful and famous died earliest.

Performers and athletes died at an average age of 77.2. This compared to creative workers who averaged 78.5 years, professionals and academics averaging 81.7, and people in business, military and political careers averaging 83.

Philanthropists, academics and doctors were the most likely to die of "old age," a cause of death least likely among performers.

Lung cancers deaths — which the authors considered a probably indication of chronic smoking — were most common in performers (7.2 per cent), and least common among professionals/academics (1.4 per cent).

The researchers -- whose study has been published in QJM: An International Journal of Medicine -- can only speculate as to why these numbers add up as they do.

“First, if it is true that successful performers and sports players tend to (have) shorter lives, does this imply that fame at younger ages predisposes to poor health behaviour later in life after success has faded?” Epstein says about his findings to the Toronto Star.