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Do celeb bodyguards ever sleep?

Wed., Apr. 11, 2007 5:21 PM PDT by Leslie Gornstein

Do stars' bodyguards live with them or very close by? How in heaven's name would bodyguards of famous people ever get time to rest, much less sleep?
—Kathy, Queens, New York

The B!tch Replies: Famedom features two flavors of bodyguard, so it depends which model of goon you mean.

I assume you're thinking of what trained security pros call Hollywood bodyguards, the human beef cubes with words like Big or Nasty before their names, who lumber behind their clients like doped wildebeests—until a paparazzo shows up.

Then they manage to leap, dik-dik like, into each frame, while glaring and groping at the lens for effect.

These folks "typically live in the guesthouse, poolhouse or over the garage," says Steve Browand, of the security firm NYSS Group. There, they chill, waiting for a cell-phone call from Lindsay or Britney or whoever is their client, announcing that the clubs are crackin' and it's time to roll.

"Usually, when the celebrity is up, they're up," Browand tells this B!tch, "and when the celebrity goes to sleep, they can sleep."

To be clear, Browand and other experts say, "Hollywood bodyguards" usually have nothing to do with the shadowy little ninjas in suits that VIPs hire when poisoned-pen letters start showing up to the production office or those restraining orders aren't quite taking. Nay, nay, nay.

Hollywood bodyguards usually get their jobs when a young star wants to radiate an image of maniacal fandom and asks friends to find a guy who can hang and recruit the occasional sexual conquest.

"It's all about flash," Browand says. "The star thinks, Give me a seven-foot-six, 300-pound gorilla. The celebrity finds it very sexy. I've had them ask, 'How big is your gun?' "

HBs love to threaten the press. They also love to call the press later and apologize and ask how much money they can get for the occasional scoop.

"They usually become more of a problem than anything else," New York security expert Jow LaSorsa says.

HBs usually come with little to no training, sources tell me, unless you count bench-pressing at Gold's Gym a course in security. (Well, okay, one bodyguard who claims to have done club duty for Hilary and Haylie Duff is a martial-arts practitioner who fights in the occasional cage match.)

Browand says HBs are lucky to make $200 a day. (Walking Mary-Kate's dog is its own reward, I guess.) By contrast, folks like Browand charge about that much per hour, never send one guard to work more than eight hours at a time—and they're fine with operating without a silly nickname.