Now! Now! Is that polite of you? I start off with 'Familiarity breeds contempt' and is it nice of you to say, "With some, the first sight counts as familiarity for this purpose" and direct meaningful glances at me? What did I ever do to you?
It is sort of true though of a lot of people. Like your film stars for example. You see them all aglitter on screen and on stage and you fall head over heels. Getting closer, though, could be a problem. I mean, after knowing that it takes three hours and a ton of chemicals to make that face look that lovely, it is a shade more difficult to swoon at it. All art is like that. When you see only the end result, you are taken by the beauty; when you see the effort, you start dissecting the artistry. (Not to mention the fact that it is rumored that the ONLY way you can see some people as they appear on screen IS on screen - till they find a way to photoshop the real person and not only the image.) So, yes, familiarity can take the glitter off a person.
Those, though, are not the only celebrities who are so affected. In the more mundane world of writing, there is still the problem. Hear of a school-friend who has a book out and what immediately springs in your mind? "Arre! THAT chap who had to keep holding his shorts up in order to keep them in place? You mean he expects people to actually spend money on his writing?" Exactly what the vertical position of his shorts in his childhood had to do with his linguistic and other abilities is something that everyone else seems to understand. So, there is the case - if you are familiar with a person, you hold his art in contempt, more often than not. Even if you are too kindly a person to hold anyone in contempt, a stranger's art is likely to get respect whereas a friend's art gets, at best, indulgence. Which is why an author probably should aim for respect for his writing from rank strangers and not friends.
You need not be a celebrity in order to be faced with this issue. After all, when they said in Hindi "Ghar ki murgi daal barabar" ('A gourmet meal at home gets no more respect than a burger' - Loose transliteration), they were not speaking only of celebrities. Ever had your advice sneered at when you gave it only to later on find that the same advice, given by an external consultant, is treated with all the respect that Moses accorded to the 'Ten Commandments'? THAT is your lesson on how familiarity breeds contempt.
Now that I have convinced myself that familiarity with people is counter-productive, I must start standing aloof. As a first step...
"Do I know you?"