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Just ask Madonna, Courtney Love, Drew Barrymore and Sharon Stone.
For years, they were the premier bad girls of music and films. They flaunted their sexuality and revelled in their roles as modern temptresses.
Times they are a changin'.
DREW BARRYMORE
Barrymore who once starred in such films as Bad Girls, Boys on the Side, Mad Love, Poison Ivy and the Amy Fisher Story will soon be featured as Cinderella and Dorothy for The Wizard of Oz.
"After I did a slew of bad girl roles, every one thought I was a bad girl. My bouts with alcohol and drugs are all on record but that's in my past. I don't even want to play these kind of women any more."
In real life, Barrymore, 23, who once bragged of bisexual experiences, is in love with actor Luke Wilson.
"I used to think sex was sexy. Now I realize that intellect, wit and humor are far more sexy and beautiful."
Barrymore says changing her image was a matter of survival.
"I love being an actress but I realized my private excesses were destroying my career."
She says it is Hollywood's double standard that allowed Christian Slater and Robert Downey Jr. to work when every one in the industry knew they were abusing drugs and alcohol.
"If it had been a woman, she'd have been run out of Hollywood in an instant. We're not allowed to have opinions without getting a bad reputation."
SHARON STONE
Sharon Stone, 39, is a different woman these days.
The one time icy femme fatale married newspaper editor Phil Bronstein.
In the recent past, monogamy has not been Stone's strong suit and she has not been particularly flattering about her former beaus.
She called Dwight Yoakam "worse than a dirt sandwich," production assistant Bob Wagner, a decade her junior, a "sexy boy-toy" and returned Bill MacDonald's engagement ring via Federal Express.
"Contrary to popular belief, I'm not promiscuous and I never deserved my reputation as a home wrecker," insists Stone who was married for eight years to producer Michael Greenburg who helmed her movies King Solomon's Mines and Allan Quartermain and the Lost City of Gold.
"I loved my husband from the minute I laid eyes on him. I wanted us to be the perfect couple. The problem is I never believed I was lovable."
Stone credits the power she gained in Hollywood after Basic Instinct for helping her know herself better.
"I learned how to survive in a man's world. It didn't make me popular but it made me stronger.
"No one will ever exploit Sharon Stone again except Sharon Stone. Now that's power in Hollywood."
COURTNEY LOVE
It was fear of not working in film that put punk rocker Courtney Love on the fast track to image control.
Once an admitted drug addict, Love agreed to take drug tests daily in order to work on the movie The People vs Larry Flint.
For the past two years, Love insists she has been drug free and is even speaking out against drug use.
"I've been there and I know what drugs can do.
"I believe it's time for artists like me to tell the world what drugs can do to a person.
"They made me a widow," says Love referring to the suicide of her husband Kurt Cobain.
Love just loves her new lifestyle.
"I'm earning respect and that's a really empowering feeling."
Love is so intent on burying her past that she is trying to block the release of Kurt & Courtney, a documentary by British filmmaker Nick Broomfield that suggests Love might have participated in Cobain's murder.
MADONNA
Madonna is the queen of image reinvention.
She was Blonde Ambition and The Material Girl and now she's Mama Madonna.
The singer/actress insists motherhood has been responsible for her personal and, hopefully, career salvation.
"Lourdes Maria's birth was like a rebirth for me," says Madonna.
"She has put my life and my career in a perspective it never had. I am responsible for someone other than myself now. I can't afford to do anything unless I consider how it will impact on her life."
Madonna insists that means no more sex books, raunchy videos and lurid films.
"When she sees things from my early life and career I will always be able to tell Lourdes that that was me before she was part of my life.
"I don't regret those things I did. They were part of different me."