SHORT TAKES : Celebs Calculate Price of Fame

Glenn Close changed her phone number. Steve Martin became closer to his parents. Sylvester Stallone’s blood pressure increased. Arsenio Hall got scared.

Fame affects celebrities in a variety of ways, as several of them reveal in the November issue of Cosmopolitan magazine.

“You’re not a person anymore. You’re someone to be challenged and stripped of your identity,” Stallone says. “I enjoyed the attention at first. Now, as soon as they touch me, my hands ball up into a fist.”

Martin says his stardom has given his parents a new pastime: “We’ll go out for a drive, and my mother will say, ‘Let’s stop here and get out. You walk on the street, and we’ll watch the people look at you.’ ”

For talk show host Hall, success has been sweet vindication--although he is afraid it could all slip away.

“I’m happiest when I’m out there doing the show. I’m scared the rest of the time,” Hall confesses. “I don’t want to go back where I started.”