Ivanka Trump

Being celeb spawn has always been a ticket to success in Bollywood, but Hollywood is fast catching up with the trend. Not everybody is like Bryce Dallas Howard, Ron Howard’s daughter who can be seen in M. Night Shyamalan’s latest offering, The Village, who claimed that “acting in dad’s films was never an option at all”.

Some clearly prefer to capitalise on a name. After the heiress from the Hilton hospitality dynasty Paris Hilton made a sensational splash on the Net (do we need to go into the details, again?), the ratings for her show, The Simple Life, only went up. She co-stars in the series — about rich girls trying to slum it — with friend and fellow star daughter Nicole Richie, daughter of singer Lionel Richie (so what if she is adopted?).

Ivanka Trump has done more for herself than make the most of a last name. The daughter of Donald and Ivana Trump has achieved supermodel status, hitting the London, Paris and Milan ramps while still in school.

But let’s not forget the days when budding actors shunned their A-list name tags to make a name for themselves: Angelina Jolie (estranged daughter of Jon Voight); Nicholas Cage Coppola (yes, he is Francis Ford Coppola’s nephew) and Kate Hudson (who turned down a role with mother Goldie Hawn’s long-time partner Kurt Russell to avoid association and make it on her own).