Hollywood celebrities are used to getting things for free. But some celebs live their daily lives completely on the tabs of others, reports the New York Post.

WE all know celebrities get free stuff - swag - just for being famous. But did you know that there are some stars who eat, fly, sleep, party, do virtually everything in their day-to-day life for free? All they do is demand it, take it, or simply walk out on the tab. The Hollywood "gimme!" syndrome has run amuck.

They go on to detail how stars like Britney Spears, Sharon Stone, Andy Dick and others try to con people out of free stuff or just walk out without paying. Many companies give up the stuff willingly in exchange for publicity, while others are forced to chase them down for payment or return.

[Rachel] Hunter, says one event publicist, never met a gift bag she didn't like. In fact, she likes them so much she often takes four or five at a time.

She's so determined that, a few years ago, at a Maxim Magazine party in Los Angeles, she left the party but came back to collect a few more bags.

Unluckily for her, the police had shut down the event due to overcrowding and were attempting to clear the area. Hunter gamely ignored them, until finally a policeman was forced to yell over a megaphone: "Ma'am! Step away from the goodie bags!"

Entertainment Weekly has more. They say that the cost of perks is about 5% of a studio's film budget. So for a $100 Million movie, about $5 Million of that is just for perks.

Every time you accede to a star's demands, you need to take money from somewhere else. One action star, for example, requires a basketball court wherever he's shooting, even if it means spending $35,000 to build one. Such extravagance, says one production executive, inevitably comes out of someone else's paycheck: "People who work below the line get squeezed: the director of photography, the editor."

Ultimately, of course, anything that drives up the cost of any entertainment product eventually trickles down to the audience. "The consumer ends up paying for it," one studio chief says flatly. If the 5 percent estimate is roughly accurate across the entertainment industry, when you fork over $10 for a movie ticket or $18 for a CD, bear in mind that anywhere from 50 cents to a dollar of your hard-earned cash may be going to pay for a star's dog to fly first-class. Fido thanks you.

All of this self-aggrandizement certainly explains why some celebrities flock to entitlement politics.

But studios are fighting back. Following the dot-com bust of 2000, bottom lines are a lot leaner. With shrinking profitability, many studios are now balking at celebrities outlandish demands, and enduring the resulting temper tantrum.