It was the final straw: a 17-year-old Sunday Rose Kidman, stomping her way down the runway looking stern in a beige trench coat with big leather lapels for Calvin Klein at New York Fashion Week last month. Oh God, not another nepo baby!

Since the daughter of Nicole Kidman made her appearance, she has faced accusations and criticism online for getting a leg up on the career ladder: “Nepotism is revolting,” said one person. “Clomp clomp clomp,” declared another about the fact she couldn’t even walk properly. “Without her parents’ connections, she would be helping the REAL models in and out of their runway outfits!” said another.

Then came Harper Beckham and the announcement of her imminent skincare line, to be aimed squarely at tween and teenage girls. The ensuing publicity made much of the fact that “this was all Harper’s idea” and how “she’d always wanted to start her own business”. She was, we were told, a real challenger to Kylie Jenner’s makeup empire – now valued in the billions. However, this excited coverage was quickly replaced by accusations that she was helping to breed “success anxiety” for Gen Z and her privileged path to entrepreneurship simply left people feeling sad and dispirited.

You only have to think of the millions of hopeful actors, models and budding entrepreneurs with bags of talent to understand the resentment – and why we have become nepo baby haters.

So, it was refreshing to hear that Ronnie Wood’s eldest daughter Leah, 47, has “hustled” her way through life as an artist, and has had to “work her arse off” despite her dad having a fortune estimated at £150m.

In an interview with The Times last weekend, Wood even went as far as to say: “I think my dad did me a favour there in not putting tens of millions of pounds into my bank account.” Wow! If I was in her position, I don’t know if I could bring myself to say that, even if it is true.

The only help her Rolling Stones rocker dad has given her, she says, is “money to, like, buy food some days and maybe do the occasional school bill”.

“I have got a very normal life,” she continued. “My husband and I have had to work our arses off. Having kids and stuff, our mortgage to pay and, you know, trying to find X amount of money to fix the old stone wall,” said Wood. “I look at other kids who have got famous families and they just get handouts, and it doesn’t motivate them to be hungry for work, to be passionate for work.”

Wood is determined to hand this work ethic on to her own children, as her dad did for their family. Her brother Jesse Wood, 49, recently appeared in court on a speeding charge and claimed that he was “scraping by” on £1,000 a month, after separating from TV presenter Fearne Cotton.

Nepo babies get a bad name – but it’s always an advantage. At theVanity Fair Oscars party on Sunday night, nepo babies dominated the red carpet, including the models Kaia Gerber, 24, the lookalike daughter of former supermodel Cindy Crawford, and Iris Law, the 25-year-old daughter of actors Jude Law and Sadie Frost. Despite his howls of pain, David and Victoria Beckham’s estranged son Brooklyn still managed to get a whole book out of his much-mocked wildlife photography and a product line from his questionable skills as a chef. Others, like Lily Rose-Depp, the actor daughter of Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis, just float into Hollywood films like it’s their birthright – and it seemingly is.

That’s why we need to hear more about those hardworking children of A-listers like Wood, who are on normal salaries – and dubbed “anti-nepo babies”. It’s refreshing – and throws a new light on the issue of privilege: that you can tear yourself away from your A-list parents and succeed in your own right, saving both your sanity and self-esteem.

Madonna and director Guy Ritchie’s son Rocco Ritchie, 25, has the right idea. It was reported in 2016 that he got a job as a Deliveroo cyclist in London aged 16. He was even toying with the idea of a garden centre. He has proved to be a top mark anti-nepo baby ever since. He has intentionally carved out his own career path as an expressionist painter, aiming to build a reputation away from his parents’ fame. He sold his paintings under the pseudonym Rhed, to hide his famous heritage, until he was unmasked as Madonna’s son in early 2022.

In December, he finally shared a photograph of him with his parents on Instagram, when they both came to support him at his new art exhibition at London’s The Painting Rooms.

Anti-nepo babies show that it’s possible to tear yourself away from an A-list parent and get an ordinary job for your own sanity and self-esteem

“It’s obvious why some people might hold judgement against me; I don’t blame them,” he wrote in the post. “However, I am proud to be who I am, but I’m even prouder to have both of my parents together in one room supporting me. The work should speak for itself, that’s why the show was called ‘Talk Is Cheap’.”

I also love the fact that Gordon Ramsay’s daughter Megan, 27, is a police officer and his son Jack, 26, is a Royal Marine. Ramsay – who is estimated to be worth £162m – has previously said he and his wife Tana have reportedly only agreed to provide 25 per cent for their six children’s first homes. It sounds so refreshingly normal.

There are tons of hard-working A-list offspring out there who are forging their own careers – and not in the entertainment and fashion industry. Anna Wintour’s son Charles is a doctor; Jeff Bridges’ daughter Hayley is an interior designer; Bruce Springteen’s son Sam is a firefighter; Bill Murray’s son Luke is a basketball coach; Robert de Niro’s son Raphael is a real estate broker, and Willem Defoe’s son Jack is an environmentalist.

Jamie Oliver’s 22-year-old daughter, Daisy Boo Pamela Oliver, is a trainee nurse; Ben Atkinson –the mirror image of his dad Rowan Atkinson – joined the British Army’s Royal Gurkha Regiment in 2019; Ulrika Jonsson’s daughter, Bo, 24, is a Norland nanny.

It’s true that nepo babies can’t win – they are damned with a famous name and damned without it. But they seem to forget there is another way – one that usually involves a P60 form, not an A-list parent.

The world of celebrity is so weird that it would be more normal not to jump into the pit – and see it for what it is and get a normal job. But the problem is many of these A-list offspring grow up as a brand – and, as Brooklyn discovered, are part of a PR machine from birth.

Even those who stay in their own lane and actively seek regular jobs live in the shadow of their parents’ famous name. But if Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall’s daughter Leslie, now 73, can break free, any nepo baby can. Leslie lives a relatively normal life out of the spotlight, having worked as a yoga instructor and a nurse in Boston.

We need more anti-nepo babies, like her, who are on normal salaries, so that celebrity culture isn’t normalised. It’s a welcome antidote to a world where Hollywood celebrities are all even starting to look alike with the rise of the “copy-paste face”, which just leaves us wondering if they are all just related.