gilded cage

1. To be like “a bird in a gilded cage” is to live in luxury but without freedom: “Because the movie star could not go out without being recognized and pursued, she stayed in her penthouse, living like a bird in a gilded cage.”

Idioms and Phrases

The encumbrances or limitations that often accompany material wealth, as in She had furs, jewelry, whatever money could buy, but was trapped in a gilded cage. This metaphoric expression indicating that riches cannot buy happiness was popularized (and possibly coined) in a song, “A Bird in a Gilded Cage” (1990; lyrics by Arthur J. Lamb, music by Harry von Tilzer), about a young girl marrying for wealth instead of love and paying for luxury with a life of regret.

Example Sentences

Here she sang it while standing in a glittering mermaid gown that seemed to make it impossible for her to move — some kind of metaphor for the gilded cage of a celebrity romance.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

In transplanting this device to a hypervisible celebrity, it affords Finn the chance to play on a bigger stage, producing stylized musical numbers, backstage antics, public meltdowns, fan frenzy and private anguish in Skye’s luxury gilded cage.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

With “Maria,” he’s got the gilded cage, but little of the bird’s desperation.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

Fabio Capello lead a campaign that mirrored his countenance - grim, austere and discontented, the Italian choosing to base England in a gilded cage at the Royal Bafokeng Sports Palace outside Rustenburg.

Read more on BBC

Trump would be put in a gilded cage.

Read more on Salon