Weighty celebrities and one without hope (8)
I believe the answer is:
fatalist
'hope' is the definition.
The definition and answer can be both people as well as being singular nouns.
Maybe there's a link between them I don't understand?
'weighty celebrities and one without' is the wordplay.
'weighty' becomes 'fata' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'celebrities' becomes 'a list' (A-list).
'and' becomes 'n' (common abbreviation for 'and').
'one' becomes 'an' (an apple is one apple).
'without' indicates named letters should be taken away.
'alist'+'n'='alistn'
'alistn' with 'an' removed is 'list'.
'fata'+'list'='FATALIST'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for fatalist that I've seen before include "philosophical type" , "Predestinarian" , "One with a submissive attitude to events" , "One submitting to destiny" , "One who accepts whatever happens as inevitable" .)