I once took acting lessons from a man who had a small part in Corvette Summer, with Mark Hamill. I’m three degrees from the entire cast of Star Wars, and that makes me happy.
I spent a couple of hours once chatting to John Savage, who starred in The Deer Hunter, which also starred Robert DeNiro, Meryl Streep, and Christopher Walken. That might connect me with a few Hollywood celebrities.
I also went to high school with Carl Lee, defensive back for the Vikings and NFL pro-bowler.
My best friend has met (as in, talked to and had dinner with while less than 50 other people were present) Bill Clinton several times, as her cousin is a big campaign contributor for the Dems. So if I work that angle, I can get to almost anyone world wide pretty quickly.
I hung out with a musician who has played with Paul Simon for years, and I was sat in the middle of all of the members of Santana and talked with them on a nightmare 7 hour “flight” from LaGuardia to O’Hare (most of the time we were on the ground, of course.) I couldn’t call them up and invite them to tea, of course, but it we were pretty close for a while there! Since Carlos Santana knows everyone in the music business ever, that means I’m only two degrees away from anyone in music.
I competed against Anthony Rapp in high school forensics, but we didn’t know each other outside of that. There was a huge hullabaloo because he was already a professional actor at the time competing against amateurs. Still, wraps up most of Broadway in a few degrees.
I’m a 2 or 3 degrees from the Star Trek cast. My roommate worked for a year or so at Radio Shack in Studio City. Nimoy and Shatner were semi regular customers of his.
I spent an evening having drinks and chatting with Lawrence Fishburne which makes me 2 degrees away in the 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon game!
I’m sure there are a bunch more, but thats life in LA.
My cousin-in-law’s sister is the campaign manager for the governor (and a general staffer in non-election years,) and I’m fairly certain Gov. Douglas has met Bush and/or Cheney.
In high school, I had a friend who met the older Bush.
My GF’s roommate is acquaintances and took pictures (for an art class) of Scarlett Johanson’s brother (I guess he did/does go to the same college as her.)
My GF has met (and had dinner with) most of the members of My Chemical Romance. She has also met several other bands, many I haven’t heard of, but who are popular in their given genre (she worked for a music promoter for a period of time in Boston.)
It’s not that special. If you go to Comic-Con regularly, you can get autographs from all sorts of Hollywood-types. It’s not like I spent private time with them.
I used to work on William Shatner’s Jaguar. Very nice guy, wears a baseball cap when he is sans rug.
I also worked on Howie Mandel’s car, Victor French’s car, and William Daniel’s car. Howie is crazy, Victor was a kick in the pants, and Bill was about the nicest guy ever. Ther were several others, but these are the ones of the top of my head.
So I think I am fairly close to a lot of Hollywood.
My recently deceased step-mother’s second cousin is Cher.
A very good friend’s husband works for the duo who should go unnamed (since one of them trolls for information about himself, or his wife does) who often does specials called, “Bullshit.” One is a super sweet, very, deeply good guy, the other is a megalomaniacal asshole who only likes to hear himself talk.
I had a naughty dream about Zach Braff. I demand that to be counted!
Oh, I forgot! My brother-in-law (my husband’s sister’s husband) is Kevin Sorbo’s first cousin. See each other on holidays, grew up together variety of cousin. I’ve never met Mr. Sorbo, but my BIL is simply the nicest human being ever put on the face of the earth. And very cute, too! I can definitely see a family resemblance.
My first cousin’s wife’s first cousin is Marvin Hamlisch (of A Chorus Line fame, which makes me close to a variety of stars, in theory) (3)
My husband’s PhD advisor’s brother is Robbie Jarvik (of artificial heart fame) (3)
I worked directly with Kary Mullis (Nobel Laureate) (1)
My first cousin wrote music for Lily Tomlin (2)
My HS math teacher was a baseball consultant on The Natural with Robert Redford, while I was in his class (2)
My Aunt was on Sally Jesse Raphael (not a crazy, “I slept with my daughter’s boyfriend” type episode, thank god!). (2)
My husband used to come home from work and tell me about the latest “celebrity” he met once or twice a month. At the time he was the 3rd shift manager at a truck stop. Lots of bands on tour would stop. I would have to say the most impressive (IMHO) was the night he met and chatted with Steven Tyler and Stephen King. They stood around bullshitting about what gives them nightmares.
