I work in retail service, and have done so in some celebrity heavy markets. I have waited on these people. I don’t know if it counts as meeting them as I wasn’t introduced:
Ed McMahon
Roddy McDowell
Georgia Engel
Mary Tyler Moore
Candice Bergen
Barry Livingston (My Three Sons)
David Letterman
Diana Ross
Paul Newman
Joanne Woodward
Bill Clinton
Vanessa Williams
Simon Schama
Ernie Anastos (Local News caster in NY)
Pete Fornatale (famous in folk music and NY radio circles)
NY professional athletes (and one coach):
Mike Richter
Patrick Ewing
John Stark
Jeff vanGundy
Encounters outside of the retail context (in which pleasantries or handshakes were exchanged)
Hillary Clinton (during her first term in the Senate)
Dr. Ruth Westheimer
Kevin Pollak
Capt. Lou Albano
Emily Sailers and Amy Ray (Indigo Girls)
Neil Young
John Waters
Near encounters such as sharing and elevator, seated next to:
Truman Capote
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Kelsey Grammer
Tyra Banks
Hands down, the nicest were Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, and the absolute worst was Diana Ross.
Several years ago, my husband and I discovered that we were sitting at the next table over from Joan Baez in a NY restaurant. We sent a round of drinks over to them and chatted briefly as we left. We asked if there were any tickets still available for her current billing, but she said no, there were not. We left her our names & phone number anyway. The following day when I came home from work there was a message from her – Joan herself – on our answering machine, advising us that we were welcome to attend that night’s performance. We did, and it was great.
Met Isaac Asimov at a speech he was giving.
I still have Christoper Reeve’s autograph from when he was performing in The Fifth of July in NYC.
Diana Ross lives (lived? It’s been over 15 years since I worked there) in Greenwich,CT which is a town with than more than its share of movers and shakers and millionaires and billionaires. Part of the job interview in this and similar markets is “can you wait on celebrities without turning into a gawping idiot and just treat them like regular folks?” because most of them don’t want a fuss made.
She’s well known among shop clerks there. Almost every store on the avenue has at least one story of her making a grand entrance demanding to be served before the people you’re already working with because “Don’t you know who I am!?!?!?”
In my case she placed her order and I told her it would take two weeks, because everyone’s order takes two weeks, or more, but hers was two weeks and she wanted it faster because she was Diana Ross. And was horribly unpleasant about it.
I mean, yeah, she’s a great singer, and I loved her in Mahogany, but someone needs a “more flies with honey” lesson.
I waited tables in Chicago for more than ten years and served: Jackie Mason (twice! At different restaurants,) Scottie Pippen (crappy tipper), Jasmine Guy of Facts of Life fame, Lester Holt from Dateline NBC, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Quentin Tarantino, and Jermaine Du Pruy (a music producer & boyfriend of Janet Jackson). I know some are not huge celebrities, but they were all fun to wait on.Tarantino was hilarious & Jasmine Guy was very down to earth and super sexy. Rrrroooowwwrrrr. She was in the Chicago production of"Chicago" at the time and probably didn’t have more than a few ounces of body fat on her entire frame. Jermaine Du Pruy had a loud group with him & he kept asking if they were bugging the other patrons. He tipped really well, too. Jennifer Love Hewitt lunched alone and was a little flirty. Fun memories. Thanks for asking!
Oh yeah, forgot to mention he was my neighbor of sorts on Crescent Height Blvd. in West Hollywood. I lived in a large apartment complex on the corner and he lived in a small house/apartment three building south. I would see him walking every once in awhile (before he was famous and I knew who he was) and would nod and say hello. We never really talked but always nodded and smiled when we would pass each other on the sidewalk.
After Pulp Fiction came out and he was seen everywhere on the news I was surprised to notice it was my neighbor guy! To his credit, Quentin remained in that little apartment for a couple years after hitting the big time (you would see a limo dropping him and his usually gorgeous female dates off at the apartment regularly) - so I guess you could say he was not in film for the prestige and big mansion fantasy.
The day he moved away, my SO and I wandered into that apartment to check it out. Small, hardwood floors, one bedroom with a small living room and kitchen and a bathroom so tiny that you could not open the door without hitting the toilet seat!
Still, it was a cool little house/apartment for that neighborhood and I could see why he was in no hurry to leave.
I met the King of Thailand when I was a wee lad. My father was US military and he became good friends with the King’s personal physician. We got to visit the palace and met the King. I should have stolen a towel or something.
I shook hands with Bob Hope’s hand when he came to do a show in Germany. I think I was 13 or so.
I’ve posted this before, a few years ago, but I’ll mention it again.
Back in the late 1970s, I was working in a parking lot in downtown Toronto. The lot was full–there was a big show on nearby. A man pulled up in a rental car, and I told him we were full. “But don’t you have even one spot left?” the man asked. “I’m headlining the show.”
Yeah, right, I thought. I’d heard everything that night, but not that one. Give the guy points for originality. But once again, I apologized, and directed the man to where he might find parking. He was a nice guy, he didn’t protest too much; and he went to where he might find parking.
A couple of weeks later, I was watching the Johnny Carson show, and Tony Bennett was the guest. He told the story of how he was late to his recent show in Toronto because when he pulled up in his rental car, a parking attendant wouldn’t let him park in the event’s lot.
Forward to the mid-1980s. I was in England, and took a tour out of London. We were going to see Stonehenge and Bath. The only other single traveller on the tour was an attractive lady in her early 30s, so we sat next to each other on the train and the coach. Her name was Jean, and she was American. We conversed throughout the day as we saw the sights, we had lunch together, and at the end of the day, we headed back to London together on the train. I said goodbye to her at Paddington station, but I also said I was curious–she had never really told me what her job was. “I’m an actress,” she replied. You might have seen me on “Airwolf.”
My stories aren’t nearly as cool as the others above, but I did meet George Lynch. His tour bus (during the Lynch Mob years, after Dokken) was rolling through my town, and they needed new deep cycle batteries. I worked in the local distribution branch of the mfg of the batteries currently in the vehicle. When he told me who it was, I told them to come by and I would provide replacement batteries at no cost. Sure enough, I was allowed on the bus to meet a very bleery eyed and hung-over guitar god. It was cool!
I’ve lived in LA all my life, and I’ve had the requisite number of celebrity encounters (Mario Van Peebles, MC Hammer, Kirsten Nelson of “Psych,” Adam Sessler of G4 TV’s “X Play,” went to school with Mythbuster Grant Imahara, etc.).
But my all-time favorite encounter will probably always be when I worked in McDonald’s in downtown LA in my long-ago youth, right next to where they happened to be filming the movie CB4. In the middle of lunch hour, in walks Chris Rock, dressed as his character from the movie. Now, we tend to get a lot of odd ducks in LA, so as far as I could tell, all of the business people standing in line gave him a wide berth and just ignored him. I’m not aware of anyone else who recognized him other than me, and I was fortunate enough to have him in my line. I wasn’t able to say much other than a “Hey, man!” and smile, which he returned. Ordered a strawberry sundae. That was it.
I knew actors Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Karen Mistal, and Cory English before they were famous. I was in a school play with Cory, a play and a band with Karen, and I spent many hours and a few sleepovers in Phil’s house.
In a more “six degrees” fashion, I’m just a few degrees away from the likes of Albert Einstein, Helen Keller, Winston Churchill, Albert Schweitzer, and Fidel Castro.
When I was a kid (maybe 10 or 11 years old) my family met Strom Thurmond in a California Pizza Kitchen. My father went up to him and introduced his family, including my older sister (whose hair was short at the time), my younger brother and me. Strom said we were some “fine lookin’ boys”, a fact about which I still tease my (strongly liberal) sister some times. (It didn’t help that she ordered the exact same meal as the senator: a bowl of split pea soup and a glass of water.)
A very minor brush: I had a friend in high school who was assigned a very old English text book. At the top of the list of the names of students who had had the same book in earlier years was the name “Sandra Bullock” (who did go to my high school about 20 years before my friend and I.)
I talked football with pro wrestler “Road Warrior Animal” Joe Laurinaitis for a couple hours in the airport while our flight was delayed in Minneapolis. His son, James, had just finished his playing career at Ohio State. Unfortunatey, we didn’t talk about wrestling.
I’ve had other very brief encounters, but that was by far the most in depth.
Matthew McConaughey (knew him as a kid. I was friends with his older brother)
Willie Nelson (met him at a Texas truck stop)
George H. W. Bush (met him when he was running for POTUS in 1980)
George W. Bush (met him at a campaign fund raiser and in the Oval office)
Bill Clinton (met him multiple times, ate BBQ with him at a pic-nic table when he was running for re-election for Ark. Governor)
Al Gore (met him during the 1992 presidential campaign)
James Carville (met him during the 1992 presidential campaign)
Ted Koppel (met him during the 1992 presidential campaign)
Dick Cheney (met him at a campaign fund raiser in 2004)
Mike Huckabee (met him while he was governor of Ark.)
Kirstie Alley (sat next to her on a flight from LA to DFW)
Robert Griffin III (met him in Waco, TX)
Robert Gates (met him at a school speaking event)
Lionel Richie (introduced him and the Commodores at a concert they were performing at)
Cedric the Entertainer (met him at Teterboro airport)
Tom Kite (met him at Teterboro airport)
Penny Marshall (met him at Teterboro airport)
Billy Crystal (met him at Teterboro airport)
Carrie Ann Inaba (sat next to her on a flight from NYC to Chicago)
Tiger Woods (met him at the Masters)
Stone Cold Steve Austin (met him on a flight from Wichita to Dallas)
Al Franken (met him on a flight from Chicago to Washington DC)
