These can be done any way you want. Movie stars from the past. Current TV celebs. Whatever. I’m choosing to do current celebrities because I’m particularly fond of my “most” choice.
Tim Gunn: Most
This man has more class and grace in his little finger than I have in my whole body. He’s just really true to himself, it seems to me. He carries himself extremely well, and seems genuinely respectful of everyone he meets. I’ve seen him on Bravo’s design show and in a couple of interviews. He’s a guy so classy that I’d want to include him in a list of top ten people in history I’d invite to dinner. I think he’d be a great facilitator.
Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth: Least
This woman is the slime underneath the heals of the lowest bottom feeders in the sewer. Her self-absorption and disregard for humanity and civility are legend, except that they’re real. She will mock your mother and taunt your children if it will get her a few seconds of air time. She smiles proudly as she engages in her passive-aggressive mental terrorism. At the core of her charred and barren heart is nothing more than a common whore.
Thirded. Paul Newman was the name that popped into my mind when I saw the Subject Line.
Helen Mirren is pretty damned classy. So is Kate Bush.
Britney Spears and Amy Winehouse are pretty close to the bottom. It’s a damned shame, because Winehouse is amazingly talented. If she had class to go with her enormous talent she could be a legend. I fear she’ll just be a statistic.
A friend of mine got to escort Helen Mirren to a movie premiere and said she could not have asked for a nicer, more polite or modest person to deal with.
I don’t know for sure, but Sigourney Weaver strikes me as a class act.
I had heard that Niven was above all a good story teller. That he applied what he heard to himself. I have no idea if it is true- I believe it came from a biography on him.
For class I would go for Jackie Kennedy or Audrey Hepburn.
Hussain was always a character - driving Clinton crazy by constanly sneaking out of peace talks to share a smoke with Yitzhak Rabin; or the time when, after the U.S. asked him what sort of financial aid his country needed, placing his little finer to his lip and saying “One *million * dollars!” (apparenly, he was a huge Austin Powers fan). But my favorite Hussain story happened in the mid-nineties: a deranged Jordanian soldier had opened fire on a group of schoolgirls on an outing by the border, killing several. Hussain got on his plane that very day, flew to Israel, and went to visit with the parents of the girls killed, kneeling besides their mothers to comfort them and to apologize to them. It was amazing. If we could have elected him Prime Minister that day, we would have.