They all played fictitional Presidents? Ben Kingsley as the VP from Dave that took over after fake Dave’s fake death, Pedro Cerrano as the President in 24, and Harrison Ford as the President in Air Force One?
Alec Baldwin would have had he continued his role as Jack Ryan, instead of being replaced by…Harrison Ford. (I heard an unconfirmed rumor once that Ben Affleck also played that character - glad it never happened).
Dooku, you’re a smart guy.
Hooray! Time for pie!
She was also a hardcore anarchist…
Shakira and Gabriel Garcia Marquez are good friends…
Kris Kristofferson, Robert Taylor, Richard Chamberlain, and Art Clokey (the guy who created Gumby) all went to the same college, Pomona College in Claremont CA…
Speaking of Art Clokey, the NYC Museum of Television & Radio recently did a retrospective event for Gumby’s 50th anniversary. Clokey was too ill to attend the event, but his son went in his place. According to his son, Clokey was good friends with Frank Zappa, converted to zen buddhism, was a fan of absurdist theater of the 1960s; but his son adamantly insists that Clokey "did not use LSD at the time he created Gumby.
It’s been mentioned in another thread, I’m sure - I think by me, actually - but Apple cofounder Steve Jobs and novelist Mona Simpson were brother and sister, separated as babies by adoption. They didn’t find out until they were both grown up and famous.
Actress Alicia Witt is the daughter of the woman with the world’s longest hair (±15 feet).
Trombonist Tommy Dorsey once broke a chair over the head of B-movie actor John Hall, whom he suspected of having an affair with his wife.
“It’s All In The Game,” a hit song of 1958, was set to a melody written many years earlier by Charles Dawes, who was Vice President under Calvin Coolidge.
The Henry Jerome Orchestra, a modern jazz big band of the mid 1940s, had a saxophone section that included both future White House counsel Leonard Garment and current Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. Greenspan was offered a chair in the Woody Herman band but turned it down.
Frank Sinatra, then an unknown singer, was approached by NBC to sing over their experimental TV station in the late 1930s. He declined; he thought he’d have a better chance breaking into show business by hanging around ballrooms hoping to help unload band trucks.
The actor’s name is Don Novello, and it’s actually his sister-in-law that was Surgeon General (Dr. Antonia Novello).
Don Novello also wrote a book called “The Lazlo Toth Letters”, in which he would write goofy letters to politicians, CEOs of major corporations, etc.
Lazlo Toth, incidentally, was the guy who tried to smash Michelangelo’s Pieta with a hammer back in the 70’s.
Franklin D. Roosevelt got story credit for writing the Hollywood film The President’s Mystery and also was credited with the book version (though he only suggested the basic premise).
Gypsy Rose Lee also wrote a murder mystery – The G-String Murders – which was also made into a movie Lady of Burlesque.
William Gibson became famous with his novel Neuromancer, which postulated people traveling in cyberspace (The Matrix is just a slight expansion of the concept). At the time he wrote it, he had never used a computer.
Author Somtow Sutcharitkul (better known as horror writer S.P. Somtow) is a distant relation to the Thai royal family and was a well-known avant garde composer before turning to writing.
Writer Lawrence Watt-Evans is actually Lawrence Watt Evans. His editor added the hyphen because there was another Lawrence Evans writing at the time.
Similarly, Michael Kube-McDowell is actually Michael McDowell. “Kube” was his wife’s maiden name. Both he and Watt Evans have often expressed the wish they hadn’t had to make the change (Kube-McDowell after he divorced).
Artist John Schoenherr (best known for his covers of the original Dune books) had never heard of the Hugo Award (one of science fiction’s biggest honors) until he won it.
William “Cannon” Conrad was the voice of Matt Dillon in the radio version of Gunsmoke. When it went on TV, it was clear he wouldn’t look the part, so it was offered to John Wayne, who refused and recommende James Arness. Conrad, however, got steady work as the narrator of all the Rocky and Bullwinkle episodes.
Sweet Og in Heaven, Chuck, do you ever leave the house?
(I don’t.) :rolleyes:
Oddly ‘Mona Simpson’ is the alias used by Homer Simpson’s mother.
Homer Simpson was a character in the 1930’s novel “Miss Lonelyhearts.”
Wrong Nathanael West novel. Homer Simpson’s a character in “The Day of the Locust”.
Falls under the category of not-really celebrity and very well known, but it always makes people shake their heads when I tell them that John Adams, 2nd President of the United States and signer of the Declaration of Independence, and Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President and writer of the declaration, both died on July 4th, 1826, while John Adams’s son John Quincy Adams, current (6th) President of the United States, was celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the declaration; and that each of the dying men took solace in the belief that the other was currently attending said celebration.
In Philip K. Dick’s gnostic-themed novel, The Divine Invasion, the merciful Pistis Sophia (a feminine aspect of divinity) tries to persuade an incarnate Messiah to call off his scheduled Day of Wrath by reminding him how beautiful Stanley Park in Vancouver is:
Casual readers may miss a poignant personal subtext: In March of 1972, a decade before The Divine Invasion was published, Philip K. Dick attempted suicide in Stanley Park. 
Rapper Tupac Shakur (who was named for an Incan prince) was a big fan of musical theater. His favorite by far was Les Miserables; he listened to the CDs on a loop and obtained a bootleg video of the play that he watched constantly. The phrase “to love another person is to see the face of God” (from it’s final number) was one of his favorite quotes, and he dreamed of one day adapting/starring in a version featuring an urban African-American Jean Valjean. (I could really see that working, incidentally- perhaps a black kid imprisoned during the Civil Rights era, escaping {I know Valjean was paroled, but just go with it} and finding grace due to the kindness of a Christian white redneck he assumed would turn him in, becoming a Silicon Valley millionaire, being pursued relentlessly by a black Javert, hiding himself in South Central, the Rodney King Jr. riots taking the place of the 1848 revolution- hmm.)
I’ve read varying accounts of Dick’s mental illness, but I think it’s generally accepted he was a schizophrenic of some variety. It’s amazing how many of his books are about “other realities”. I read an interview with one of his daughters when Minority Report was in theaters in which she said that she was glad he didn’t live to see his posthumous success with movies and re-releases. She honestly didn’t think he could have handled the attention and fame and it would have pushed him irretrievably over the edge.
I’m looking at this and thinking “Why isn’t there anything recent”…then I realized, what with the tabloids and paparazzi, there IS no unknown trivia about newer Celebrities.
Your post is 10 years old, but I thought I would mention that Mona Simpson was married to one of The Simpsons writers.
Sorry, my previous post was for Paul in Qatar:
Originally Posted by Beware of Doug
It’s been mentioned in another thread, I’m sure - I think by me, actually - but Apple cofounder Steve Jobs and novelist Mona Simpson were brother and sister, separated as babies by adoption. They didn’t find out until they were both grown up and famous.
Oddly ‘Mona Simpson’ is the alias used by Homer Simpson’s mother.
Major league baseball catchers Joe Garagiola and Yogi Berra grew up across the street from each other in St. Louis and were best friends in childhood. Garagiola, who had an average career while Berra was elected to the Hall of Fame, once lamented, “Not only wasn’t I the best catcher in the Major Leagues, I wasn’t even the best catcher on my street.”