Further complicating things, there used to be a major gray area between the public pages and private pages. People with public personas would often have two profiles, a professional one for fans and such (often run by an agent or publicist) and then a personal one for their “real life” friends. Facebook put the kibosh on this a couple years ago and theoretically all the public profiles should have been folded into the business/public figure pages you “like” instead of “friend,” but there’s still definitely some floating around.
I am facebook friends with a fairly well-known actor and voiceover artist.
I’m FB friends with Jack McConnell, a former First Minister of Scotland. Mind you, he has nearly 5000 friends* on there, so it’s not an exclusive club, but still. He’s one of those political types who never forgets a face - he bumped into a friend of mine 30 years after having been her maths teacher, and he remembered enough to ask after her mother by name - scary recall.
- I think there’s a limit about there, that’s one reason why famous people make a page alongside a profile.
A few best-selling authors - hopefully it will rub off on me
Yeah, I’m in the same boat. I have no problem sharing my personal information, but I don’t like to name-drop, as these Facebook friends are also friends of mine or colleagues in real-life. It’s fine if others have no problem with it, I personally just don’t like doing it. Most are just photography and journalism-related people, anyway, so not household names to most. I don’t think there’s anyone with huge star power, but there are some names some people here would recognize.
A friend of mine is pretty active in the Democratic Party (USA obviously). A few years back he sent me some pictures of him and Bill Clinton which I unfortunately lost. So I asked him if he could resend them (I lost contact with him for about a year).
He trumped me. He sent me pictures of himself and President Obama.
My mother is a semi-famous author and speaker so I have her. I was Facebook friends with Lynda Carter (Wonder Woman) for a while (yes, it was really her). I sent her a request and she accepted it. I am not sure why except maybe that I have an unusual name. We wrote back and forth a few times before she decided to get rid of her personal page. She gave me her personal e-mail address though and I still have that if I ever need it.
One of my FB friends, and a RL friend way back when I was young and hip, was a dancer in Flashdance. She’s a back-up singer for Pink Floyd.
I’m FB friends with a Grammy nominated opera singer. She’s a high school friend.
I’m FB friends with a magician who is well known for “close up” magic, has been on David Letterman, etc. I stage managed his show aeons ago before he was famous.
I’d be interested to know who the Shadowrun one was, just out of curiosity (I know a lot of them, and if you’re talking game material rather than novels, I am one (I’m trying on the novels!) :))
I have several authors and gaming luminaries as FB friends, though most of them I don’t know in person beyond a ‘hi’ at a con. The one exception is a NY Times best selling author (who’s also written for Shadowrun) who recognizes me at cons–or at least he used to. It’s been a few years. I’ll find out at Gen Con this year if he still does. 
A writer of comic books that are based on some of the animated series of Matt Groening and Warner Brothers. He also has several titles in the Scholastic catalog*.
We were good friends in community college together back in the mid-to-late seventies.
*No, NOT J.K. Rowling. Sheesh! :rolleyes:
George Takei is a Facebook friend and he posts funny stuff on my wall. I hear he has a few other friends as well.
That’d be Aaron Pavao, a guy I met in the SCA in the midwest.
I’m friends with:
Don Miguel Ruiz. Never met him but I loved his book “The 4 agreements.”
Jake Herbert. NCAA Champion and Olympian wrestler. He wrestled at a neighboring school when I was in high school. I didn’t really know him but my teammate used to battle with him regularly
Coleman Scott NCAA Champion and Olympic Bronze medalist. This dude was in my weight class every year until about the time we were seniors. I wrestled him once in Junior High and he teched me. Every time he was in a bracket, it became a battle for who would take 2nd.
Phil Davis. UFC/MMA figher aka Mr. Wonderful. Went to a wrestling camp with him one summer. Very cool dude.
I’m friends with a woman who works in Hollywood…she’s done some acting, but she primarily works as a combat choreographer, and, with her husband (who’s a little more well-known as an actor), runs a company which trains actors on how to convincingly act like soldiers. She and I have been friends for 20-odd years, before she began working in the industry.
I’m friends with a few RPG writers / designers, as well.
I’m FB (and IRL) friends with one famous 80s singer and one not so famous but still well known bass player.
I know it is unsatisfying to nosy people (and I am nosy about other people’s vague descriptions) but one of those guys is really particular about his friends talking about him, and fair enough. He’s been burnt in the press before.
the woman who got a preemptive masectomy b/c she had the BRA breast cancer gene.
Used to be friends with the girl who got her hair pulled by a cop at Occupy Wall St and the picture of it made the news. She also was the purple haired clown who attacked the Wall Street bull.
Rick Guidotti who used to be a big name fashion photographer and now takes pictures of people with disabilties/ facial differences.
The guy who invented Bing (I know him personally actually)
If you want to ask a celeb a question hang out on Reddit, quite a few famous people do AMA (ask me anything) threads, including Barack Obama, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and more recently Kari, Grant, and Tory from Mythbusters.
The singer for Faded Paper Figures is my FB friend. He and I used to live next door to each other in grad school, our kids were best pals.
I have another FB friend (another neighbor from the same time period) who is now a pretty prolific cultural commentator blogger type lady. I don’t know if her name would be recognizeable outside the industry, but there’s a very good chance you’ve read something she wrote if you read that kind of thing. (I know this because I keep “accidentally” reading things she wrote while just randomly browsing around.) And she’s close personal friends with the guy from Death Cab for Cutie.