I remember seeing Jennifer Aniston in California once at a café. Also saw Mark Wahlberg at a bar once too, in Boston.
This last one was a strange one. My dad traveled a lot back in the 80’s and 90’s for business, and went many places. He often brought me, my mom, and my big sister along (later on my little brother too).
My family visited Iraq in 1989 (pre-Gulf War craziness). He was there for a business meeting. My mom, dad, and my big sister actually saw Saddam Hussein as he visited our hotel for some reason. They said the people there were going happy and wild, pumping their fists in the air and chanting things in Arabic.
I was 3 years old, and remember none of it. I remember Iraq faintly as a really hot place with lots of palm trees, but I don’t recall seeing Saddam.
My grandpa had two brothers who were much older than him and one of them was a cab driver in Cleveland. Any time you mention Uncle Les and his cab, you must mention that one time he drove Cary Grant in his cab.
I have met the Clintons a couple of times. But so has nearly everyone in Arkansas. They got around. My Oldest brother saw Johnny Cash at an Airport in Memphis, Tn. He talked to him for awhile.
Made eye contact and nodded in acknowledgement/greeting with Pierre Elliott Trudeau once, on St. Catherine on a warm summer evening. He was just out for a stroll in downtown Montreal, I guess.
Had dinner at a table next to Newt Gingrich and then saw him doing his grocery shopping at a Giant a month or so later.
Sam Donaldson at the Home Depot in the plumbing isle.
I met and spoke briefly with Hank Aaron at the main office of the bank where I worked. My son met Adam Sandler in a hotel elevator. I’m sure there are more, but apparently they didn’t make a big impression!
I’ve seen (and met) a lot of mid-level acting celebrities at science-fiction and gaming conventions, including Kenny Baker (R2-D2), Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca), Mark Hamill, and Ioan Gruffudd.
My wife has met a number of the cast of the original Star Trek at conventions, as well – William Shatner, Nichelle Nichols, George Takei, and Walter Koenig.
I work at an ad agency, and we occasionally have celebrities in the office (usually either because we’re using them in an ad, or they’re doing a meet-and-greet in hopes of getting some commercial work). People I’ve met there include guitarist Peter Frampton, country singer Trace Adkins, a cappella group Straight No Chaser, and former Chicago Cub player Ernie Banks.
I met “Weird Al” Yankovic and Felicia Day at book signings.
Outside of those:
When my wife and I were flying to Pittsburgh some years ago, Franco Harris (former Steelers running back) was in first class on our plane.
While she was waiting to board a flight at O’Hare, my wife saw Stevie Wonder disembark from the plane she was about to board. She was traveling with some friends, and said, “Look! It’s Stevie Wonder!” He heard her voice, turned in her direction, and smiled and nodded to her.
I shook hands with JoAnne Worley (from Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In for all you youts on the forum) at a shopping mall in Pennsylvania. It was an advertised event where you stood in line to shake her hand. She was pleasant and smiled at everybody.
One summer I worked on the grounds crew at the campus where the University of Pittsburgh football team had their pre-season training camp and Tony Dorsett walked by. He made eye contact and said, “How ya doin’?”
Too late to add: my sister hung around with a number of fairly well-known rock groups in the late 1980s and early 1990s. A bit of family knowledge that is not spoken of: she likely lost her virginity to the singer of a band that is now in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
I didn’t know anything about him at the time, but I met infamous spook James Jesus Angleton. This was back when I was a paralegal, and he was co-executor of an estate that my law firm handled, where I handled the grungy details.
Back in the 1940s, my grandfather settled a case with Dean Acheson.
Didn’t join the line to shake his hand, but when Bill Clinton was campaigning for the Dem nomination in 1992, he made a brief stop at the Florence, SC airport. I was living there at the time, so I came out to see him. I was probably 15-20 feet away from him.
I was in a small (a few hundred people at most) protest against ACA repeal at a House office building last March. Rev. William Barber (best known for the Moral Mondays protests in NC) led the protest. I didn’t introduce myself to him or shake his hand, but I was within a few feet away at times.
Was on a flight from Boston to Seattle and Mitt Romney was in first class. That was during the time he was governor of Massachusetts.
I went to talks by Stephen Hawking and Chuck Yeager. At the reception after Hawking’s talk, he passed about 15 feet away from me. Yeager’s was on the 50th anniversary of his first supersonic flight, +/- a couple days.
Saw John Lithgow at a bookstore; he sang a couple songs and read from his book Micawber. It’s a children’s book. I don’t have children, but I went anyway, because John Lithgow.
If it was a beautiful day, could you have met him twice?
I went to one of his speeches during his campaign for reelection. I saw an area that was barricaded off for no good reason, and so I worked my way over to it. After the speech he worked the line shaking hands.
I’m not going to count seeing celebrities in a show. So let’s see:
Mick Fleetwood
Darryl Hanna
Jackson Brown
Whoopi Goldberg
Rick Ocasek
Sly Stone
(all of the above were members of the audience at a small Prince concert I went to - I saw them up close and personal)
Christopher Lloyd (at lunch in Montecito)
Bo Derek (at a dog show in Santa Barbara)
Paul Winfield (at a dog show in Pomona)
Julie Kavner (at a restaurant in Malibu)
Al Lewis (at a motorcycle race in Salinas)
Jane Seymour (client at a law firm where I used to work)
Bob Barker (I worked at CBS when I was a teenager - he came in for some paperwork)
Nina Foch (client at a law firm where I used to work)
On a trip to Seattle a dozen or so years ago, my wife and I were sitting in a Starbucks having a coffee and saw Arlo Guthrie walk by outside. We both looked at each other and went “Was that…?” I mentioned it later to a friend we were visiting and he said “Yeah, I think he’s in town for Bumbershoot.”
My mom once sat behind Walter Payton on a flight.
On a business trip a few years back from Kansas City to DC, on the flight out I sat across the aisle from Dennis Moore, who was the congressman at the time from my district in Kansas. Then on the flight back my coworker sat next to Emmanuel Cleaver who was/is the congressman from the KC MO area.
I once saw Hockey legend Jean Beliveau flying from Barbados to Montreal on the same flight as my my wife and me. It turned out that he owned a villa there down the street from the one we had rented.
And we saw former Canadian PM John Turner in Princeton where his son was graduating at the same time as my son.
My sister, whose married name is Coppola (but accented on the second syllable), and her husband once met Francis Ford C in an elevator in Vegas. She introduced herself and had a short conversation in which he admitted that his name had originally been accented on the second syllable and it was an affectation to use the first (although perhaps that would be correct in Italian).
And I knew quite well several mathematicians whose names would be well known to any mathematician, but unknown to the world at large: Sammy Eilenberg, Saunders Mac Lane, and a passing acquaintance with Alexandre Grothendieck.
Yay! I get to pull out my degree of the Sixth Degrees of Kevin Bacon!
The original “Footloose” movie was shot at my high school and I’m an extra in many scenes. Bacon was a relative unknown and I think Sarah Jessica Parker was about to start “Square Pegs.” Both were VERY nice people and so young. (FYI: SJP was a knockout in person, not horsey at all).
SharkWife and her bro worked with Bruce Willis (pre-game). Willis tried to get BIL to move Hollywood to break into showbiz with him; if BIL had gone with him I think he would have become the movie star – he was smokin hot in the day.
We stood in front of Rhea Perlman on line for the DC Holocaust Museum. I opened my maw to say something fanwonky, but instead just made small talk. I reckon celebs get really sick of attention when they are out in the real world.
