Eddie Murphy
Sam Kinnison
Dom Irrera
J J Walker
Jim Carrey
Roseanne Barr
Andy Griffith
Pauly Shore (ugh)
Bob Newhart
Bob Hope
Jay Leno
Many, many more. Can you tell I used to work at The Comedy Store?
The Beach Boys
Ella Fitzgerald
The Cleveland Orchestra
The Blues Brothers
Oh, hockey! I stood in line at first class check in at my local airport with the entire Anaheim Ducks hockey team! 
Clint Eastwood almost didn’t stop for me in a crosswalk in Carmel-by-the-Sea once…
And another baseball one- former Rookie of the Year Tim Salmon shopped at the same Ralphs grocery store that I did, and we ended up in line together a few times. He’s nice.
Robert Englund (of Freddy Krueger fame) lived in Laguna Beach and lived like a normal guy with no hype. Nice guy, quiet, nice to folks who recognized him.
Partied pretty hard with Georgia Frontierri and her posse when she owned the LA Rams- she has the nicest two story luxury suite… She was my college friend’s godmother.
Okay - who are you, how did you hang out with all those guys, do you know the Doper elelle, who also knows a bunch of bluesmen (most old-school Delta types like Kimbrough and Burnside) and how come you don’t end up in any of the blues guitar threads - it sounds like you might have some stories!! ;)
And do you play?
Here’s oneof those threads…
There were other people I’ve seen, but my favorite story is about seeing Nelson Mandela, because nobody (or at least nobody on the outside, for security reasons) was supposed to know he was going to be there.
Our college at Oxford was mysteriously closed up one summer morning. Granted the College was usually quiet during the summer but it was the first time I could remember that even students weren’t allowed in. The porter was uncharacteristically tight-lipped about what was going on but did allow that “a high-level visitor” was expected. I was trying to think of who might be considered high-level enough to shut down the College when I remembered that Nelson Mandela was making a state visit at the time. And it so happened that the founder of the ANC was a College grad. Surely Mandela wouldn’t be visiting Oxford without anybody knowing about it though…right?
Around noon I was walking towards the College again, hoping it was reopened, when a massive black limo passed me on Turl Street driving down the wrong side of the street. It pulled right up to the College gate and an armed security guard jumped out of the driver’s door and opened the back right door. Nelson Mandela exited the car, followed by a second armed security guard and a couple of VIPs. The four of them went through the College gate, which closed shut behind them. The first guard closed the back door, jumped back in the driver’s seat, and in a flash the car was gone. The whole process probably took about 30 seconds.
I looked around Turl Street after the limo had disappeared around the corner. It was totally deserted except for me.
Later on I talked to the College Principal and he confirmed that Mandela had indeed been a lunch guest that day. I’d been starting to think I’d imagined the whole sequence.
My close encounters with famous people are of the musical kind.
While working at a radio station in grad school, I conducted interviews with Robert Fripp and Peter Hammill (famous if you’re into 70s prog rock).
I ran (or, rather, crashed) into Iggy Pop in a mosh pit at a Ramones show in Ann Arbor. No mistaking that scowl.
I’ve gotten the chance to speak briefly with musicians after concerts… most recently, the Pretty Things did a show here and I hung out afterwards … they came out to talk; I was holding up the wall, as is my wont, and Dick Taylor (the guy who introduced Mick Jagger to Keith Richards) came over and sat down next to me, and we talked for a couple of minutes… about guitars, not surprisingly.
Backstage passes from radio or other connections:
Met all of Van Halen (Hagar-era)
Met James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett, and Jason Newstead (Metallica)
Met Ted Nugent (bizarre)
Mickey Thomas of Starship (is this guy even famous? he sure thought he was)
Other/random
Skye Skjelset (Fleet Foxes) - had drinks in a Seattle pub and conversation with him about comic books and movies, found out later what band he was in when I got back to my room and he was on a Saturday Night Live ad as part of next week’s musical guest.
Ozzie Smith - baseball card show sometime in the 80’s-early 90’s
Kevin Mitnick - trade show and book signing
Tino Martinez, Steve Kline (baseball, Cardinals)
Joel Myers, Wayne Hagin (KMOX Cardinals baseball announcers with relatively short tenures)
Probably quite a few relatively insignificant encounters that aren’t coming to mind.
Ok here’s my list
Ann Richards (more than once at the little cafe down the street when I lived in Austin)
Weird Al Yankovic came down on the floor & sang to me at a concert last year
Joe Ely (married to a classmate of my ex - met at the 10-yr reunion) (ran into lots of locally famous, even Texas-famous folks with my ex - he went to high school with Willie Nelson’s kids, etc, and his parents were teachers/coaches of lots of people who went on to become somewhat locally powerful. Also he worked in the downtown Austin Whole Foods - several sightings of famous people a week there, but he rarely realized who they were…)
Charlie Waters & Cliff Harris (Dallas Cowboys back in the 70s in the Staubach years) both went to my childhood church - I sat by Cliff Harris at Easter once
My husband once had an actual conversation with Majel Barrett (at a Trek convention but in the hallway or something)
I’m going to exclude concerts too and only include those I interacted with.
Bill Clinton (got to shake his hand. the opportunity arose because my GF at the time worked for the secret service)
Green Day (they played a show in my dorm and hung out with everyone afterwards. this was in the pre- “Dookie” days)
Neil Young (he was in line ahead of us at the movie theatre. we stopped him just to say hello and thanks)
Kari Byron (she dated my roommate for a while. this was way before mythbusters)
I’ve also worked with the founders of quite a few famous web companies here in the valley.
I was one of the founding editors of Living Blues Magazine in 1970. (It’s still being published by the University of Mississippi [Ole Miss]. I met these musicians through hanging out in South and West Side Chicago (ghetto) joints; doing radio & print interviews; extensive road trips through Mississippi & other locales, & checking out the jook joints where female honkeys should not have trod! Basically folklore/fieldwork similar to the Lomaxes, but at a later date. Also got to travel with many musicians to points in Europe and Mexico. Now THERE are stories 
I met ElElle’s SO David, also a former Living Blues editor, recently at Ole Miss, but knew him in previous years. David & Scott Barretta (yet another former LB editor) took me on a custom road trip through the Delta to spot Mississippi Blues Trail Markers. A true joyride for me! There are now 62 in place (new one at Barnard Observatory at Ole Miss, which is why I was in Mississippi in the first place in late Feb.) There have been only 6 LB editors in its near-40 year history, BTW.
I don’t play guitar. I’ve TRIED to play harp since high school, and never got the knack! Pity. I could have taken lessons from Snooky Pryor & Big Walter Horton :smack:
Check out www.msbluestrail.org …
I’ve walked past Brian Dennehy, as he sat on one of the concrete posts that restrict traffic in Boston’s Fanueil Hall (East side) back when I worked in Boston.
I’ve sold a camera battery to Michael Chiklis at the Radio Shack in Lowell Ma (He’s from the next town over). This was back when he was “The Commish”
I had some time to kill while working at the WB studios, and as we waited for the next meeting we were told to “wander around the lots, and look at some of the sets… don’t get in the way of any active filming”. Martin Sheen rode by on a bicycle shortly after we left the West Wing set, and said hi.
That’s all I’ve got. No fawning over them, nothing more than a “Hey, I know who you are. How are 'ya doing?” from me, and I was on my way. Fun experiences though.
edit: Oh, and my 22 seconds of fame, my voice went out over the Dr. Demento show back in 1991 or so, as the announcer voice for the not at all successful comedy song “Zamfir’s Evil Twin,” by The Sponge Awareness Foundation. (Oddly, as I search for it now 16 years later, it still apparently gets some play… where are my royalties?)
Richard Riley (former Governor of South Carolina and Secretary of Education under Clinton)
Pat Conroy (author, was the speaker at my undergrad commencement, shook his hand)
Brad Dourif (The Two Towers, et al.)
Nathan Fillion, Alan Tudyk, Morena Baccarin, and Jewel Staite (Firefly)
James Hong (Big Trouble in Little China, et al.)
Erin Gray (Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, et al.)
Matthew Lewis (Neville Longbottom from the Harry Potter films)
Edward James Olmos (Battlestar Galactica, et al.)
All but the first two were at Dragon*Con last year. I’m also probably forgetting at least one.
I don’t want to hijack this thread any further, but let me just say - cool! I would love to hear your stories. You and elelle should start an “ask the folks who know all the blues greats” thread - seriously. I would so be into that.
And I must hear about Keith Richards…
and **cjepson **- clearly I want to hear about the guitars!
I’ve met a few famous people over the years, but in terms of actual relationships - I am drinking buddies with a former soap opera star (on All My Children for years) and guitar-playing buddies with a well-known TV Business journalist (no, not Jim Cramer, after all the Stewart kerfuffle…) and a woman friend got thanked by Barack Obama in the credits of his second book, but because they are friends, I don’t think it would appropriate to name-check them here…oh, and there’s always my drummer, who has worked with everyone from Bowie to Depeche Mode to, well, lots of folks as a record producer…weird going into his bathroom and seeing platinum records above the toilet…
Back when I was about 22, I spotted Cher in the lane adjacent to us, driving a red Ferrari down the PCH. I was hanging halfway out the passenger window of my buddy’s car, waving my arms like mad and yelling “Hey, look! It’s CHER!” She threw me a quick, terrified glance and sped away.
Also, that same year, I saw David Lee Roth in a club in LA. I tried to get the waitress to send him over a drink; she refused. I drunkenly insisted; she refused again, saying, “Don’t be a dick! Do you think you’re the only one who wants to buy Dave a drink?! He comes in here to just hang out and relax, not to be harassed by his drunk, idiot fans.”
It was really a very short conversation. I said “It was great to hear an authentic psychedelic guitar solo” and he said that it was almost an authentic psychedelic guitar solo – he was using a backup guitar on the song I was referring to, because earlier in the set he had unfortunately broken a string on the guitar he would have used, on which “you can flatten the strings and just go mad”… I’m afraid that’s all I remember.
Good for her! No offense to you, but it’s nice that she had his back.
In concert:
The Rolling Stones (with Brian Jones—yeah, I’m THAT old……)
Beatles—Shea Stadium; it could have been anybody we were that far away……
Peter & Gordon (later got to meet them backstage)
Mamas & Papas
Tom Jones–at a press conference when his TV show “This is Tom Jones” was on ABC. I worked for ABC then and have a pic with me, him and 2 of my co-workers
Stephen King—at a book signing
Around the streets in NYC:
Carol Lawrence
Richard Burton
Dustin Hoffman
Woody Allen
Dick Clark
Michael Douglas
Polly Holiday—“kiss my grits”—on a NYC bus
Butterfly McQueen—“I don’t know nuthin’ about birthin’ babies, Miss Scarlett”—on another NYC bus
The tall weird dead guy who was in the subway in Ghosts with Patrick Swayzee & Demi Moore—sorry, don’t know his name
Tom Brookaw
Robert Pastorelli—Eldon the painter on Murphy Brown. He was an honorary director of an organization I belonged to
That’s all I I can think of now, but working in NYC as I did for 20+ years the opportunity is always there……
Close enough to touch
Magic Johnson
Robert Downey Jr
Allison Janey
Erick Estrada
John Savage
Robert Blake
James Doohan
I’m sure we’ve done this before, but I meet a lot of famous people flying around and lounging in the first class lounge. It’s an easy way to meet famous people.
I once helped Lindsay Lohan get her suitcase into an overhead baggage compartment, and spoke with her briefly, and it was only later in the day that it occurred to me, “Hey, that Lindsay person on the plane was the girl from Mean Girls and Freaky Friday.” I was doubtlessly fooled by the fact that she was nice and did not act crazy or drunk.
I was in the seat next to her sister, who I believe is also sort of famous but I don’t remember her name (her last name is Lohan, I assume.)
Close enough to touch
Magic Johnson
Robert Downey Jr
Allison Janey
Erick Estrada
John Savage
Robert Blake
James Doohan
Not too many…but…
Performed for Prince Charles when he visited my hometown.