It was London in the 70s. I was in my 20s then, in my disreputable hippie days, and walking on the north side of Trafalgar Square. Suddenly I recognized the unmistakable form of Sir John Gielgud approaching me (don’t think he was a Sir then but he may have been). As we neared each other our eyes met for just a moment and he shot me a look of the purest disapproval. The only thing visible in my eyes would have been awe and surprise.
His obvious dislike didn’t trouble me. Believe me, most looks that the young got from older people then back in the late 60s/early 70s did range from bemused to disapproving to hostile so you got used to it. But I’ve never forgotten the moment.
Any other chance meetings with celebrities (whether they went badly or well) that Dopers remember?
Walking with my wife & her parents, midtown Broadway many years ago, I slowly recognized Henny Youngman walking towards us. As soon I realized it was him, he winked at me.
Just a few years ago, wife, young son & I were in the Christmas mob looking at the tree in Rockefeller Center when I noticed we were standing next to Yoko Ono, all by herself. We wished each other Merry Christmas.
I was in the audience when Tom Selleck was on “Colbert” on January 12th. As he walked into the wings, there came a point when he knew that the camera, which had been on and was following him, was finally turned off.
He then turned to face the audience… and he gave us all Such a Nasty Stink-Eye!
Not a waive, not a smile, not even a well-mannered nod. It was if we were all just beneath him just because we were clapping & trying to raise the energy of the show.
Its like he thought that it was our fault that he was a Pretty Boring Guest and that all his (attempted) joke responses to Colbert fell flat.
“Higgins, why am I such an Entitled Asshole…?”
“Because your entire personality consists of a rented sports car and a bad 70s guitar riff…?”
Last year coming home from vacation, my husband and I saw Jamie Hyneman in the SFO airport. He and his wife were walking through the terminal ahead of us, but close enough that we could tell it was definitely him. We played it cool instead of acting like fanbois. However, I noticed that he ended up at the gate next to ours. I still didn’t pay any further attention, until I noticed that he was standing in front of me a few feet away and staring at the big honking mobile decoration thing in the ceiling. I took the opportunity to stare at him, until he made eye contact and then I looked away with my best Dead Calloused New Yorker face.
Kevin Smith (Silent Bob) shouted at me “don’t be creepy!” when I tried to surreptitiously take a picture of him as he stood in an airport check in line beside me.
I turned bright red while he got someone near us to take a picture of us together. He put on a giant smile for the camera and it faded the second the flash was gone. It was clear he was pissed at me for trying to take his picture without him noticing. I made a tiny attempt at friendly small talk and went about my life.
In 1985 or so I worked in a ski shop at the base of Ajax in Aspen Co. At the time, the building (the Little Nell building) was right at the base of Ajax. It has since been demolished and replaced by the gondola. We had a small locker room with about 20 lockers. The lockers were great because it meant you didn’t have to carry your ski gear around. You could put your boots on and head out the door and be at the lift. Most of the lockers were rented by Aspen celebrities. Jack Nicholson, Martina Navratilova, and George Hamilton had lockers. Local drug dealer Steve Grabow rented a whole closet. These lockers were rented yearly and only rarely became available (see Steve Grabow). We didn’t advertise the lockers and you wouldn’t know they were there unless you poked your head through the doorway.
Christmas season is by far the busiest time of year in Aspen. The town gets packed with vacationers. You can’t get into restaurants, lift lines get long and all the stores are busy.
My ski shop was twice as busy as usual. Our clientele was mostly people either rich or famous or both. We used to joke that we needed a subscription to People Magazine to know who we were dealing with. Which leads to DJT.
A guy comes in to the shop and says “I’d like to rent a locker”. The store is full of people and we are BUSY. I looked at him and said “No way. It’s Christmas and the lockers are all rented yearly anyway”. He says “But I’m Donald Trump.” I, having never heard of him, said “That’s great but we still don’t have any lockers available”. He left, apparently to find a phone, because I soon got a call from the manager that said “This guy is famous in New York and is a millionaire real estate developer or something. He called a couple weeks ago and I said we would take care of him. Give him my locker.”
I set him up and Ivana and he came in every day for the next week. He was never rude or unpleasant and I honestly don’t recall talking to him any more. Ivana however, I remember much better. She was very outgoing, sort of attractive, and a good skier.
The most memorable ones for me were MC Hammer and Mario Van Peebles, both many years ago, and both of whom were super, incredibly nice guys. Adam Sessler seemed either really shy or really not in the mood when I ran into him while he was in town for E3, but he wasn’t rude or anything. And I had the privilege of stopping to let J.K. Simmons and his family cross in front of my car in a busy parking lot (he gave a hurried wave of appreciation).
My own story is that one day I was in the Roebuck on Richmond Hill having lunch with my father. We were the only ones in the pub. A world-famous rock star walked in - one of Jagger’s ilk - and ordered a pint, maybe more. My father pointed him out to me. I said that we should let him enjoy his pint in peace and he shot me a thankful glance. I’ve entirely forgotten the name of the pop star - it’s not my scene.
Jerry Hall, Jagger’s ex-wife, owned one of the bigger houses on Richmond Hill at the time, and Jagger had a house nearby to easily visit his children, so I guess the guy was visiting Jagger.
One for auto racing fans…Sometime in the 80’s (I think) we were at a single-seat Can-Am race at Mid Ohio. We had walked to the hill on the outside of Turn 1 to watch the cars come down the straight when someone pulled up alongside me on a mini bike. Mini bikes were not permitted in the infield at Mid Ohio, so I turned to see who the moron was who thought he was above the rules. Turned out to be Dan Gurney who had motored over from the pits to watch the car he’d entered come down the straight.
In a McDonalds on Ventura Boulevard a few years ago, I was watching my daughter playing in the, whatever, and sensing a fellow near me, I realized I was standing next to Steve Landesberg watching his kid playing, and, as always, played it cool. He noticed my trying to play it cool and looked way down on me (he was kind of tall, I’m not) with this goofy,mad hatter look, and I regained my cool, stuck out my hand and said, Mr. Landesberg, I’m a big fan, nice to meet you. We parted.
I’m not gonna tell the story of how I walked in on Alan Greenspan, sitting on the toilet in the dark, in Ayn Rand’s bathroom. I’ve already told it a few times over the years, and enough is enough.
I was working at the UIC Pavilion. Wrestling wasn’t just starting to pick up again from the 60s and 70s. I was a door guard and before the showsomeone banged on my door. I opened it and there was this big guy standing there saying, “Let me in, I’m one of the wrestlers.” I said, “If you’re one of the wrestlers, you know you need to go around the corner and enter from the back.” He says, “but my fans will mob me.” I said, “Pfft, fans, right” and go to close the door. He sticks his foot in the door, grabs my shirt, LIFTS ME UP WITH ONE HAND by the shirt, moves me to the side and walks in. I went to my supervisor who was an off duty cop and describe the guy. he goes, “That’s Hulk Hogan. You actually laughed at Hulk Hogan”. He walked down and chewed the Hulk out. He said he didn’t do anything. he was the talent so nothing happened and I had a ripped shirt. Good story though. I use it whenever we have one of those corporate bullshit sessions where they ask you to tell a story about yourself.
This is my mother and grandmother’s encounter, not mine. It was in the 1990s in South Carolina and they had a flat tire on the side of the highway and were out changing it (both were perfectly capable of changing a tire.) Some guy stopped to help them, and they chatted for a while, he said his first job was changing tires for his father, and he was headed up to North Carolina to visit relatives, among other things. He may have looked a little familiar to them, but they couldn’t place him. It was after they got home and saw one of the Goody’s Headache Powder commercials that were running at the time that they realized that they probably had their tire changed by Richard Petty.
I’ve never seen a celebrity I recognized at the time. A decade or so ago I saw a pro wrestler dressed in WWF gear in an airport and people were walking up to him but I had no clue who he was. And by his outfit he was obviously wanting to get noticed so that doesn’t really count anyway.
I once played a board game with Dave Arneson without knowing who he was, but few would recognize that he was the co-creator of D+D so that doesn’t count as a celebrity either even if I had recognized him.
