I voluntered on the McGovern campaign when I was in high school. I helped set up the sound equipment for a wine and cheese party that Shirley McLaine was attending. I was underage and took the opportunity to get sloppy drunk. Shirley McLaine chatted with me for several minutes and was very pleasent even though I was slurring my words.
Almost sixty years later my mother still loves to tell about how gracious and sincere seeming Mae West was when she met her backstage (my mother’s uncle was business manager of the Birmingham theater where she was appearing and arranged the intro). It’s amazing how one little five minute meeting with a celebrity burned itself permanently into her mind.
I’ve heard very few nice things about John Denver, but speaking of my mother she once singed off one of his eyelashes with a lit cigarette. It was totally his fault: he was being a brat and kept reaching over the bus seat to blow out her matches and cigarette cherries [he was a junior high school student at the time and the class was in route to Vicksburg, MS on a field trip] and when she raised her cigarette to take it out of reach just as he switched sides it caught his eyelash; he wasn’t too happy and he told his father, who basically told him he needed to respect adults more and made him apologize to my mother for blowing out her lights and buds.
Short version: My Fiat was at the only Italian car mechanics shop for some insurance claim work. I had to battle with a big corporation for MONTHS AND MONTHS to get them to fix my car that thier faulty product damaged. Anyway…
I’m standing there supervising the guy, making sure he is actually, finally working on my car. Joyous times have arrived! The car was out of service going on a year by now.
Just then, Andre Agassi rolls up in his Ferrari, and the guy working on my car LITERALLY drops his tools on the ground to rush over to see what he needs. I can still hear the ringing of a Snap-On wrench hitting the floor.
I was sooo pissed!
Madonna lured me into her limo, got me to take off my clothes, had her brutal way with me, and then kicked me out of the limo. She kept my clothes and made fun of me with her pals Appollonia and Sarah Michelle Gellar.
Oh, you wanted factual encounters.
I got into a fight with a Spice Girl a summer or two ago (it was Sporty Spice, since you ask).
I was sitting in a pub garden having a drink with a friend. Someone tries to sit behind me, shoving me out of the way. I’m having none of this, and shove back. Cue several minutes of back-to-back shoving – that kind of terribly unsubtle fighting that fools nobody – before she gave up and moved further round the table.
I didn’t even know who it was until my friend, who’d been facing in the right direction, pointed it out quietly.
About two minutes further up the hill a friend of mine was nearly run over by Helena Bonham-Carter. He swears she was deliberately trying to kill him, accelerating as he started to cross the road.
Is there a pattern or something? With few exceptions it seems the movie/TV good guys are assholes, while the villains are nice people?
I helped out at the Special Olympics one year, with the communications stuff - ham radio. Remember the guy who played Durwood (I know, I know) on Bewitched? The second one, not the original one/ He apparently thought we were all there to be his retainers or servants. Get me a sandwich. Where’s my sandwich. Get me a soda. Where the hell is it. The Special Olympics is not about him, but he acted like its sole purpose is to give free meals to washed up has beens. On the other hand, one time I went with some friends and their daughter to a restaurtant. Being a toddler, she was giggling, bouncing, have a good time. Then I notice this guy grinning and waving at her. An old guy, too “built” for his age. It turned out to be the wrestling villain, Billy Superstar Graham.
I used to deliver pizza to Charlie Rich’s house all the time, they never tipped. I actually delivered to him once, I wasn’t 100 % sure it was him since I had been told he had a brother that lived with him (overweight, wearing only shorts, very white hair and an extreme tan) he didn’t tip either but he wasn’t rude or anything. I of course didn’t say anything about a tip but folks who don’t tip is whole other thread.
The son of a big well known restaurant owner here in town never tipped either. I often consoled myself with thougts of tattleing to his Mom, but she was rumored to be pretty nasty in her own right. (She started Indian-French fusion cooking and won lots of awards)
As long as were getting into sharing third-person stories, I have a friend with a (girl)friend who had an unusual encounter with Steve Martin. Not being there myself, I cannot vouch for the veracity of the story, but it is bizarre enough to make me think it was real.
Anyway, my friend “Mike” had a girlfriend “Shelley” (psuedonyms) who worked at the Luncheonette restaurant on Amsterdam avenue (upper west side of Manhattan). Steve Martin came in and “Shelley” waited on him. Steve took a shine to Shelley and chatted with her, and before he left he gave her is his business card with his cell-phone #.
Shelley, BTW, is a petite, fair-skinned blonde with very curly hair and green eyes. She is (or was, this occurred about ten years ago) an aspiring actress and hoped that Mr. Martin wanted to meet with her in order to offer her a part in a movie(!)
She called the number, and he invited her over to his apartment for a drink. She went over. Almost as soon as she gets there, Steve blurts out that Shelley looks very much like a girl he went to high school with whom he’d had a crush on, but never had the nerve to ask out. Shelley takes this is calmly enough. But then, Steve proceeds to ramble on and on for upward of 30 minutes about this girl from high school, and how he loved her, and how much it hurt that he never got together with her. Finally having had enough, Shelley makes an excuse and gets the heck out of there. Shelley never hears from Steve again.
Anyway, months pass by. Shelley & Mike are walking up & down Broadway one fine Sunday and happen to see Steve Martin walking along the street, hand in hand with a new girlfriend. The girlfriend is … a petite, fair-skinned blonde with very curly hair and green eyes, and looks suspiciously like Shelley!
You too?
You too?
That’s how it was supposed to read in the first place, if it weren’t for my incompetence. Not as funny now…
I have an aquaintance who back in the 70’s used to regularly provide Mr. DJ with certain recreational substances when DJ was attending a rather well-known midwestern university as a drama student. My friend was in the entertainment business for a while and met/partied with a couple famous folks. My mother will sometimes meet local celebs at the high-end dry cleaners she is manager of.
I got nothing of my own. I have had a very sheltered life.
Well, a friend of mine has a long tale about being a ‘liason’ to Val Kilmer, who was apparently a real jerk.
On the other hand, I’ve heard -nothing- but good (and very fun) stories from people who have met and interacted with Bruce Campbell
He came to the local college to give a speech. His dad was a teacher there.
Simply put, Bruce Campbell is just cool. Answered every question asked, even about the evil dead video games. Talked about how great c-span is. We couldn’t stay late to get an autograph as we had to put the kid to bed, but a friend of ours got him to sign an autograph for us.
OK, this isn’t an unpleasant experience, really, so my apologies to the OP:
I got to meet Roy Rogers years ago (obviously) while going through his museum. He wouldn’t sign autographs for my brother or I; said he just didn’t do that. But then he took over an hour giving us a tour of the museum and going into detail about each of the exhibits. Even though I was a little disappointed about the autograph thing, I remember finding him very likable. He did pose for photos with us; I guess he just had a thing about autographs.
I’ve only had one close-up celebrity encounter and it couldn’t have gone better:
I met Jerry Garcia backstage at a Jerry Garcia Band concert and got to have a very brief chat with him. He was gracious, self-effacing, and higher than a kite (he also was very, very greasy and dirty looking). I asked if he’d pose for a picture with me and he said, “Sure, man, whatever.” So I stood on my head beside him.
The picture is one of my prized possessions. I’m standing on my head and he has this completely straight, serious look on his face.
Afterwards, as he’s walking away, I hear him say “Well that was weird…”
Higher praise there could never be.
Fantastic.
Only one thing though. The celeb encounters are getting too pleasant. What we want is famous people kicking your dog, breaking your windshield with golf clubs, getting piss-eye drunk and calling your bf/gf a skanky buttnugget. That kind of thing.
Come to think of it, anybody ever meet Mickey Rourke? 
For about a year and a half, I got to share an office building (and thus, an elevator) with Ms. Joan Rivers and her dog. She wasn’t mean and nasty, just self-centered. If you were having a conversation on the ‘Ms. River’s’ elevator (which means, any elevator she was on) and it wasn’t about her, that had to stop. All elevator conversations on her elevator had to be about her. And none of these quiet elevators - if you shared her elevator there was a conversation (or more likely, a monolog).
Thank Og for express elevators.
Being in NYC, you have to beat off celebrities and celebrity wannabes just to get served lunch at the deli. Most interactions don’t stand out. Most of them go, “I liked you in (name role)”; “Thank you”. I can’t speak poorly of them, as I’m a typical surly, sarcastic and curt NYer myself.
I met Cecil Adams in a bar once. He was a mean, obnoxious drunk and he kept trying to cop a cheap feel off my girlfriend, which really went too far.
Why she left with him that night, I’ll never understand.
This was back in the late 70’s when I was about 14-15.
I was on the school soccer team and my main position was a goalie. A ‘name’, high scoring soccer player from, I think, Brazil was going to stop by the school and speak with the students. He did this and then showed up at soccer practice with news people.
We were so excited we nearly pissed our pants.
He gave us some tips and lessons, then asked for the goalie (me) to get up there and he continued lessons. He was leisurely kicking the ball and nothing was getting by me which was no biggie because he was explaining, not trying.
After a while, he started showing how to score better and tried a little harder, though not very and I still stopped them. I could see the next time that he had kicked up a notch and I still stopped him 
He then came at me like a blur, 50 million misdirections at once. I had never seen anyone close to being that good. He kicked finally…
and I stopped him
He came at me again and I stopped him again. However, it was pure luck. I had no idea where he woud try and just got plain lucky. He seemed to be a bit annoyed.
After that he scored 3 times with no problem.
I was so excited. I was sure that this famous soccer player would come over and compliment me saying I had potential.
Nope. He just took off. 
Of course, maybe I didn’t have any talent… 
It still would have been nice though.
Perhaps we should change the thread title to exclude the word “unpleasant”. Then it would more aptly describe the contents of the thread.
Personally, I haven’t met a whole lot of celebrities. I’m from Texas, and we just don’t have nearly as many celebrities per capita as California and New York do. All of the celebrity encounters that I can remember, though, have gone very well. Here’s one that stands out:
When I was a kid, Mickey Mantle was probably my biggest hero. I didn’t have any real cards of him (those cost money, which kids don’t have) but I had read just about everything about him I could get my hands on. So when I heard he was coming out with a new book (ghost-written by someone else, of course) and that he was coming through Houston to sign copies of his book, I just had to be there. Actually, my mother brought all 3 of her kids, and we all bought the book and got him to sign it. I wore my Yankees’ jersey (closest thing I had to a prized possession) and when I presented my book to him to sign, he grinned and said, “I like your shirt.”
I remember it like it was yesterday.