That’s awesome.
I get why celebs are assholes. I don’t condone it, but I get how they would be driven crazy constantly by fans and eventually lose their cool.
Like celebrities who have fans that come up to them repeating catchlines constantly or calling the celebrities by their character name. I can just imagine, for instance, Anthony Hopkins getting weirdos coming up to him saying, “Hey, hey, Hannibal Lecter, want a nice Chianti? Huh? Ha ha ha! And some liver? Ha ha ha! Do that slurping sound!” I suppose that would wear a little thin.
Sampiro, this is bringing back memories of my HUGE crush on Eddie Furlong when I was 13 until I was 15. I’m looking on the photos at that site and thinking, “What in the FUCK was I thinking?!”
The only celebrity I have ever met in my life.
I was training in a local gym, early in the day (I got off work early). Doing a set of rows for the back.
Up walks Hulk Hogan, in town for a wrestling match, and asks to work in with me. So we traded sets for a bit, and a kid runs up and interrupts Hulk in the middle of a set to ask for an autograph.
Cool as you please, Hulk puts down the weight , signs the autograph, and spends a minute or two asking the kid about his grades. “Keep at the school work - that’s the important thing. Get an education and you can do anything in life.” Then he went back to his set.
I have no brief for professional wrestling, but at least Hulk spent that thirty seconds of his life giving a kid a positive push. Good for him.
Regards,
Shodan
My celebrity encounters are ancient history.
Back in 1970 or 71 I was backstage at a Mountain concert and watched Leslie West throw up. Poor guy thought it might have been the altitude.
Then I watched as Felix Pappalardi (producer of Cream’s Disraeli Gears) was informed of the shootings on the Kent State campus in Ohio.
That was kind of sad. (Sadder still, Pappalardi
later died of a gunshot wound at 43.) Pappalardi was very kind and polite to me.
That was about as unpleasant as it’s been.
Other old skool rock star stuff was polite and friendly.
I remember hearing that back in the day Hulk was by far the top requested celebrity by the Make a Wish foundation. No matter how busy his schedule, he always made time to meet every kid he could. Sounds like a terrific guy.
Makes it hard to maintain an attitude of sneering contempt towards “professional” wrestling, but I find that if I try hard enough, I still can. 
If it helps any, those thirty seconds were rare for home. Hogan’s generally a huge flaming ass.
Him. Not home. Blah.
Only to his coworkers, so he can protect his own spot in the lineup and his legacy.
Here is an other second hander. I can’t be verified because all the participants are dead. At the end of WWII my father was stationed at the army hospital at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. What with all the rumors about Ike playing fast and lose with his driver there was a concerted effort to get Mamie to England. My father and another doctor named Morton, a urologist from Toledo, Ohio, got the job of vetting her for the trip and giving her the necessary vaccination.
Dad and Morton quickly decided that there was little that could possibly happen to the wife of the Commander in Chief, United Nations Forces - Europe, and that they were not about to do anything that could cause Mrs. Eisenhower and distress at all and coincidentally make their remaining time on active duty a living hell. She got a cursory examination of the fully clothed variety and her shots consisted of a single injection of sterile water.
Before the needle was out of her arm, Mamie collapsed on the examining table. Dad and Dr Morton stood there staring at her for five or ten seconds while visions of a life time at Levenworth flashing before them. Mamie roused, eyeballed Morton - the guy with a half empty syringe in his hand - and said, “You better be scared, young man.”
Later the hospital commander thanked them both for getting Mamie out of his hospital so fast.
Touché. I don’t know of any incidents where he’s been rude to fans but I’ve never heard any good stories either… I just don’t like the orange freak and never have. Even as a kid during Hulkamania’s heyday.
By the way, have you and I ever ran across one another at other boards? Your name looks ***really ***familiar.
No brushes with fame myself, but an ex-fianceé once accidentally roamed onto a private estate in Aspen while mountain-biking. She met a nice fellow who explained that she was on private property, and told where she turned wrong. While she was talking to him, a huge ugly man with a huge ugly dog drove up in a huge ugly truck, and the nice fellow introduced him – Hunter S. Thompson. Being an English teacher, she fawned over him a bit, and he brushed her off with a burst of profanity. When he left, she asked the nice fellow if he was a writer too, and he explained that he wrote songs. Might she have heard of him? “Maybe – my name’s John Denver.”
Rob Lowe has a bad rep in Santa Barbara for his property squabbles and nanny issues, but I’ve seen him out surfing twice and I want to vouch for him. He’s a total beginner, but the two days he was out were each the second-biggest days of the year, and he was alone. I’m talking 8-10 feet and heavy, and a lot of casual surfers were on the beach. He initiated chatting with me both times, a little nervously on one occasion, saying “jeez there’s a lot of water moving out here”. Because I’m so f_n cool I chatted but pretended not to recognize him, as we do here in SB. Anyway, he was really there for the surf, no cameras in sight either time. I have also pretended not to recognize Will Ferrell, Cameron Diaz, Billy Baldwin (like every week), Cindy Crawford, Conan OBrien and some others. Consequently, none of them were assholes to me!!
I worked a few years at a ski resort, and had no problems with the ‘Don’t gawk!’ mandate because I admire art for art’s sake; the artists, not necessarily. And I really hate fame for fame’s sake; I mean, I really detest the whole shebang.
So when Robin Leach did a sleigh-ride gig thing, and a co-worker asked me to get his autograph for her as she was working at the time, I about barfed. But I joined the throng; when he signed the napkin and asked my name, I told him it was for my friend <whatever her name was>. He winked broadly, asked a nearby friend what MY name was, then wrote out ‘To Natalie, with caviar wishes and champagne dreams’ or whatever that drivel was he used to sign off with.
I do believe I burned the napkin at the bar that night. >.<
Edit: he’s probably nice, but holy shit, to assume everyone’s buying into your brand of bullshit is a type of arrogance that’s just triply hard to swallow, yuck.
Celebrity zombies are ALWAYS unpleasant…
The son of a friend of ours dated George Romero’s daughter. 
Aah, I know it’s a zombie but I love these threads.
Not exactly a celebrity but certainly a famous person: a co-worker of mine who went into the Navy in 1981 claims he was the last person ever to have his ass thoroughly and completely and career damagingly chewed by Admiral Hyman Rickover. He (the co-worker) partied too hard on his leave and showed up for inspection very obviously hung over days before the Admiral’s retirement and said he caught about half an hour of absolute hell from the old man who seemed to have been saving up and was confined to ship for a very long time afterwards.
My wife used to tend bar/waitress in Evantson, IL and said that she served Jeremy Piven on more than one occasion. According to her, he is an awful person to serve, he is consistently grumpy, has Short Man’s Attitude (IMDB says he’s 5’10, which doesn’t seem so short to me), and is a pretty poor tipper.
John Cusack, on the other hand, was great, charming, and a good tipper.
This is going by her account, though I have no first-hand experience to verify.
Celebrity heights are notorious for being mis-reported.
From a facebook friend I trust who’s an actress/waitress/dancer in Los Angeles-
Worst Celebrity Customers she’s had (bad attitude, bad tippers):
Ben Stein
Martin Lawrence
Vanna White
Best Celebrity Customers she’s had:
Danny Devito/Rhea Perlman
Mary Tyler Moore
Angela Bassett