Doesn’t necessarily creep me out, but I’ve heard from a couple of friends about Mike Mills of R.E.M. (and, to a lesser extent, Michael Stipe) hitting on women/groupies in a really obnoxious, misogynistic manner after shows. Didn’t fit with my image of the band members.
Every major comedian has a similar story. Red Skelton and Lou Costello both went onstage the nights their respective sons died. Comedians have a very different work ethic than, say, musicians. The bar for being considered “high-maintenance” is a lot lower for nightclub comics than it is for other entertainers, making their reputations for professionalism a lot harder to maintain. Having been cut from the lineup myself for much less substantial reasons, I don’t begrudge any of these guys for the appearance of callousness.
Well, the OP’s already set the bar pretty low when it comes to creepiness.
And most of these other ones seem to be pretty much hearsay. It seems a bit like being creeped out by Richard Gere because, I heard, somewhere, maybe, about him and a gerbil and an ER…
My sister’s friend is an interior designer in L.A. who works for a firm that does a lot of homes for the rich and famous. She was with a small group in Tom and Nicole’s home and she reported something similar. All of the framed pictures in the rooms they were shown were turned face down. Also, whenever T or K were about to walk down a hallway, servants went ahead of them and closed the doors so the designers couldn’t see them.
Huh, maybe that’s why the OP referred to “minor anecdotes” in the thread title. I mean, what did you honestly expect - a bunch of first-hand accounts of celebrity creepiness from people on a message board? I pretty much assumed by looking at the thread title it was going to be more Inside Edition than BBC News. Most gossip is hearsay - doesn’t mean it’s not entertaining.
A friend of my girlfriend’s knows the singer Pete Yorn and apparently he goes for the most underage-looking girls possible.
Bea Lilly went onstage in a show for British flyboys during WW2 on the night she learned her only son, a British flyboy (or Canadian- RAF either way) had been killed. The audience didn’t know and she didn’t tell them. I always thought it was an awesome testament to her.
I have a hard time enjoying performances by stars who had notorious deaths. The Sharon Tate episodes of Beverly Hillbillies always freaked me out (after I learned who she was, obviously), anything with Phil Hartman, Elvis, etc.- I can’t watch it without thinking of how they died.
I think Jane Fonda is a stellar actress but her Hanoi activities (which I know were grossly exaggerated in a variety of urban legends, but the basis still happened) put a damper on any of her movies as well as her later claiming she was young and misguided (she was over 30- young yes, but not too young to have decent judgment).
Anne Heche- I always think of her as babbling incoherent “space alien” messages in the desert while in between sexual orientations and periods of sanity. Strangely I had that problem before she went nuts in a desert post-Ellen.
Not to knock her, but she also told Larry she’s never smoked a joint, even though there’s video eveidence that shows otherwise.
Before home computers, I recall hearing that Cary Grant allegedly smelled bad from smegma, but damned if I can find a cite on the internet.
Going on stage on 9/11 is a non issue- good for David Brenner.
Neither of these bothers me at all. I thought Weird Al’s reaction was a good tribute to his parents – their boy doing what he does best. How can anyone else tell him what the proper way to mourn is?
Paul Shaffer strikes me as one of those old-school songwriters who could churn out tons of songs like that. It’s not as if “It’s Raining Men” is the deeply-felt work of some brooding folkie. It was created in that hit-factory way that brought us songs like “Please Mr. Postman” and “He’s So Fine.” Just some guys (or girls) writing catchy songs to make some cash. I think you’re finding creepy when there’s no creepy there.
He was a major LSD advocate, which resulted in a lot of really really bad and sick jokes and imitations with a friend I used to have that I still can’t watch one of his movies without thinking about.
I wouldn’t say “creeps me out” but I can’t watch Patty Duke without thinking that she used to charter Lear jets (and keep the meter running) whenever the president summoned her to DC to help with a major crisis through coded radio messages. (She revealed this in her autobiography- she had audio hallucinations during her manic phases pre-medication.)
This doesn’t seem that creepy at all to me but there ya go…
A friend of mine used to manage a restaurant in B’ham and described Carol Channing as a raving psycho biatch when she played there in a tour of Hello Dolly in the 1990s. She brought her own organic vegetables to the place and recipes to have them cooked and was furious when they weren’t cooked to her liking… total prima donna.
Mickey Rooney gave a “One Man/One Wife” show in Americus, GA when I lived there and was interviewed on a local radio program. I don’t know if this is his real persona or if he was pandering to who he thinks small city Georgians are, but he went into a long spiel about being born again and about how homosexuals have taken over Hollywood and in his day there weren’t homosexuals in Hollywood (?!) or if they were they kept it to themselves and Hollywood is such smut today he’s glad he’s not starring in movies much anymore (not as glad as the movies are), and I remember thinking “this is from a dwarf who’s been married 8 times and had numerous affairs and admitted to drug problems and bragged in his autobio about what a stud he was and now he’s trashing other people’s morals?” Folks at the hotel where he stayed also said he was an ass until cameras were around, then he was all smiles and waves.
I think there’s a difference between a personal tragedy and a national catastrophe. I would applaud Ms. Lilly for not disappointing the flyboys, but David Brenner performing on Sept 11 when the whole world practically came to a standstill seems a bit callous.
I’ve heard Neal Boortz (libertarian radio talk show host) say never wears underwear twice. He buys it, he pulls it out of the package, he wears it, he throws it out.
And apparently Andy Dick can be a real, well, you know.
Joan Crawford (I think it was) found out that the plumber who’d just installed her new bathroom had used the toilet. She ordered him to rip it out and install a new one.
(Actually, I think we had a poster here once who was maybe not quite that fastidious, but close.)
A lot of celebrities seem to be kind of germ-phobic. I read somewhere that working on a video for Madonna, one of the dancers accidentally flipped a drop or two of perspiration onto her, and she wiped down not just herself but the dancer with antibiotic moist towelettes.
He is, however, a charming drunk.
I was hanging out and sipping a couple of cool ones with my close friends Bill Moyers and Elvis Costello, when suddenly Dr. Jonas Salk walked into the room and bit the head off of a live marmot.
Now she does it in London. 
I can believe that. I listened to an interview with the humorist Dave Barry once. The interviewer said the column Barry wrote immediately after his mother died was the funniest one of Barry’s he’d ever read (no, I don’t remember which one that was). The interviewer asked about that. Barry said he wrote it on the plane right after learning of the death and that it was his was of dealing with it, sort of a catharsis.
About Michael Stipe hitting on women- not bloody likely, he’s gay.
About Val Kilmer- I have heard that his rudeness stems from a crippling shyness, but it could just be a front.