I was once traveling and had a long layover in Phoenix. I went and sat in an empty area because I had a couple of hours before my next flight, and found some seats at an empty gate for some privacy. A very tan old guy in sunglasses and a suit came and sat in the same area. He looked about as tired and frustrated as I felt.
After a while a young guy came up to him, he looked like the poster child for alternative music. Long hair, unbuttoned plaid shirt over a t-shirt, guitar over his back. He went over, talked to the man for a bit, shook his hand, and walked off. At that point I thought, hold on, this guy must be someone famous.
I tried not to stare but sort of checked him out covertly (or tried to) and then I realized… IT WAS TONY BENNETT. I’d been sitting across from a legend for the past half hour and didn’t realize it. I looked around and then finally noticed not too far away a group of people with a bunch of equipment in black travel cases (the sorts of things you’d see roadies hauling for a music group).
I stayed where I was and left the poor guy alone. He was clearly tired and while he seemed very gracious to the guy who came up to him, he went to that place for the same reason I did… Some privacy and some rest. Plus it’s not like I was a huge fan or anything, I just knew who he was. I gave him what I thought he wanted and needed… A chance to just be a regular person on his own for a bit.
After maybe 15 minutes it was time to go to the gate for my flight because it wouldn’t be long before it was time to board so I left, again not even acknowledging that I knew who he was. When I heard earlier this year that he passed away, I remember this weird little chance non-encounter.
When I used to walk through Harvard Square regularly in the 1970s and 1980s, I’d see famous people who were doing residencies at Harvard. The ones I remember were Betty Friedan and Spike Lee, both of whom I looked at with wide eyes, but I left them alone.
I hate to say it, but my first thought on seeing Betty F was, “oh my god, she’s even uglier in person than in photos.” I feel bad that that was my first thought, rather than “oh wow a feminist icon right in front of me.”
I was boarding a plane in Phoenix with my wife, and as we passed through from first class, I noticed who was sitting in the 2nd-to-last first class row. I turned to my wife as we passed the opening, and said “That’s Mark Kelly, the astronaut.” A young woman sitting in the cheap seats heard me and said “No, that’s his brother, Scott - I’m his daughter.” I said to her “He travels in first class and sticks you in Coach? That’s not right - you tell him I said he should buy you a first class ticket.” She just laughed.
The “poster child” you saw may well have been one in his own right, and you just didn’t know who he was.
When I was in college in the early 1990s, Craig T. Nelson was a very popular actor, and word got out that he was staying at the hotel where I worked. Guess who ordered room service? I wouldn’t have known who he was, although the name was familiar to me, but the young man who delivered it did, and hadn’t previously known he was In The Building.
Ooh! Another chance to tell my clueless celebrity encounter story! (That is, I was the clueless one…)
Years ago, I was selling flooring for Home Depot in Atlanta, when I approached a couple who were looking at laminate flooring. One was a slight, very short young African-American woman; the other was a biggish guy. They wanted to know about soundproofing; they were apparently putting together a recording studio.
At the time, I had a coworker who was trying very hard to break into Atlanta radio. As I was talking to the couple, he came up and squeed over the young woman for a few moments. She was reserved but not unfriendly, and I thought to myself, “She must be a program director at V-103 or something”, and made a note to ask my coworker about her later.
And about a week later, I did. He said, “You didn’t know? That was Lisa Lopes, Left Eye from TLC!” Color me clueless, I had no idea. It’s also possible that the man was her then-boyfriend Andre Rison, formerly of the Atlanta Falcons. I felt a little silly, because TLC was one of the few R&B/soul bands I occasionally listened to.
The really weird thing is that a few years later, at a different store, I did the very same thing with Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas. So I’m just waiting to have an unwitting encounter with Tionne Watkins, to collect the full set. FWIW, Left Eye was cool but polite; Chilli was arrogant and entitled.