That reminds me about Steve Buscemi showing up to work with the firefighters after 9/11.
I have some friends who would disagree. They were fans, got to meet him at a small show and were thoroughly disgusted by his behavior. Could have been him, them, or just a bad day, so I reserve judgement until I get to hang out with him!
I don’t know shit about professional wrestling, but John Cena has done a lot with Make-A-Wish, like over 400 meetings with kids. If it was a handful, I’d chalk it up to PR and marketing, but 400 is quite a commitment.
Watching a lot of old British horror movie commentaries, it seems to me that everybody who worked with Peter Cushing says he was a kind and sweet man and always professional in spite of some of the awful movies he appeared in. The most shocking thing I’ve learned about him, from the director of a little werewolf mystery titled “The Beast Must Die,” is that neither he nor Charles Gray could play chess (“But my dear boy, we don’t know how.”)
George Takei used to have the reputation of being the friendliest and most approachable and friendly Trekker, unless you approached him with a lit cigarette (longtime rabid non-smoker). He used to go for a run with any interested fans when he did cons. This was back in the '90s when he charged around $2,000 for a public appearance he would be booked into lots of tiny cons (Montgomery, AL, for instance- he came here a couple of times) with very manageable crowds.
When his popularity exploded in the 2000s he had to become a bit more distant because now he’s absolutely mobbed even though his appearance fee is many many times what it was, but he still has a reputation as a very nice guy.
Is it any wonder? Look at how Hanks treated Winkler!
He didn’t show up to work with the firefighters, he showed up to work as a firefighter. Before he was an actor he was a member of the FDNY. After 9-11 he went down to his old firehouse, grabbed some bunker gear and went to work.
If we can count sports figures, you’ll be hard pressed to find anyone who’ll say something bad about Stan Musial. Bob Costas said Musial represents “more than two decades of sustained excellence and complete decency as a human being.”. After his wonderful playing career, he loved going around playing the harmonica and doing little sleight of hand tricks for anyone he met. He just seemed like a happy guy who wanted to make his fans happy, and in his adopted hometown St. Louis, *everyone * was a fan.
True. I met Robert Blake while taking a walk in North Hollywood (We lived in the same neighborhood. Who knew?). We had a chat and he seemed like a nice fellow.
This was about 2 months before he was acquitted of murdering his wife.
My cousin had a small speaking role in a Will Smith movie, and said that he was totally friendly and pleasant to work with. It’s a shame he and his family are kind of kooky.
I saw Paul Walker at a Premier once. He had slipped out and (this was the West End of London) wanted to catch a show. Some people recognised him and he stayed and took selfies with all of them.
Natalie Portman I saw in Long Island once, she was with some younger kids, and was in the middle of telling one of them how he could put away his iPod and be more social. Probably siblings or cousins, and I was impressed, she could have been anybody’s older sister/cousin. Does that5 qualify as “nice”.
I’ve heard the opposite about Portman. She grew up in a wealthy family and became a famous actress at an early age. The stories I’ve heard is she considers herself “special” and above normal people.
But she’s 33 now. Maybe it was just her younger personality.
Which is why I asked if that was “nice”;). Those kids could have been siblings or cousins and they would have been just as above normal people then.
Anyway is’nt Nassau County one of the richest in the US?
Tony Heald is reportedly a very nice man. You may never have heard of him, but he played the slimy head of the prison/hospital where Hannibal Lector was kept. He’s also a stage actor. A friend of mine just did an interview with him about his role in “The Elephant Man” with Bradley Cooper on Broadway. I saw him in a Shakespeare production in Ashland, OR. He was very friendly with the audience.
A lot of people say that while that’s quite admirable, you can’t really call Cena a nice person anymore since it was discovered he’d been cheating on his wife (since divorced).
I will say that when I met Mick Foley (back when he was just Cactus Jack) he seemed like a hell of a nice guy.
Tori definitely has that reputation, and I’ve had a chance to meet her once, briefly, before a concert. Her bus was later arriving at the theater, she was plainly tired and (I’m guessing) hungover, but she still spent time with a big group of fans. I got a picture which is still one of my prized possessions over 15 years later.
Also, everyone seems to love Felicia Day.
Dave Brubeck was just an everyday guy. I approached him after a gig he did in Moscow and we chatted on the lawn for awhile about his old quartet. A woman told me later that he sat with her on the stoop of her apartment the night before and they talked for about an hour.
Stephen Spielberg, who could get away with being the biggest shitpile on the planet and still get work, is reputably an extremely nice, down to earth guy.
One wonders if a lot of famous people put on an artificial “nice guy” imagine when directly interacting with fans out of fear of being labeled a jerk, since famous people seem to have a reputation for being jerks.
Of course being pleasant when approached by fans doesn’t make you a super-nice person, it’s just the minimum level for not being judged a colossal asshole.
Of course lots of celebrities love chatting with fans, most everyone likes being told how wonderful they are by adoring people. But some celebrities get jaded after the 1000th time someone comes up to them at a restaurant while they’re trying to eat dinner. The polite thing to do is smile, say thanks, see ya later. That doesn’t make you a nice person. That celebrity who’s nice to the fans can scream at their assistant, be rude to their co-workers, cheat on their spouse, cram multiple substances into every available orifice, rip off their business partners, or rape teenagers. But they’re nice to the fans because the fans pay the bills, and the fans offer unmixed adulation.
He is NOT a nice person by any stretch of the imagination.
A friend of mine was a guest for about a week at the family home of a friend of his, and Steve Martin was there as a guest of the friend’s father for part of that period. He was a complete asshole.