A friend of mine sometimes gets to escort actors at movie premieres or other functions. She said Helen Mirren was very gracious, pleasant, polite, and all-around classy.
I met Matt Winston (look him up–he’s done a lot of mostly small roles and I think you would recognize him if you saw him) at a convention and he was extremely friendly, cheerful, and easy to talk to.
billfish678 - He plays JD, the main character. I’ve previously heard good things about Braff so hearing different accounts of him being a dick is kind of sad, but not that unexpected given this is a star we’re talking about.
I really hope to god that should I ever get famous/big in any way I wouldn’t treat people that way.
Since a few singers have been mentioned…
Trace Adkins is a class act. I worked a festival last summer where he performed. He showed up early in the afternoon and instead of hiding in his bus he walked around the backstage area saying hi to everyone. Local bands were performing throughout the day and he watched each one from the wings of the stage. After each band finished playing he talked to each one and signed autographs, took pictures, etc. He even took a demo CD from one of the bands.
After his show he stuck around and signed autographs for anyone who wanted one. After the area cleared out he invited all the security people to his bus for a beer and would not take no for an answer. Totally down to earth and the type of guy you’d want as your neighbor.
It seems most people’s definition of “class act” in this thread is “extrovert” or “people person.”
This is a ball player, but still…
Frank Thomas, aka The Big Hurt, was always very gracious with fans, even on road trips. A friend of mine was out by the players parking lot at Anaheim Stadium after a game, and Thomas came out to sign autographs. He was friendly with everyone, and signed everything offered to him, posed for every picture, whatever, until every fan had been spoken to. Then he went to his car and drove to his hotel. Even the Anaheim players didn’t hang around that long.
I’ve heard just the opposite about him, and he supposedly travels with a posse that has been known to beat on people who get in his way. I’ll try to find a site on this – there was a law suit a few years back by someone who was seriously injured by his “friends”.
Re: Leo
Google his name and the term “pussy posse”. Um, less than total high class.
Here is one story about the beat down. Not real informative, I’ll see if I can find some others.
And yet they’re apparently great friends in real life. Weird…
Since we seem to be split regarding Steve Martin, I’ll tip the scales with a classy anecdote: My mother and her friend were about to be seated at a restaurant in NYC (I think they had reservations), when Steve and his date walked in. A young staffperson (perhaps not recognizing him) told him “Sorry, we have no tables available”. Steve could have “pulled rank”, but instead he politely siad, “Oh, that’s okay”,.
The girl’s boss then approached her and started to berate her for her “insolence”. I’m not sure if Steve had left, or maybe he reassured the boss that it was okay, that the girl had done nothing wrong. Either way, sounds like a class act to me (on that occasion, anyway).
Almost the same thing happened at UM in Missoula: Whoever set up the ticketing for our concert went through huge hoops making sure that in-person ticketing would be random and equitable and blah-blah-wristbands, and then didn’t bother to have online and in-person/over-the-phone ticketing come from two separate pools. I think maybe 3 tickets were sold in real life before the internet sales wiped them out entirely.
So we got another Elton John concert, although it was about 6 months later, and there were still wristbands.
I’ve been watching Spain… On The Road Again, a travel-doc TV show that follows a quartet of food celebs/actresses around Spain on a road trip as they sample local foods, wine, culture, etc… with Gwyneth Paltrow being one of the quartet and I must say she comes off as very fun, humble, down-to-earth and entirely pleasant. It’s a nice surprise to see that a mega-millions Hollywood powerhouse can remain so normal.
An athlete, but I have to say that Art Monk formerly of the Washington Redskins is by all accounts a very very nice person.
Because my then-wife was a contributing writer for Creative Loafing (Atlanta), we were both invited to the cast party of Camelot starring the late Richard Harris as Arthur.
Because the Braves were in the play-offs that year, I was chosen to present him with a Braves jersey which he sincerely appreciated, but (this probably being one of his “dry” periods) he remained aloof from the rest of the gathering for the rest of the night, and I can’t say that I blame him.
All around him people were knocking back drink after drink and this hard-drinking Irishman was relegated to drinking his Perrier.
Not once did I see him speaking to anyone else, but before he left he gave me and my wife a very sweetly-worded autographed program of the show.
In keeping with the spirit of the OP, since that time, I have made it a policy not to approach anyone famous or ask for an autograph.
If I happen to observe them being nice to people, fine, but I kinda get the feeling that when they have to go out into public, they kinda dread it a little.
Q
Mrs. Cheesesteak has worked with numerous celebrities in her years in theatre (the Elaine Stritch moments are hilarious) and was lavish in her praise of Donny Osmond. Sure, he’s not a “big star”, necessarily, but he’s got a seriously rabid fan base, and has been performing his entire life.
He joined her show (Beauty and the Beast) and came with your typical “star” problems, scheduling, security, etc. but was a total professional. Nice to everyone, easy to work with, and hard working as hell, because he seemed to really care about putting on a top notch performance for his fans every single night. Considering there are Chorus Girls who want everyone to kiss their asses, I guess Donny was a real pleasant change of pace.
Both Gilda Radner and Gene Wilder had reputations for being sweethearts. GIlda wrote in her book that after her last radiation treatment for cancer, Gene came to the hospital and talked to everybody, asking them about their jobs and letting them be proud of what they are doing.
Now that is a “class act.”
When I was working security in Hollywood I foudn the following to be very classy and gracious:
Raquel Welch. Talked with me for 15 minutes even though I was just a Security guard. It helped she was bored, waiting to go on, of course.
Johny Carson. Very private, but treated staff with respect.
Dean Martin (by the time I met him) really was a heavy drinker, but was cool. Earlier in his career, the drinking was overstated for the press and public.
Paul Newman. He lent his back up racing dirt bike to a young competitor that had destroyed his own.
David Carridine was not very “star-like” but seemed a bit strange or odd. He wasn’t condesending or anything, just a “dude”. He needed to borrow $5 as he had no cash in his pocket! Of course you just write that off, but when Kung-Fu was hot, saying that I had left “Caine” a fiver got me plenty of “oohs” so it was worth it!
Bill Macy from Maude bought me and my GF a chicken dinner- he had just bought the franchise and he recognized me from working with me.
Clint offered to buy us a drink at his Carmel inn.
After I grew up, I never bothered celebrities for autographs etc. I just said something like “Hey I really enjoyed XXXX, thank you for your work” or something like that.
A few other “class act” musicians that I’ve encountered and chatted with briefly over the years.
Perry Farrell of Jane’s Addiction. Literally smacked into him turning a corner and knocked him over. His entourage got pissy and wanted to rough me up, but he graciously apologized to me, shook my hand, and we had a good chuckle and went our way.
Roxette I saw at a CD signing. They were charming and chatty with the fans throughout, and equally nice before and after with staffers.
Juliana Hatfield apparently likes to hang in the audience/bar during opening acts and before shows, I’ve seen her a few times and talked briefly. She’s very nice to her fans. I’ll also mention that she is one of the most heart-meltingly stunningly beautiful women I’ve ever seen.
(If we’re allowing musicians…)
I’ve worked with just about everybody in the bluegrass world at one point or another, and with the glaring exception of Ralph Stanley (and, to a lesser extent, his son), every single one of them was completely friendly and classy. My favorites to work with were always Del McCoury and his family (his two sons are in the band, and his wife manages their merch); by the end of the night, they always had us all feeling like family.
By far the most fan-friendly musician I ever worked with was Bruce Hornsby. If you’re hanging out after the show and mention you’re a piano player, he’ll probably drag you up on stage to show you some new stuff he’s been working on. It also surprised me that he is very heavily involved in transcribing his work into piano sheet music.
Furthering the George Clooney train, every feature or interview on him that I’ve read usually involves the article writer going out of their way to talk about what a great guy he is, and not in a “plug the movie-star” kind of way, but in a genuinely, almost surprised “Wow, this guy is awesome!” sort of way. One of them wrote about going over to Clooney’s house for dinner, which Clooney and his wife made from scratch, and then hanging out and getting drunk with them late into the evening and just shooting the shit.
And, two anecdotes, only one of which I know is true:
The Definitely True One (read an article about it last year): Some kid was selling lemonade near a location where Clooney was filming, and Clooney came over and bought a glass fo $75. The only reason the paper knew about it was that the kid’s mom called them and told them.
The Possibly Not True One (but a friend swears he read it in an article somewhere): If you stop George Clooney on the street and tell him you saw Batman & Robin in the theatres, he will give you eight dollars on the spot.
This goes way back, but Buddy Hackett was nice enough to come talk to my church youth group. Of course I missed that night. Buddy was in our area to go to the Duke diet center and he made some local friends and one of them asked him to come to our group and he did. Around that same time I met him at a local store and he was nice to me there. ( BTW, this was a Catholic group and he was Jewish)