Herbie Mann
Dave Frishberg
Jenna Elfman
Joe Mantegna
Mel “Scary Spice” B
Joey Fatone
Alex Trebek
Liza Minnelli
Kathryn Grayson
Fred MacMurray
Dick Sargent
Neil Abercrombie (currently Governor of Hawaii)
ETA almost forgot: Stevie Wonder
Springsteen (danced next to him at a club!), made eye contact, but didn’t bother him.
Dave Berry and Ridley Pearson several times.
Sue Grafton.
Maury Wills several times (my childhood hero)
Ray Bradbury.
Woody Allen
Isaac Asimov
Brigitte Bardot
Bill Clinton
Jose Feliciano
Alan Ginsburg
Alan Greenspan
Sir Edmund Hillary
Paul Lynde
Barak Obama
Bernadette Peters
Ayn Rand
Mickey Spillane
Sylvester Stallone
Barbra Streisand
and many more
The Queen and Prince Philip.
Last year they came to officially open the building that I’m currently working in (even though it’d actually been in use for nearly a year).
Following the opening ceremony, they did a short tour of the building. They (and their enormous entourage and security detail) walked past my desk. I’m no royalist, but that felt like a relatively unique experience. I got a little video.
The preparation that went into that day was enormous. Visits by security teams for weeks beforehand, checking and sealing manhole covers, checking all the cupboard and drawers.
Other than that, the cast of Top Gear (UK) I’ve been to the filming a couple of times and have had brief chats with all three.
Met Roger federer, Maria Sharapova, Anna Ivanovic, Rafeal Nadal, Mike Tyson, would love to meet Sly Stallone
That will be known outside of Spain, Metallica (they were having coffee at el Triangle in Plaza Catalunya before one of their concerts) and Shakira (we crossed on the street in NYC).
Dad got to meet Queen Sofía when she officially opened the hospital where he worked. She impressed him so much that he forgot he was politically opposed to her husband’s enthronement and referred to her as “the Queen” from then on - he still was against him but very much not against her.
Gary Busey: I was an extra in a miniseries. Busey elected not to sit down with the other stars for lunch, and sat with us extras. He chose a chair right next to me, and joined in our conversation.
Other than that, I met Toni Tenille personally in LA in about 1980.
Oh, and I shook hands with Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau during his 1980 campaign.
Ray Bradbury (book signings)
Carl Sagan (I sat by his slide projector while he loaded it up for a public lecture)
Gene Roddenberry & Majel Barrett (sat at their table at a Star Trek convention)
George Takei (at same convention)
Harlan Ellison (helped him spell a word at a SF World Con)
Gov. Jerry Brown (on a plane)
Michael Jordan (he held a door for me at UNC)
Victor Mature (passed him in a restaurant)
As a teenager, we were at Blue Man Group and spotted Francis Ford Coppola a few rows ahead of us. My mother made me go get his autograph.
At Gallagher’s steakhouse, our obviously awestruck waiter pointed out Joe DiMaggio sitting across the room … and made me go get his autograph. (DiMaggio was super nice, by the way.)
I was on stage with Penn & Teller twice (once to throw darts at bible verses, and once for “Mofo the Psychic Gorilla”).
There have been a million others, many more famous than the above, just walking around Manhattan for 30 years. Not a lot of interactions, though.
Queen Elizabeth
Prime Minister Howard
Prime Minister Abbott
Did a science project in 5th grade with John Sayles. Kevin Costner sat on the other side of my husband at the bar in The Irma in Cody, Wyoming.
4 people away from Condoleeza Rice on the White House lawn, 9/11/2004 ceremonies. Daughter and I were visiting Tina Hager, then White House photographer.
Well, BIGGEST, would be former Celtics basketball player Larry Bird and his then-pregnant wife. They came in to the restaurant where I worked in college and boy was he BIG. I was basically looking at his belt buckle (I’m not exactly tall). His wife was very tall and on the thin side, other than her pregnant belly. Yes, many jokes about her having swallowed his basketball…
Gov. Deval Patrick, although maybe only Mass./New England people would really know him. I was amongst a group petitioning for a specific issue and spoke with him briefly.
William Shatner - spoke to him after a theater performance.
Most of the rest are musicians I’ve met or closely encountered from my days of playing in a band in Boston. Leslie West of Mountain, James Montgomery, Tom Rush, David Robinson (drummer for the band The Cars), Livingston Taylor (James Taylor’s brother), Extreme (“Only Words” was about their Only Hit and they were full of themselves), Joe Perry (Aerosmith), Indigo Girls, Bonnie Raitt. Probably a few others I’m forgetting.
I was working at my flying club the night Cliff Robertson flew in. I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt and say he was tired after his flight and that’s why he was being such a butt about his plane. Then the camera came out, and he was all smiles, posing for a photo with my friend and me. Oh, and he stiffed the club for a quart of oil and a tank of avgas.
When I was in college, I came face to face with Harry Chapin after a concert as he was heading to sign autographs/sell stuff for his world hunger cause. He became increasingly peeved that students were asking him to sign tickets and their programs and not buying the souvenirs - as if he didn’t understand that these were students and for some, just getting tickets to the concert was a financial stretch. But maybe he was just tired, too.
In the 60s, I was in the same parade as Bob Crane (of Hogan’s Heroes fame) but the float I was riding didn’t go anywhere near him, so I guess that doesn’t count.
George W. Bush and Al Gore, at two separate events during their campaign. Bill Bradley, at another event. And, for the non-political celebs, Don King, at National Airport.
My wife (uber-geek) once shook the hand of James Doohan.
met Alice Cooper
Robin Williams
Billy Crystal
Little Richard
Bo Derek
met Mike the Dog
Janet Napalitano
John Carradine
Emmy Lou Harris
Stan Ridgway
Pink Floyd 1975, stranded in their limo right beside my car. stuck in an adoring crowd. We got to stare at them for a couple minutes from our luxury seating while we went “whooah”…
Clint Eastwood was standing in a movie line about six people behind me. And I never knew he was there. This was in Monterey. California, in 1975. I was with two other people, and after the show one asked me “Did you see Clint Eastwood? He was standing just a few people behind us!”
The mayor of Bulverde, TX, Bill Krawietz.
Holocaust survivor and one of Mengele’s Twins, Eva Kor.
Grandson of the commandant of Auschwitz, Rainer Hoess.
Grandson of the professor that trained and sent Mengele to Auschwitz, Micheal Worle.
General celebrity: Neil Young w/autograph.
Geek celebrities: James Burke of Connections w/autograph, Nobelist Arno Penzias, and Math God John Conway. Less generally well known but bigger thrills.
I have also been around/talked with (at the least) with 19 Turing Award winners. Spent some significant time with several of those. But that presumably doesn’t impress people in general. Plus I knew almost all of them before they won so meeting them the first time wasn’t a thing. But taken as a group, pretty cool looking back.
Paul Newman.
Andre the Giant