I, Brian

After littlemissattitude's comments elsewhere I thought it would make a good thread.

Most famous person I met was Bill Oddie - used to be a significant comedian on British TV, and now has a career as a TV ornithologist. I met him as a kid when our school took those of us kids who were in the Young Ornithologists Club to York, for a showcase day - involving him - on the reintroduction of Ospreys.

I remeber very little other than I had him sign I think 3 lecture programmes.

Anyway - who have you met, and how were they?

dwndrgn

I'm a boring nobody - I've met not a single person. Unless you count the Detroit Tigers player nobody remembers who signed a baseball for me and the dog then chewed it up...

Wait a minute - that's not true. I was working a charity casino event at one of my old jobs that was hosted by some former football players and I got Joe Bostic's signature on a menu for my brother. I believe he has since lost it . But I didn't really speak with him other than to ask for the signature, he was rather busy mixing and mingling for his charity group. I also worked in another place where Jaclyn Smith and Barry Bostwick came to eat dinner while filming a TV movie locally (Williamsburg, VA) but I just saw them from accross the room. And, my piece de resistance was flying in first class (because I was underage, by myself and missed my regular flight they threw me up there as those were the only seats available) along with a soap star whose name I don't know, I just recognized him. Didn't talk to him either.

So, even still just a boring nobody!

littlemissattitude

Okay. To reprise from the other thread - I've met and spoken with Orson Scott Card, Robert Bakker (the dinosaur expert, for those of you who didn't read the other thread), and David Crosby (Crosby, Stills, and Nash). I've also met and spoken with Kage Baker and Mark Spitz (yes, the swimmer with all those Olympic medals).

When I was very young (birth to age six) I lived across the road from Raoul Walsh, who was a silent film actor and later quite a famous film director. He was one of the founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the folks who award the Oscars), and was the first director invited to put his hand and footprints in cement at Grauman's Chinese Theater on Hollywood Blvd. If any of you have ever seen the films "White Heat" or "High Sierra" or "The Strawberry Blonde", he directed those, among many other films. He also played the role of John Wilkes Booth in D.W. Griffith's famous (and infamous) "Birth of a Nation".

See, this is what happens when one grows up in Southern California - there are "famous people" all over the place, so that you're bound to run into them from time to time. You see them out shopping, at sports events, etc. This basically just emphasizes the fact that those folks are just like the rest of us, for the most part.

dwndrgn

I lived in the LA area for about the same period of time LittleMiss. Unfortunately we lived in what could politely be called 'the barrio'. Not too many famous people do their grocery shopping there!

I also lived outside of DC for 10 or so years and didn't meet anyone famous there either! My hubby met quite a few (the world champion female kayaker was his favorite) as he worked in more public venues. Being a homebody who worked in PBS's headquarters led me to meet - nobody. Unless you consider the last two CEOs of PBS famous.

I did work in an exclusive, read 'extremely rich' business person's club and heard a lot about famous people but never met any of them. I know Oprah ate lunch there once, Joe Theisman was a member and came often (never while I was there) and many top shelf lawers and politicos from the area. Ooooh, that just made me remember someone famous I did meet that I'm sure nobody knows. He had been one of the Washington Redskins and he then went back into (I assume) art. I found a wonderful pen and ink drawing of a cheetah (my fave) in a local store and fell in love with it. After several more trips to the same store hubby convinced me to buy it since I liked it so much. The saleslady told us the artist had been a local football player. Later that year he held an art auction for charity at the club where I worked. I got to meet him, and of course told him I loved his work. He was extremely sweet, soft voiced and congenial. The only thing that could hint he'd been a football player was his physique. Now I can't remember his name! I'm so ashamed of myself! I'll go look when I get home.

Amidala

I went to see chicago at the opera house and the cast of corry watched it the same night..they were really nice it was erm, Dev, charlie and dr matt are there charecters!

littlemissattitude

dwndrgn...I never met anybody famous when I lived in Norwalk. Well, there was a family from the church I went to that sang (wanted to be the next Osmonds, I guess), but they were in the congregation that met in the afternoons (we met in the mornings), who were on American Bandstand once. And there was a girl who I did go to church with who was a regular dancer on Bandstand for a year or two - but I don't think either case passes as famous.

I think the key to it was that I grew up in Simi Valley, an area of Ventura County that is right across the mountains from San Fernando Valley, that was (and still is, actually) a magnet for industry types who don't want to live the "Hollywood lifestyle". So there were a lot of fairly well-known people and marginally well-known people who brought their families and lived in the area. I went to high school, for example, with a girl whose father sang on the Lawrence Welk Show (which thrilled my mother no end). Kathy was a nice girl, but was totally out of the "celebrity" thing - although she did appear on one of Welk's Christmas shows while I knew her. I only know this because I was in the room when Mom was watching the show - Kathy didn't breathe a word of it to anyone.

jerchar

As we have a bookfair taking place every year in our area in France I got to meet various authors, all of them French so I think you wouldn't know them. They're also french actors who join this fair to do some readings. Otherwise I have met some tennis stars that played at the swiss indoors championship, but here they just give authographs they don't spend time talking to you. That's it for my celebrities. And as to what Dwdrgn was saying, I'd rather be a "nobody" than to have all this nonsense and all these lies written about me in all these cheap magazines. Honestly, life would be hell for me if everything I do would be the highlight of "Voici" (crap paper here in France that just stains everything they write about). Et vive les nobodies....

Incognito

Ah, yes - authors: Met David Gemmell and Robert Rankin. I wouldn't class them as famous, though, as they're not on the telly.

I made a point of ambushing any authors who came to Hull for booksignnigs, and managed to get into conversations with both after the fans had their books signed. I asked a lot about the publishing industry and gettng published - both are very sympathetic to the plight of aspiring authors and mixed hard realism with genuine encouragement. (Robert Rankin also ran about around in my tie-dyed velvet jacket at one point - he'd gotten a little merry on the free wine the book store supplied ).

littlemissattitude

I agree that I don't think the celebrity life would be a fun one, at least as lived by the ones who always end up in the tabloids. Although I sometimes think that part of the time (not all the time, of course, but in some cases) part of the fault for that lies with the celebrities themsevles - when they do things to deliberately call attention to themselves. I'm thinking of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez here, for example. Certainly some people who are very well known as actors, directors, musicians, and so forth, manage to be well known but still have their private lives essentially private.

I've always figured that all any artist owes me is their best performance or best work; what they choose to do aside from their professional work is none of my business, and I'm really not all that interested in that anyway. As I said before, because of growing up where I did and watching from the outside, I know that the lives of most of these people away from their work is just as dull as my life is. Oh, they may have the money to live in a bigger house than I do and are able to do things like travel more than I can. But other than that, they just exist the way we all do. No big deal.

gillman

I was CLOSEST to HOLLY DUNN (Country music singer) she came out into the audience at a County Fair sat at the bottom of the stage when GLEN CAMPBELL was popular MAC DAVIS and ANNE MURRAY HAL KETCHUM Mc BRIDE & the RIDE JOHN DENVER (that was the BEST CONCERT ever) In SPORTS seen DAVE COWANS & JOHN HAVLICEK (Celtics) play BOB McADOO (Buffalo Braves) WILLIE MAYS ,BOBBY BONDS,TOM SEAVER,LARRY BOWA,PETE ROSE,JOE MORGAN in BASEBALL.