Celebrity Sightings (1 Viewer)

[Bill Wise]

While we were in Vegas for our wedding, my best man and I bumped into (literally) Tom Jones coming out of the restroom in Bally's casino. Have also shared plane rides with Bob Costas and Cheryl Miller and played mini-basketball with Dennis Rodman in a bar in Detroit. All very nice people.

Bill

 

[Scott_lb]

After moving to Los Angeles from Wisconsin for grad school, I've bumped into what I consider quite a few.

1. A friend of mine used to work on Hollywood Squares so I got to meet a few people. Martin Mull was my favorite, after all, he's in one of the greatest films ever created: "Clue".

2. I saw Kurt Russell at a Charley's sandwich shop in Long Beach

3. They used to film Buffy the Vampire Slayer at my school (or at least parts of it) so I saw Sarah Michell Gellar, Freddie Prinze, and the rest of the Buffy gang more times than I can remember.

4. I encountered the mother of all celebrities about two weeks ago: I was driving around Hollywood on Sunset Blvd. the night that the Matrix Reloaded opened just to take in the city. I like Hollywood and hadn't been there in many months. And who ends up walking in the middle of the road (wearing dark clothing of course) that I almost run over? Friggin' Ron Jeremy! The king of all celebrities! That really made my night.

I've also got to meet many boxing/ kickboxing celebrities as well, as I used to train at a World Champion kickboxing gym. They don't hold a candle to the king, of course.

 

[James_Kiang]

Let's see....

- Back somewhere between 1984-1986 my brother, his girlfriend at the time, my sister, and the Australian exchange student we had staying with us met one of the blonde daughters from Charles in Charge.

- A few years back, I bumped into Bob Saget at a Jackson Browne concert.

- Back in January of this year me, my wife, my brother, and a friend were visiting the folks in Colorado. We decided to head over to Aspen. While driving around looking for a parking spot, I looked up and saw George Lucas. He was talking to some fans and taking pictures. If I wasn't driving I would have got out and asked for one myself. We did get a picture, but just from the car.

 

[Michael Reuben]

I live in New York City. Sightings occur so often that I've lost count. Most recent two:

1. On Memorial Day, my wife and I walked past Richard Belzer window-shopping on Amsterdam Ave. I was surprised that he would be in town for the holiday, but then I remembered he was scheduled to perform at Caroline's.

2. My wife recently passed Gabriel Byrne on Park Ave. He just opened a restaurant on the Upper East Side, so I'm sure he's here a lot.

Favorites from recent years:

Watching Sigourney Weaver intently reading ingredient labels at a local upscale food market. (She and her family live around here.)

Having Tim Robbins hold the men's room door for me at the auditorium in Pace University where Pacino and an all-star case were doing a Brecht play. Later I spotted him in the audience with Susan Sarandon.

Having dinner at Ouest on Upper B'way on a Saturday night. At the table next to me was Denis Leary. On the way out, we passed Spielberg and Kate Capshaw waiting at the bar. My wife stood right next to Mr. Steve for a few minutes while we waited for our coats, and she didn't bat an eye. (Ouest is popular with celebrities; on our previous visit, Robert Altman was there holding court.)

Sitting next to Leonard Nimoy and some of his family at Sarabeth's on the Upper West Side. This was right around the time the Thalia reopened as the "Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theater".

Standing next to Tim Curry at my local deli.

Standing next to Whoopi Goldberg at another local deli. A week later, I happened to be in California at Fred Segal's -- and she walked in there too (with Frank Lagella; they were together at the time). She probably thought I was stalking her.

A few years back, we used to pass Woody Allen and Soon-Yi wheeling a stroller on a regular basis.

Attending a reading of a Shaw play performed by Ed Asner, Dianne Wiest, Rene Auberjonois and Harris Yulin. A member of our group knows Asner, so we went backstage afterward to congratulate him. While we were standing there, Al Pacino appeared, told Asner how much he enjoyed the performance, and vanished as quickly as he arrived.

M.

 

[Armando Zamora]

Muhammad Ali
The Greatest

The year was 1999...We were at Disney in Florida at the time. We had just watched the parade go by when all of a sudden a huge crowd sorta engulfed us. I got freaked out because I was holding onto my 2 y.o. and was trying to take care of our belongings at the same time. You can tell I was in frantic mode as I tried to keep track of everything...kid and stuff. As the crowd totally surrounded us, I looked up to check out the situation when to my amazement, I see standing immediately next to me arguably, the Greatest boxer of all-time, the one...the only...Muhammad Ali himself. I was awestruck. He had stopped for a moment to shake a few hands and pick up toddlers. I was one of the fortunate ones to have shaken his hand and my son was actually the first child he picked up. I was so caught off-guard and unprepared that I didn't get a picture of the moment. By the time I collected my self and regained my composure, he had already set my son down and picked up another child. Man, was I bumming that I didn't get that picture. His entourage just so happened to cross our paths as we stood there minding our own business. That was awesome!!!

That's my brush with fame!

 

[Josh Lowe]

I've met a few famous people, but they weren't accidental or surprises.. only a couple accidentals:

Martin Luther King III was in front of me in line at CompUSA. I didn't recognize him until the cashier told me.

Steve Garvey was standing next to me for about 20 minutes at the bar at a Ruth's Chris before someone pointed it out to me.

Hm.. My grandparents used to live next door to the Pittsburgh Pirates training camp. They'd go religiously and made friends with a lot of players back in the early to mid 80s. There's a great pic of them chatting with Barry Bonds and Bobby Bonilla, back when they were still good guys. They also had a good one of them arm over arm with a slightly intoxicated looking Billy Martin.

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

I met Jerry Garcia several times when he was a hack guitar teacher at Dana Morgan Music in Palo Alto, circa 1962.

I got fairly close to George Bush Sr. when, as VP, he gave a pep-talk at Camp Red Cloud near the DMZ in Korea in 1982.

I got to meet with Justice Sandra Day O'Connor when she was a guest at my law school's alumni party.

 

[Christ Reynolds]

bill murray was filming osmosis jones in my town, plymouth, mass. my friend and i snuck behind where i went to kindergarten, which was across from the house he lived in in the movie (i think) and took some hi8 footage of him. maybe it sounds creepy, but i have bill murray footage on my own personal video camera, even though i havent even seen osmosis jones and a few nights later, bill murray and a couple other guys were walking out of the local pizza place down the street, and my parents ran into him. my mother, who is a crazy scottish lady, ran up to him and hugged him, he was pretty cool about it i guess, ive heard he could be a bit nasty. 5 minutes later, i saw my parents and they told me about it, so i took my rollerblades and skated all over town with my rushmore criterion and a sharpie looking to get an autograph, to no avail. i think i told this story on the last 'celeb encounters' thread here. and my friend has seen chris cooper at the local mcdonalds a couple times. he lives either here in plymouth, or kingston, which is the town next to us. and i also saw julianne moore naked in my room, right here on my tv while watching boogie nights. that was probably the best one.

CJ

 

[ThomasC]

My friend went to the last performance of Tosca last year at the Met. He saw Jerry Seinfeld, James Earl Jones, and various others.

A few weeks ago, I saw one of the meteorologists for my hometown NBC affiliate at my hometown library, and was talking about tornadoes to one of the librarians, no less . He's been at working for them since before I was born (joined them in 1980, I was born in 1983), so he's definitely gotten celebrity status as far as I think.

 

[Jay Heyl]

I got a brief glimpse of Morgan Fairchild on an airplane once before they closed the doors and whisked her to an unoccupied seat in first class.

Yogi Berra said hello to me as he walked toward his seat on another flight.

Sid Ceasar was on a flight I took once. I didn't see him on the plane, but he was standing next to me at the luggage carousel. I figured someone like him would have "people" to take care of the luggage, but there he was waiting for his bags just like the rest of us.

I was about five feet away from Ron Perlman during intermission at a concert last year.

 

[Allen_Appel]

Back in 1980 or so I was waiting for a delayed People's Express flight and talked with Peter Vidmar, the Olympic gymnast, and the guy who played the dad on Lost in Space. I saw Merlin Olsen drunk and smuggling a bottle of beer out of a bar the night he broadcast a game at my college. I saw Jack Kemp on the street and he said "hello". I saw Yoko Ono on the street in NYC. My wife and I vacationed with friends at Clint Eastwood's Carmel ranch and saw him in the restaurant. He is much much much older-looking in person. I was in line for movie tickets and the man in front of me was Ted Koppel. I partied with the Red Hot Chili Peppers (Hillel era). My wife sold her hairbrush to Henry Rollins. My dad once gave money to Mama Cass Elliott. My mom went to high school with Goldie Hawn. My stepmother had her picture in the National Enquirer sitting on Rod Stewart's lap.

 

[Justin Lane]

About 5 years ago I ran into Rebecca Romijn-Stamos and her husband John Stamos at MGM studios in Florida. John was there for a program of some sort and she tagged along. I got a picture of the two with myself somewhere as well.

I have also seen Bruce Willis a couple times. His hometown (Penns Grove, NJ) is where I attended high school and he comes back and visits every so often.

J

 

[Max Leung]

I saw Atom Egoyan give a little speech at the Calgary Film Festival Closing Gala, after his Ararat screening.

Unfortunately, he ducked out right away before I could talk to him about the Armenian genocide. He commented that "making humans into abstractions" is the cause of genocide, but I really wanted to give him the current scientific view of the "phenomenon".

I was also at the Atanarjuat Q&A after its screening a year before at the 2001 Calgary Film Festival, with two of the stars and the director. Later I saw them at the opening gala. Lucy Tulugarjuk (who plays Puja) is pretty cute. And really really short.

 

[Devin U]

I used to work at a sporting goods store, and around Christmas one year, Danny Ainge came in to buy some last minute gifts. I was his cashier. Then I forgot to take the security tags off his clothes. He was in such a hurry, he ignored the alarms. I had to run out, catch him, and bring him back in to the store. On a flight to London, I sat near Sen. Chris Dodd. I asked him for the time, and then said, are you Sen. Dodd. He said, "yeah, I am. Now F*ck off, im on vacation." I also met Jay Leno and Garth Brooks. I was a contestant on the weakest link, and we were in the hall leading to the Tonight show stage, and the both stoped and talked with all the contestants.

 

[Devin U]

I saw Merlin Olsen drunk and smuggling a bottle of beer out of a bar the night he broadcast a game at my college.

Hahahahahah.....Didnt he go to Brigham Young University, the driest college in the US?

 

[Yee-Ming]

I met Gene Simmons in a giftshop at Vegas.

How did you recognise him without KISS makeup on? Then again, I note it was in Vegas, did he have his full getup on at the time?

No point me reciting most sightings, since local celebs would be unknown outside this little place.

But I can say I met Tony Hadley (lead singer of Spandau Ballet) backstage after a promo club appearance and we had a nice chat about Arsenal Football Club (we're both fans), courtesy of my sister who was then working for the local radio station promoting the event.

And once at the airport a long time ago, my father introduced the family to Simon Yam, a Hong Kong actor (my dad worked in the HK movie industry).

 

[Cees Alons]

Living in Amsterdam, I happened to meet/see several Dutch celebrities, most of you probably have never heard of.

A few encounters of the third kind with international celebrities happened in Cannes, while I was on vacation, not during the Film Festival.


About American Celebrities.

Michael Jackson once stayed in the same hotel, while we were there. I didn't meet him, he was on the balcony once or twice, when we left the hotel, with a tremendous crowd of fans in the street, shouting.

Several years ago, there was a film that was shot partly on location there. It was called "Paris Match" (working title).
My children used to play on the beach together with the son of an actor who was in that movie. We met, and one afternoon he invited us for an evening sea-ride on a ship he hired privately. I didn't tell him I'm a film buff and that I knew him: it was Timothy Hutton (already divorced then of the boy's mother, Debra Winger; BTW, he's now married to a niece of the former French president Giscard d'Estaing).

We had a very nice time on that boat, my wife and some other very attractive ladies (among which another actress from that movie: Susan Anbeh), Timothy, the children and myself. I remember having to tell him the true story of the Man in the Iron Mask (supposed to have been imprisoned on the isle we passed). Easy enough for me, because Alexander Dumas' Three Musketeers has been one of my most favourite and most frequently read books since I was 13.

Later we watched a funny scene being filmed with Meg Ryan and Kevin Kline inside the hotel (at least 50 people, many guests who happened to pass just like us, behind the camera; you wouldn't know it from the movie, we were all hushed almost constantly) and a scene at the beach were we were sun-bathing too (not visible in the movie). Then we happened to pass at the harbour while several (different!) takes were made of a particular goodbye scene in the movie - with a different "result".
I still have many nice pictures (but won't show them in public), on the beach, all behind a sand-castle the children made, several on the boat, the filming of the harbour scene, etc.

That film got the name French Kiss later and of course we saw it in the cinema and I have it on tape and now DVD.


Not of American fame, but in the hall of that same hotel we also passed the King Fahd now and then. He used to be there almost every year, sometimes during the same period as we did.
My son (little blond guy) used to talk shortly with his bodyguard (huge black guy) while he was sitting in the lobby, playing solitaire (I think). The bodyguard, that is, not my son.
We had a running joke, when I used to warn my children always to pronounce his majesty's name very carefully, lest someone could get very angry (hint: the gutteral sound of the Arab "h" sounds much like the French "r").

Cees

 

[DaveMcS]

During a semester at University College Dublin, I ditched class for the day to wait for the midnight release of U2's Rattle and Hum album at the Grafton Street HMV. By 10pm the line was some three hundred people long. At midnight, they took the first 10 people (of which 5 were myself and fellow Stonehill College students/diehard U2 fans) They gave us free copies of the album. and lo and behold they ushered Bono, Edge, Adam into the store for us to kibbutz with for a few minutes. Larry was AWOL!! Got pics with all the band and their longtime manager Paul McGuinness.

Met Mo Vaughn(former BoSox player) at a gas station!

We get a number of local celebs and sports figures at our furniture store..but I prefer not to bother them for autographs..out of respect for their privacy..esp if I am on the clock.

 

[Dave_Brown]

My first one was back in '94 when I flew to Hawaii for the military. Got bumped to first class and during the flight I see this HUGE guy get up for a moment. I thought "man, he should be a bodyguard or something." Sure enough, the plane lands and Joey Lawrence was sitting two rows in front of me.
Couple years later I fly to Maui for vacation and am walking along the beach near the Four Seasons and I see this guy who looks awfully familiar. Turns out it was Al Michaels from Monday Night Football. Nice guy, actually said hello to me first (probably because I was looking at him wondering where do I know this guy from?) and we chatted for a few minutes.
Finally, my brother was living out in CA for a few months on contract work. He heads down to a local golf course to try and walk on. The starter didn't have much for him but a voice says "hey, we're looking for a fourth if you want to play." Turns around and it was George Clooney and a couple buddies of his. My brother said he was real laid back and cool to play with. Matter of fact, they got along pretty well and Mr. Clooney invited him out to play basketball with them a couple days later. They did this a few times before my brother had to move back at the end of his contract.

 

[Scott Strang]

Saw Jeff Foxworthy at Picadilly one night here in Monroe, LA. Very cordial gentleman.