For me it was Jeff Kinney. I was meeting a different author I love, but there wasn’t enough room downstairs and we had to go up. Turns out that’s exactly where Jeff Kinney works! He’s the author who got me into reading so I thought that was so cool
do birds fly? do ducks duck?
That’s nice. Besides clearing the two rows part for obvious reasons, was it business class, first class, or coach?
do bees be?
Dolly Parton at the Nashville rotating restaurant (on top of the Sheraton in the 90s). I was having dinner with a friend and just getting to know her better. She was explaining to me how she always runs into celebrities. She carried around an autograph book everywhere she went. We go to leave and Dolly is coming in. My friend gets another autograph. Dolly was very sweet and very short.
Edit: remove extra words
James Earl Jones. He was doing a book signing in his small hometown, not far from me, when his autobiography was published. As it was such a small shop he spent time talking with everyone who came by. Hearing Darth Vader’s voice coming from such a humble and relatively soft-spoken man was an amazing experience.
I met Quinton Tarantino. Even did a movie with him. Really likes giving pedicures.
But now I just see him out of the corner of my eyes everywhere I go now. It’s weird.
Jimmy Carter, Céline Dion, Michael Gorbatchev, Bruce Springsteen, Arnold Schwarzenegger and many many more. One of the benefits of working in the luxury hotel scope for a few years.
Met Arthur C. Clarke in 1997 in his house near Colombo, Sri Lanka… A friend of my dad had organised the meeting…when we arrived Mr Clarke was sitting in his office watching one of the first Mars rover landings live on CNN…a moment and coincidence which i was only able to understand many years later…
I lived and worked in New York and met a ton of celebrities/big names there. James Gandolfini was really nice. Bjork was not particularly nice. Tori Amos is one of the sweetest, most open and genuine people I’ve ever met. Ethan Hawke was a gross dick. Rik Okasek smells bad but is nice. I got shitcanned with Claude Coleman, my favorite drummer. My favorite celeb I have ever met though is Joan Jett, who I have met many times and is absolutely the best. It was super funny the one time I was just hanging out randomly on the street with a group of friends and this short little muscular blond lady rushed up to me, gave me a hard hug, and rushed away and I got to be like, “Oh, that was just Joan Jett” to my friends.
I met Jeremy Clarkson - he was alright, very pleasant and funny
I didn’t actually meet him, but I made Bill Hader smile!
I was walking being him in a parking lot/alley in Venice and when I realized it was him I got super excited, then my friend whispered loudly “keep your cool, don’t make a scene” and then when he turned the corner we could see the smile on his face. It was very exciting
I’ve also walked behind Fred Armisen and Carrie Beownstein when I walked past a place where they were filming Portlandia
If you count the dudes from Last Podcast on the Left, though, I’ve met Henry Zebrowski so often that he recognized me on the street when I ran into him coming out of a bar. And he was in a Scorsese movie
Hail yourself! I was just scrolling back to see if anyone had met any of the boys. I am sad I haven’t met any of them yet. Seems like all of them would be excellent folks to get a beer and talk about weird shit with. It’s strange how parasocial relationships work. I’ve been listening to them twice a week for 8 years and feel like they’re my friends.
Numerous metal bands… I can’t list them all with any accuracy. In the early 2000s I met most of the Green Bay Packers and numerous WWE wrestlers due to a promotion gig I had.
Hello fellow Metal Band meeter. What was your trick? I just hung out by the venue for a few hours after the shows finished. Got lucky with a few contests as well.
Small venues offer more opportunities. I also am a musician myself, so being friendly with opening local acts and sometimes doing sound or hell, even sometimes filling in for my buddies if they needed a guitar or bass to step in. I’ve just been involved in the scene as a fan, a tech, and musician for a long time, it just kind of happens.
Quite literally bumped into Jacob Rees-Mogg in Chelsea. He looked terrified without his nanny around.
The best I can say is that I was MSN Instant Messenger buddies with someone who now has 2.4 million Twitch followers, before they started streaming.
Which is to say, I’ve never met a famous person.
Met Robert Patrick (best known as the T-1000 from Terminator 2).
He had a booth at a Horror convention. I knew nothing about the convention and didn’t know a ton about his other work, but his local agent asked their local family if they knew a Graphic Designer because the booth posters for Robert and Billy Boyd got lost in luggage.
I eneded up being a last minute call for help, had the agent send me what official images they had, and threw together what I could in an hour or two so I could get it to a printer in time.
Was right by Robert at his booth all day, interacting with his fans. He seems like he probably has some political views I’d disagree with, but I’ve never seen anyone spend time with fans like him. He truly put the time and work in with every single person in that line.
Had no clue how many diverse fandoms he was part of. He seems strongheaded, but very professional and super loving to the people that show up for him.
Got to have lunch with him and Billy Boyd that day, and they’re total dorks together in the best way. Billy Boyd is 100% the sweetest man and it was hilarious realizing he had voiced Chuckie.