Most Famous Person You’ve Actually Seen/Met in the Flesh

[choombaz]

I watched Ben Affleck and Rebecca Hall film a scene for The Town outside Boston Library. Was crushed when the scene wasn’t in the film but luckily ended up as a deleted scene on the bluray.

 

[Landry]

comic book guys:
John Byrne @ multiple conventions in Chicago, early 80's. Got him to draw 3 pencil drawings for me. This was after X-men run and during Fantastic Four run
Terry Austin, super nice guy, got him to ink my Byrne drawing of Conan
Marshall Rogers - huge ego
Howard Chaykin - not a chatty guy
Bill Sienkiewicz at the tail end of his Moon Knight run. Dude sat on his feet for hours,, which was weird, but really nice. Got him to make me a MK drawing
Berni Wrightson - My idol. Always wanted to meet that guy and finally did at a convention in NJ. Extremely nice man, total life memory for me.

Howard Chaykin might be the most chatty guy in comics. You must have caught him on a bad day.

 

[Otomofan]

Yeah he was in his usual form when I met him. Very chatty and held nothing back.

Someone saw Quentin Tarantino; he's on my list of celebs I'd love to meet and get an autograph from.

Closest I came in my time in LA was working with a girl he was...."seeing." This was pre-smart phones, but she did have a voice mail she left him and I listened to it a few times in awe.

 

[Rogerbee]

I met Jeremy Bulloch (Boba Fett) at a PA he did at my local model store, then there was Kenny Baker and his wife at a con. Walking down the street I've seen Bernard Hill (Titanic, LOTR) and Caitlin Stasey (Smile). Caitlin was still in an Australian soap called Neighbours at the time and she was in a pantomime at the local theatre in Norwich. She had family on the outskirts of the city apparently.

 

[QuiGonFishing]

William Shatner!

 

[Mr.NoCredit]

I was at a science fiction and walked into an elevator. Right behind me walked in Walter Konieg. He was there to sign autographs and was seemingly hiding from convention goers..
I shook his hand.


Also, when I lived in Venice, California I was down by at the end of Washington Blvd. and ran into Dick VanDyke. That was an excellent moment. I asked to shake his hand. I watched him growing up as a child.

I was on Tosh.0 a while back too so I met Daniel Tosh.. just got another residual check last month…

 

[histrionics]

It was 2005 and I was walking into a tiny retro toy/collectible shop to pick up an order of Mego figures. As I approached the steps of the shop to enter - it was a basement level shop - coming towards the steps from the opposite direction was Helena Bonham-Carter. I said hello and exchanged a bit of chit-chat before we entered the front door together. When I got inside the shop I saw Tim Burton geeking out over some rare toys he had been trying to find forever. It was just like you'd imagine him to be acting like a child in a candy shop, but this is was rare vintage toys.
It was just us, Helena Bonham-Carter, Tim Burton, the shop owner and cashier and myself in this tiny dark overstocked toy shop. I didn't engage Burton because I'm not a huge fan of his work and I didn't want to disturb his privacy, but it was the near-perfect circumstances of the moment that remained memorable.

Other celebs I've crossed paths with, in close proximity, while walking down the street or shopping:

Dan Aykroyd
Eugene Levy
Joe Flaherty
Catherine O'Hara
Ian Holm
Ned Beatty
John Colicos
Barry Morse
John Neville
Sarah Polley
Doris Roberts
Dennis Farina
Ted McGinley
Lou Diamond Phillips
Peter Strauss
Steven Wright (comedian)
Todd Rundgren
Burton Cummings
Bruce Cockburn
Connie Francis
Vernon Reid
Phil Collins
Neil Patrick Harris (just sitting on a bench at a mall back around 1990 when he was a kid actor on Doogie Howser)

 

[choombaz]

My friend and I sat next to Quentin and Diane Kruger at a screening of Inglorious Basterds at MIFF (Melbourne Int Film Festival). He didn’t stay for the whole screening though.

 

[Otomofan]

I met Jeremy Bulloch (Boba Fett) at a PA he did at my local model store, then there was Kenny Baker and his wife at a con. Walking down the street I've seen Bernard Hill (Titanic, LOTR) and Caitlin Stasey (Smile). Caitlin was still in an Australian soap called Neighbours at the time and she was in a pantomime at the local theatre in Norwich. She had family on the outskirts of the city apparently.

Oh yeah....forgot I met Bulloch, Prowse, and Uncle Owen at a con in 98.

Also met Kevin Smith that year. And I met Neil Gaiman at a book signing.


AND......

I once made eye contact with Sir Ben Kingsley walking through LAX.

 

[wormlander]

 

[Mr.E]

Burt Reynolds. May he rest in peace.

 

[Lordscum]

Ace Frehley and had him sign on of his CD's and shirts,,

Peter Criss

Doug Jones

Tank Abbott UFC/WCW

Bob Feller Baseball legend and Hall of Famer

Jim Tome Baseball legend and Hall of Famer.

 

[Rogerbee]

It was 2005 and I was walking into a tiny retro toy/collectible shop to pick up an order of Mego figures. As I approached the steps of the shop to enter - it was a basement level shop - coming towards the steps from the opposite direction was Helena Bonham-Carter. I said hello and exchanged a bit of chit-chat before we entered the front door together. When I got inside the shop I saw Tim Burton geeking out over some rare toys he had been trying to find forever. It was just like you'd imagine him to be acting like a child in a candy shop, but this is was rare vintage toys.
It was just us, Helena Bonham-Carter, Tim Burton, the shop owner and cashier and myself in this tiny dark overstocked toy shop. I didn't engage Burton because I'm not a huge fan of his work and I didn't want to disturb his privacy, but it was the near-perfect circumstances of the moment that remained memorable.

Other celebs I've crossed paths with, in close proximity, while walking down the street or shopping:

Dan Aykroyd
Eugene Levy
Joe Flaherty
Catherine O'Hara
Ian Holm
Ned Beatty
John Colicos
Barry Morse
John Neville
Sarah Polley
Doris Roberts
Dennis Farina
Ted McGinley
Lou Diamond Phillips
Peter Strauss
Steven Wright (comedian)
Todd Rundgren
Burton Cummings
Bruce Cockburn
Connie Francis
Vernon Reid
Phil Collins
Neil Patrick Harris (just sitting on a bench at a mall back around 1990 when he was a kid actor on Doogie Howser)

Impressive line-up, where the heck do you live!?

 

[Rogerbee]

William Shatner!

View attachment 684651

Shat himself, nice!

 

[Rogerbee]

At the same con where I met Kenny Baker and his wife, I accidentally ignored Ingrid Pitt (Countess Dracula and other Hammer movies.). She was sat at a table next to them and nobody else was paying her any attention. I just assumed she was there looking after Kenny and I didn't recognise her. It was only when I'd got home and saw a report on the con on the local news that the penny dropped. I was horrified!

Also present was Warwick Davis, but, he spent most of his time looking at his phone while disgruntled queues formed in front of him.

 

[Lordscum]

At the same con where I met Kenny Baker and his wife, I accidentally ignored Ingrid Pitt (Countess Dracula and other Hammer movies.). She was sat at a table next to them and nobody else was paying her any attention. I just assumed she was there looking after Kenny and I didn't recognise her. It was only when I'd got home and saw a report on the con on the local news that the penny dropped. I was horrified!

Also present was Warwick Davis, but, he spent most of his time looking at his phone while disgruntled queues formed in front of him.

Did Warwick say " Where's me gold"?

 

[jaztermareal]

You said not a list so I will keep it close to 1 person as possible.

Toss up between Chris Pratt and Zoe Saldana (dunno which counts as more famous).

 

[Mike86]

The same con I met Ian McDiarmid at I also met Dee Bradley Baker. He’s a voice actor and most known for the Clones in Star Wars.

 

[choombaz]

Oh and I had a brief chat with George Romero at a different MIFF as we both hobbled up the stairs together. Nothing about movies just about getting old lol.

And I think it was same MIFF met Joe Dante and got him to autograph my Howling laserdisc. He made a joke about selling it on eBay.

 

[histrionics]

Impressive line-up, where the heck do you live!?

Toronto, Canada. During film festival season they’re all over the place and easy to run into if you know where to hang out, but I don’t try. My encounters were all random, at odd afternoon hours in generally open public spaces. Celebs like to walk around Toronto because we're polite here tend not to bother them.

My list spans over 30 years of celebrity brushes. Working off memory and I’m sure I missed a few, like Mike Myers who I passed twice first in 1989 when he wasn’t famous and just started on SNL and then another time in 2007 when he was too famous for words... but I still stopped him to say hello. Well, he’s a Toronto boy so you kind of expect to run into him at least once.

The encounters I listed are specifically the most casual and unexpected, where no effort was made to run into them, on average days and on pedestrian streets or in stores or restaurants where you wouldn’t expect to run into a famous person. That’s why I didn’t list conventions, signings or other formal events where celebs would be expected. If I counted those my list would have exploded to triple the size.

How about that time when I was the only customer in the basement of HMV shopping for CDs when Shirley Manson (of Garbage) walked in and started thumbing through the racks. She was right next to me. I couldn’t get over how tall and stunning she was.