Just had this random thought as I wondered who was the most famous person I’ve ever met. And by “meet”, it doesn’t count if you saw a celebrity passing by. You have to actually have interacted with them in a meaningful manner. So this rules out say, shaking hands with a politician at a campaign rally.
I sat next to Albert Pujols on a STL-LAX flight once, and he was super-friendly. It was pretty great :)
I also shook hands with Trump once in the 90’s at a function in Trump Tower, but fuck that.
Through my job I’ve met a bunch of celebs, mostly minor-ish, including:
50 Cent - this was back in 2005 when he was on top of the world and getting shot at regularly. I hung out with him when he was doing VO for the game he made with Vivendi Universal. He was super cool and actually very funny.
Kate Sackhoff - she did VO for EVE: Valkyrie and I met her a couple time for that and for a few media interviews. Also very nice.
Vin Diesel - he did VO for the Riddick game at Vivendi and we brought him to E3 in 2004 for a signing and media stuff. Very nice guy and a closet super nerd.
Sam Witwer - he’s gone on to do some bigger things, but back in 2006 when he did Star Wars: The Force Unleashed he was pretty much a nobody. But boy is he a Star Wars fan. He bent over backwards to do pretty much whatever we asked at LucasArts, much to his agent’s chagrin.
Jerry Bruckheimer - I was at a meeting at his production studio talking about Pirates of the Caribbean back in 2006ish when I worked at Buena Vista Games. Not a nice guy.
Todd McFarlane - worked pretty closely with him at 38 Studios, and he is one of the coolest, most down-to-earth guys out there and a super smart businessman. He wasn’t what I expected at all.
R.A. Salvatore - also from 38 Studios, and such an awesome guy. Big thumbs up from me.
Curt Schilling - I guess I’ll throw him in here too, since he ran 38 Studios. But I’ve commented about him extensively in other threads.
Johnny Damon - another baseball player! We signed him up to do a day of press stuff for the VR game Sparc in 2016 for CCP. He is a real team player and got into it.
Dave Mirra - I hung out with him at Camp Woodward for some press stuff for Dave Mirra BMX when I was at Acclaim. This was a long time ago and he was really friendly and extremely interested in making the game great. I was really sad when I heard he killed himself a couple years ago.
Hmm…
I think all my substantive examples are people I knew before they were famous, which doesn’t seem like it’s in the spirit of the question (I knew Andy Beshear (new governor of Kentucky) in college and knew Rickety Cricket in high school).
Not very famous, but I chatted with Tim Kasher (singer from Cursive) at a bar for an hour or so after one of their shows. He advised me to drop out of college!
How long does the interaction have to be to be meaningful? :) I had a brief conversation (< 1 min) with Bill Clinton when he was visiting a place I worked at. That’s pretty much the only “mainstream famous” person I’ve met.
Famous in more specialized circles: I’ve had dinner with Alberto Brandolini of DDD/EventStorming fame when my company invited him to do a workshop on the latter. Really cool guy.
Stephen King.
I used to work in the Prudential tower in Boston. Over in Copley Place there was a Lauriat’s books. I blew out of work early one day, and on the way to train stopped in the store. I kept thinking, “that guy browsing looks a LOT like Stephen… holy shit it is.”
A lot of people were suddenly buying books for him to sign, but it turns out I was reading the Green Mile. The look on his face when I pulled out this dog-eared, beat to crap book with dog-ears and the like was funny. He really got a kick out of the fact that I was reading the book and ran into him. We exchanged a few nice words about his recovery. He signed the book, natch.
Edit: I also met Traci Lords. It was an odd encounter. What do you say? “I really enjoyed your work when I was a teen, here shake my hand?”
Your Clinton meet counts. You talked to him. He talked to you.
I wouldn’t count my Clinton meet. I stretched on my tippy toes so I could reach over and he could briefly shake my fingers at a 1996 campaign rally.
I guess it would be Tim Curry. Had a lovely chat with him at a bar during Megacon.
All of Negativland. Hung out with them out front of the theatre before one of their shows.
More “brushes with fame”, probably not significant enough for the question but:
Exchanged a few pleasantries with Peter Davidson (the 5th Doctor Who) and George Takei while at various conventions. Exchanged a few words with Geraldine Ferraro when she was VP candidate visitng my college. Also exchanged a few words with Cary Grant after he spoke at the same college.
My mother was a casual acquaintance of Robert Oppenheimer but if I ever interacted with him myself, I was too young to recall it.
When I met him in the mid-80’s, just outside of (appropriately enough) Madison Square Garden, he was arguably the most famous person in the world: Muhammad Ali.
Oh! I talked to Matthew McConaughey for a couple minutes once at my daughter’s school (his kids went there), and I actually know Tito Beveridge (of Tito’s Vodka fame) reasonably well. I’ve been to his house many times because our daughters were friends.
Uh… maybe Joel Rosenberg? (Not Joel C. Rosenberg.) I was at a gaming gathering I semi-regularly attend and he was hanging out reading. He mentioned he was an author, I asked about his books and then went and read them. Turns out they were pretty good. Mostly a series about roleplayers getting sucked into the game world but with a really hard anti-slavery focus for their adventures. One space-Israeli milSF novel.
I hadn’t heard of him so I don’t think he’s all that famous, but hey.
Other than that, I mean, I know some folks who are or have worked for FFG and I used to play Arkham Horror and other boardgames with Patrick Leder. But I don’t know how famous they necessarily are either.
I have shaken hands with Buck Dharma.
Two minor ones for me - Christopher McCandless and Ralph Reed (they were both in my college graduating class).
McCandless (Into the Wild, Call of the Wild, etc) was a foolishly romantic vagabond who hiked into the Alaskan backcountry with little preparation and was later found dead from starvation in an abandoned school bus. He is, amazingly, an inspiring figure for some kids today. Go figure.
Ralph Reed is the sleazy fundamentalist Christian nut-job who ran the Christian Coalition from 1989 - 1997. He’s responsible (along with Pat Robertson and others) for making the religious right a massive political force in American politics. He was also linked to Jack Abramoff, did consulting work for Enron, etc. In school he was a massive jackass who instigated protest stunts against women’s rights, gay rights, etc etc.
Wish I’d met some decent semi-famous people in school!
Diego
I met him when my wife worked as a Barnes & Noble PR person. He came to an event and I was there just helping out. “Backstage” he talked to us about his experiences writing for TSR and Star Wars and how they contrasted. According to him, TSR was very loosey-goosey about the license and allowed him a much freer hand, but since he was so early in the D&D book market, he never got much chance to mingle with other D&D writers except after the fact. The folks in charge of the Star Wars books were better at getting other Star Wars authors corralled and collaborating. Unfortunately, he (at the time) really kind of regretted writing Vector Prime because of the fan reaction afterwards. We didn’t even ask him about any of this! He just started talking when we asked if there was anything special he needed set up. He seemed pretty chill.
Harlan Ellison, despite his prickly reputation, was a pure gentleman when I met him at a different B&N event. He was very jovial, and had the best stories and jokes. Maybe we caught him on a good day? Anyway, just a very cool experience, and I’m glad I was able to meet him before he started cutting back on public appearances.
On the flip side, I met Danielle Steele and she was a massive asshole. The less said about her, the better.
Not sure if any of mine count. When I was a pre-teen/teenager, I’d go to the custom car shows every year where there were always celebrities doing meet and greets and autographs. At those, I met Greg Evigan (circa BJ and the Bear), John Schneider and Sorrell Booke (circa Dukes of Hazzard) and David Hasselhoff (circa Knight Rider). But as I said, I don’t think those really count… I mean, I stood in line with hundred of other people.
Other than that, I’ve met the playwright Christopher Durang, but I don’t think he really counts either, as he’s my second cousin (my father’s first cousin).
I served both Vinny Testaverde and Mike Love (from the Beach Boys) when I used to wait tables many, many years ago (not at the same time). It wasn’t even a particularly fancy restaurant. Mike Love has a well-earned reputation as an asshole, but he was a good tipper and he was nice enough to me.
I also had a reasonably long conversation with Harlan Ellison once. He was surprisingly decent, considering his reputation for suffering fools and me being a star-struck fool.
Everyone else is musicians, and while I could tell stories about hanging with Amelia Fletcher and Anton Newcombe, I’m not sure there’s all that many here who’d care.
Oh, I wish I’d met Sorrell Booke!
I couldn’t do Boss Hogg, but I would have impressed him mightily with my famous* Rosco P. Coltrane impression, which I worked on diligently for years, finally debuting it during a high school production of L’il Abner.
Which is where I met Meg Cabot, who kissed me during a game of spin the bottle at a cast party. She wasn’t famous at the time, on account of not having written The Princess Diaries yet. Neat girl.
*For very local values of “famous.”
I have had the opportunity to meet, and briefly chat with, both Dennis Savard and Ernie Banks.
My sister, however, was friends with Bo Jackson’s kid. Went to the same high school, so she’s been to his house.
Best celebrity encounter: Mr. Rogers. Came to a thing I was doing in Pittsburgh when I was a teenager. Thanked him for being the only adult in my entire childhood to seemed to actually care about me. He gave me a hug, I cried a little bit.
First celebrity encounter: George Takei. My second Trek convention when I was eleven, first time waiting in line for a signature. All I had was “Star Trekkin’” on vinyl, and he said, “Oh, I know this song…” and proceeds to sing a verse or so. The line applauded, I was too starstruck to do anything but mumble a thank you.
Ran into him at a con a few years later in a hotel elevator. He remembered me, asked me how school was, if I still had the album, etc. I still have it.
Other awesome encounters:
The cast and crew of Supernatural: Got to do a press event at the Paley several years ago and got to meet and interview all of them. They were alllll great.
Kevin Conroy: Did a press roundtable thing at Comic Con a decade ago for a new Batman animated movie. I kept saying to the others how excited I was to meet Kevin Conroy. When he gets to our table, another journalist offers to take a pic of us, telling Mr. Conroy what a fanboy I was. He leans in for the pic and whispers “Fanboy” in my ear in the Batman voice. I nearly came, I shit you not.
The cast of Firefly: Via various press and cons, I’ve pretty much met them all, and they’re all as wonderful as you’ve heard, especially Nathan Fillion.
Those are the big ones for me.