Personal Encounters With Celebrities

Tohokai

Iron Maiden
Last year I worked as Iron Maiden's interpreter when they had a gig in Chile.

Everytime they play here they ask to have a dinner with the people that work at the label, in order to meet them (which I think is pretty cool of them).

Even though they're extremely famous, they were very nice and very down to earth people. And, amazingly enough, very much against drugs (Bruce Dickinson and Nicko McBrain went as far as say that every celebrity that is famous for snorting coke or using any other drug should simply go to jail), which I thought was awesome.

They were also very smart guys, and during dinner we talked about psychiatry, literature, politics and stuff like that (and all of the time I had to keep myself from yelling "OH MY FUCKING GOD!!!!!! YOU GUYS ARE IRON MAIDEN!!!!! FUUUCK YEEEAAAAAHHH!!!!!!").

Later on I talked with a friend that works at the label, and she told me that among all of the metal bands that come here, the guys from Iron Maiden are extremely respectful (and this was coming from a girl).

I fucking love them.

Oh, but they do get fucking wasted

UnoriginalMind

I suppose it's not a personal experience, but it's one hell of a celebrity.

Back in the day my great aunt was a waitress at a restaurant here in Wisconsin I believe. Generally, the clientele were mostly normal people, but one day she ended up waiting on Al Capone. It took her a minute, but she recognized him pretty quick. She was so stiff and scared it was ridiculous. He just ate and went on his way though. I wonder how he tipped.

Makes me realize Al Capone really was as powerful and feared as they say.

Flash

I had a close encounter with Eric Bana...Well he hit me with his rental car when i was on my motorbike.

But he was really cool and nice and i got a fully repaired bike and a brand new set of leathers and helmet that were about 2k more than the ones i had on out of it.

He also had lunch with me and really hates looking back on his old comedy material

Keldroc

Keanu Reeves - Some friends and I went to see Eddie Izzard do a one-night show in LA a couple years ago. We're standing in line outside the theatre to be let in, and this guy walks past us and I think "Wow, that looks like Keanu Reeves." He goes to the box office, gets his tickets, and walks back out past me again, and it's definitely Keanu Reeves. I was pretty stunned, because Keanu Reeves doesn't have to wait in line for anything in LA if he doesn't want to, but he stood out there with us for about half an hour.

Inside, he sat near us on the very end on the aisle, accompanied by a woman who I suppose was his date. He's really quite tall, at least 6' 1", and the woman behind him was very short. He realized this and asked her if she could see around him. She couldn't, so he scrunched down and asked "How about now?" and continued to do so until he was almost out of the seat. He ended up switching places with his companion so the woman behind him had a clearer view. We all thought that was pretty fucking cool.

Bill O'Riley is GENIUS

My sister waited on Jon Stewart. She didn't really bother him since this was in Burlington and everyone was coming up to him. His bill was $45. He left her $100.

Z3n

Back when I was in college, I took a basic intro to film class.

I never attended this class, but today I decided that I'd go today for the hell of it. We're talking about actors, blah blah blah, face/off, and the teacher pauses when Nicholas Cage is on screen and starts going off about the difficulties of acting like someone else is wearing your face...he sort of stumbles off and goes "but hey, who better to explain it than the guy who did it?" And Nicholas Cage walks out onto the media stage, sits down in a chair in the middle of the class, and proceeds to have a question and answer session for the next hour and a half. Way fucking cool.

Maka

Valentine's day night I was at the Hard Rock with some friends drinking outside a club and I saw Dennis Rodman steadily approaching to walk by. As he's about to pass by I casually say "Dennis, what's up?". He then stops, stares at everyone standing around the table, and then proceeds to do this fucked up little dance for a good 10 seconds. Then, he jogs over to the bar to get a drink.

We often see him walking around outside at like 3am every other weekend. Every time we see him we kind of want to joke around with him but we have no idea how he will really respond. He's just weird.

REDICULOUS LOOSER

My friend and I were on the subway and Bill Murray was sitting across from us. We were nudging each other the whole trip uptown and I guess we made it quite obvious that we recognized him.

As we exited the train Murray walked up behind me, grabs me and gives me a noogie. Bill then whispered in my ear, "No one will ever believe you" and walked off.

– Chris "Petey" Peterson