Do You Know Anyone "Famous"?

[Timby]

I know Mike Wolfe (of American Pickers) quite well, and produced the early pitch videos that he used to sell the show to various networks.

Oh, and I went to high school with Dan LeFevour, currently hanging around as a backup quarterback for the Cincinnati Bengals. The Fever was a freshman when I was a senior.

 

[Miss Chicken]

I personally know the Australian actress, Genevieve Picot, whose best known movie is Proof in which she starred as Celia along with Russell Crowe and Hugo Weaving.

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AixgCHv2N7I[/yt]

Gen liked working with Hugo Weaving who she described as a 'real gentleman". She didn't have such nice things to say about Russell Crowe.

 

[Satyrquaze]

I am friends with one of the stars of "Invasion Iowa", Brooke Lemke.

Shes pretty damn awesome, but she just moved out to L.A.

 

[Agony_Boothb]

I don't know anyone famous but i do work with a chick who is also a good friend who happens to be Chris Hemsworth's first cousin.

She first mentioned it when i told her i was going to see Star Trek during a casual 'whats on this weekend' conversation. My work mate quite casually said 'cool my cousin is in that', thinking that said cousin was an extra or something i asked what their name was and she said 'Chris Hemsworth'

At this point i lost my shit and started going on about how my friends cousin was playing the father of a James T. Kirk and so forth. Luckily i didn't scare her too much, and she still likes me!

My workmate is really casual about Chris Hemsworth and his brother Liam, she doesn't make a big deal of it and she is incredibly down to earth. I don't make a big deal of it either, every now and then she may start a conversation about them (like when the first photo's from thor came out) but i refuse to go rabid fanboy on her. However i do live in hope of invite to the melbourne premier of Thor (if there is one).

 

[Owain Taggart]

Well, not directly, but my Dad builds telescopes for a living, selling them all over the world. One customer was Freeman Dyson's son, who ended up buying one of them for his Dad. Freeman Dyson, as you know came up with the concept of the Dyson Sphere which is seen in TNG's Relics.

Some of these telescopes being sold are kits that people put together, and many of them are sold to schools, and years ago we sold some to a school in the US and they wanted to have my Dad be there to build them with the school, although scheduling prevented it from happening, although what happened was really cool, and I think it's one of the coolest things he's ever done. Apparently he had started corresponding with Bill Nye, and next thing you know, Bill Nye is there with the kids building the kits my Dad made. How cool is that?

This one's more direct, but French-Canadians are more likely to remember Marie Soleil, who had two popular children shows in the 80's and 90's. Know her through my Mom and my Aunt, both of whom went to school with her. Hung out with her one night.

 

[Goji]

The husband of my closest friend at work is a weatherman on the Japanese news. That's... about as close as I come, as far as I know.

 

[TorontoTrekker]

I'm sure this comes as no surprise to my fellow oldtimers here, but yes. The three best-known would probably be David Gerrold, Robert J. Sawyer and Tanya Huff, though I'm friends with probably about 50-100 authors whom many of you would have heard of, and I'm acquainted with a few other big-name authors - well enough to say hi at a convention and have them greet me by name. (Though I have yet to figure out how Cory Doctorow knew my name at the 2009 Worldcon when we ran into each other. I didn't think we'd ever met, even though he used to live in Toronto. Maybe I'm famous and don't even know it. )

A few years ago I was at the airport to pick up Jim Butcher and Ellen Muth, who was arriving at the same time, walked up to me and said, "Hi, remember me?" (I chaired her first-ever convention a year or two earlier, and had seen her at another one in the meantime).

I also used to play bridge at the same club as Isadore Sharp, founder and CEO of the Four Seasons hotel chain. I'm not sure he counts as famous, though, as he keeps a pretty low profile, though he's very well known in the business community and most people have heard of the hotels. We probably went up against each other a few hundred times, both at the club and at tournaments. (One time was in New Orleans, at a North American championship tournament, and my partner and I looked at him and his wife and said, "We could have stayed home and done this!" )

Oh, and when I first started dating my ex-husband, one of his roommates was the girl who played Caitlin on Degrassi High. I haven't seen her in years, though.

I do get the odd flicker of recognition from actors whom we've had as guests at Polaris (I was a little weirded out when, at a couple of Dragon*Cons, Gareth David-Lloyd winked at me, and Michael Hogan yelled "Polaris!!" at me from about 20 feet away), but I don't work directly with them and I don't stay in touch with any.

And for my fellow Canadians, I'm friends with Ed the Sock's human alter ego and his wife, Liana.

 

[farmkid]

I used to know John Tait, who played football for the Chiefs and then the Bears.

 

[B.J.]

I was in Boy Scouts and went to high school with the bass player for the Zac Brown Band, John Hopkins.

 

[cyph]

Then there's the underground heads I know, like Bambu, Deep Foundation crew, Shining Sons, and I'm currently doing branding for a rapper named L.U.V

edit Actually, I shouldn't have posted the other "famous" group that I worked for, some of our projects are still under wraps...

 

[iguana_tonante]

I don't know anyone really "famous". I do know a few people that are very well-known in my field, such the Director of the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics, and other high-profile scientists.

I've also met Italian astronaut Umberto Guidoni and Italian/American Nobel Prize-winner Riccardo Giacconi, but I can't claim to know them.

 

[Lonemagpie]

Depends on your definition of "know" - from biblically to met once - and your definition of famous - to some people I'm the "famous" one they know...

I've certainly met a lot of Trek/Dr Who/B5 etc people often enough, and talked a lot with Dan O'Bannon.

Michael Sheard, who'll be best known to UK BBSers as Mr Bronson in Grange Hill, (and person who played Hitler more often than any other actor) was my Best Man...

 

[Nardpuncher]

Depends on your definition of "know" - from biblically to met once - and your definition of famous - to some people I'm the "famous" one they know...

I've certainly met a lot of Trek/Dr Who/B5 etc people often enough, and talked a lot with Dan O'Bannon.

Michael Sheard, who'll be best known to UK BBSers as Mr Bronson in Grange Hill, (and person who played Hitler more often than any other actor) was my Best Man...

Wow, Michael Sheard as best man! Wow!

I really think that his Admiral Ozzel gets a bad rap as it is actually a perfectly good idea to come out of hyperspace as close as you can to a target star system...Darth Vader was dead wrong there.

 

[Jono]

Minor famous people, I know two local pollies through their kids, I'm friends with a DJ on one of the cities bigger radio stations and I went to uni with someone who was in a nation-wide ad campaign for one of the major fast food joints here. I also know a number of golfers, though unless you're into the golfing scene here you would be unlikely to have heard of any of them. The biggest name I would know would be Adam Scott and by known him I mean he was three grades above me in the same class as one of my siblings back at school.

Oh, and I go to the small supermarket as a well known retired Australian basketballer who I've talked to a couple of times and we're now on the polite acknowledgement if he sees me at the store.

 

[John Clark]

Not really. I work with a guy who has been in various bands for the last 30 years. I have a relative who has done some tv work, but wouldn't say he's famous.

 

[Nardpuncher]

Oh, my good buddy from high school whom i still correspond with weekly on facebook is Pablo Hidalgo, who works for Lucasfilm.
It's neat because he's met George Lucas, and many of the cast...including Harrison Ford.

One time when we were both back in Winnipeg (where we're both from) he showed me Mark Hamill's home telephone number. I asked if i could have it to call him and he reluctantly said OK, so long as I ever said where I got it...but I never even took the number.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

My great uncle Andre (who went by the stage name E.J. André) was a very prolific character actor who appeared in almost every television show known to man from the mid-50s right up until his death of cancer at age 76 in 1984. His first role was as a sheik in The Ten Commandments (which he gave me a prop sword from), then he went on to do Rawhide, The Untouchables, Wagon Train, Perry Mason, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, I Dream of Jeannie, The Fugitive, Shane, The Green Hornet, Petticoat Junction, The Virginian, The Wild Wild West, Mannix, Bonanza, Gunsmoke, and a bunch of other roles. He appeared opposite the future Captain Pike (Jeffrey Hunter) in the Western legal show Temple Houston and opposite Bill Mumy, Anthony Zerbe, Dustin Hoffman, and Steve McQueen in the movie Papillon (his picture is about 3/4ths of the way down). He had recurring roles as Uncle Jed in Little House on the Prairie, the cook on The Virginian, and oilman Eugene Bullock on Dallas.

My uncle Mike McNulty is an Emmy Award and Best Documentary (from the International Film Association) winning and Academy Award nominated writer/producer (for the documentary Waco: The Rules of Engagement) and was a combat reporter in Vietnam.

49ers (and other teams) Hall of Famer Ronnie Lott occasionally came in his free time to help coach the defense of my football team at Eisenhower High School in Rialto, California (his alma mater) on several occasions when I played there, so I got some pointers from him.

I had classes and was in the same circle of friends with Nicole Eggert from Charles in Charge, Baywatch, bad Corey Haim films, and most recently Celebrity Fit Club when I later went to Edison High School here in Huntington Beach. We weren't good friends so much as she was a friend of a friend, but we used to all hang out.

I met Stone Temple Pilots/Velvet Revolver singer Scott Weiland at my Edison graduation (he graduated from there five or six years before me), but I don't actually know him or anything. I don't know why he was there; maybe he had a relative graduating or was there to see a former teacher of his.

Our baseball coach at Edison rather humorously kicked later National League MVP and San Francisco Giant / LA Dodgers (and others) player Jeff Kent off the team a few years before I played, which was kind of funny to us when he got drafted by the pros while I was at Edison. But I don't know what got him booted in the first place, and I never actually met him. I just thought it was a funny story.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I went to high school with some of the guys in 311 (played in the jazz band with their drummer and lead singer/guitarist), but I didn't really know them well.

 

[scotpens]

My mother’s second husband was film and TV composer Joe Harnell. They were married for 20 years until his death in 2005.

That’s my mom on the left and Joe on the right. I don’t know who the hell the guy in the middle is.

When I was a Cub Scout, my “den mother” was Shirley Bonne, the actress who played Ruth in the Star Trek TOS episode “Shore Leave.” I knew her as Mrs. Freemond. But that was quite a few years ago.

My second cousin on my paternal grandmother’s side is Mary Louise Weller, who played Mandy Pepperidge in Animal House. But I’ve never actually met her, so I suppose she doesn’t count.

My father-in-law's cousin is Rod Stewart. Not THE Rod Stewart, but another guy named Rod Stewart.

I once sold some model kits to James Taylor. Not THE James Taylor, but some dude in Arizona named James Taylor.

 

[Kirk's_Tights]

Angelina Love from TNA (wrestling).