Who is the most famous person with whom you have a personal relationship?
I know there are a few mildly famous people here on Fluther (Andrew is an actor, MattBrowne is a writer) and perhaps a few folks with notoriety rather than fame (I’m often in the media as spokesperson for a radical organization, the corporate media accused me of being an extortionist at one point, and I’ve been mentioned in several books by my political opponents in rather unflattering ways). What I’m curious about is the “Kevin Bacon Effect,” degrees of separation from truly famous folks.
Whom do you know, personally, with wide celebrity?
I’ll do mine:
* Dan Hill is a friend of the family and usually stops by when he’s in town to jam with my father.
* I have exchanged email with Bill Quick who actually turns out to be something of a jerk.
* I’ve chatted online with Tani Jantsang for years, and she published some of my Mythos fiction in her magazine.
* A medium-famous mystery novelist (whose name I will withhold to protect the guilty) once sent me creepy emails about her weird sexual fetish, about which I had written a story, and which had apparently triggered all kinds of disturbing fantasies.
* I organize with some activists whose names you’d probably recognize, but whom I won’t mention to avoid making the State’s security agencies’ intelligence gathering easier for them.
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I’m not really a name dropper, but I know some peeps in bands and one of my best friends in high school’s brother plays for Green Bay Packers. I often meet famous people though because of my husband. No biggie….
Nobody who’s nationally famous, but I’m friends with a few local musicians who are fairly famous in the region (amongst blues & folk fans at least).
I slept with John Goodman.
In a dream ;)
I don’t suppose knowing a former lt. governor of alaska, his son the state senator, and growing up with the state senator’s family counts? If not, I have nothing, lol, every other contact I have had has been incidental.
I’ve been on a couple dates with an academic who has a wikipedia page and fans on facebook.
How many degrees of separation do we get? My fAther in law changed John Ritters dispers.
I had a locker 2 spaces down from Dorothy Owens (Buck’s sister) at my former country club. I am friends with Alex (Alfred) Gockel
I was in a Korn Video as an extra and met the band. I was also an extra in a Brett Dennan video. (His check bounced.)
My uncle Scott. He’s somewhat famous for organ and piano playing, at least in that circle he is…
I don’t really have a current “relationship” with anyone famous, although I am descended from a few famous people.
Kelly Pavlik grew up with my husband, they even had their senior pictures taken together. I wouldn’t call it much of a relationship, though. Their friendship is rocky, although my brother in law is still close with Kelly. I am just “Mr. Neffie’s Wife” more or less.
Self edited. I didn’t really answer the question.
No one really famous. But a high school friend of mine is a local jazz singer, and also works for CBC radio and writes for the newspaper in my hometown. A former coworker now does the TV news in Ottawa. A few of my friends are well-known local musicians.
I went to Jr. High and High School with Nick Sparks. Alice Cooper (very sweet man) plays golf regularly with one of my bosses. One of my grampas is an ex Sr. Pro tennis champ.
Can you imagine if Oprah came to you and said “You are my long lost sister?” JACKPOT!!
I was friends with Matt Mcdounough, of Mudvayne in the late 80s when I was in high school. We dated a few times. Real sweet guy. I haven’t talked to him since, but a friend of mind still keeps in touch with him. There’s a little bit of info about his band somewhere on this site. Actually, I’ve partied with several people mentioned here.Ah, the good ol days.
I am one degree from Kevin Bacon- I was in a crowd scene in the movie QuickSilver in which he starred. It was filmed where I work.
but I don’t have a personal relationship with anyone remotely famous. The closest was I had a seventh grade crush on the younger sister of the actress Kathy Baker (Picket Fences, Boston Public).
All of the people with whom I had anything which could be characterized as “a relationship” have passed on, with perhaps one or two exceptions.
@jca I was thinking the same thing.
Good question, but it also raises a few other questions. You do say “personal” relationship as opposed to “professional” relationship. In some jobs you work with celebrities regularly, and, of course, you get to know each others names and have occasional conversations. But I guess that doesn’t count.
Another issue, again arising from the professional setting, is who’s actually a celebrity and who’s not. Is a leading research scientist more famous than an actor in a sitcom that runs for two seasons? I don’t know. Is an infielder for the Yankees more famous than a congressman? Beats me. I’m not sure how you would measure “most known to the most people,” which is probably what celebrity means in this context.
With news and information distribution so scattered these days, I’m not sure who reads the tech news, who reads the sports news, and who reads the entertainment news. I suppose every circle has their famous people.
Finally, I think we all try to preserve some degree of anonymity on this site, and if we answer too many questions like this one, we’ll give that away!
One of my friends (who used to post on here) has a photograph of Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso standing naked together in her mom’s shower. I shit you not.
The guy that played Robbie the Robot in Lost in Space showed me pictures of his grandchildren, gave me $20 (for being such a nice boy) and told me to “do well in college and make your mama proud.” I guess that counts for something.
I used to be 2 degrees from anyone in Hollywood.. my ‘uncle’ Tom, growing up, was really good friends with David Geffen. My mom got invited to the Oscars in 1995, I think? She was all, ‘Yeah, I don’t really want to go’ and I was all, ‘Are you freaking on crack?? You have to go!’ But… sadly.. she didn’t, and I still don’t forgive her. She’s completely forgotten about this somehow(!). I remember David Geffen giving Tom a bunch of CDs of great bands I liked, like Garbage and Sonic Youth, which Tom passed on to me because it wasn’t his kind of music.
I also recently went on a date with a woman who works at a local ABC affiliate and if you Google her name, loads and loads of crap comes up. So, semi-famous, maybe.
I think that may be the best I can do.
I dated and kissed Renée Richards when he was still Richard Raskind, captain of the Yale tennis team and sexually too aggressive for me after several evenings out.
Years later I saw him in NYC, decked out in his skirts and gold hoop earrings.
The author Eric Nylund is a friend of mine.
I know a few athletes who are well known (at least here in the UK) including one olympic gold medalist and a paralympic silver medalist.
1. I have a family friend who is a screenwriter and wrote a bunch of Seinfeld (he also happens to be the nephew of Kurt Vonnegut. I know all Kurt Vonnegut’s kids, especially his sister’s who he adopted after she died)
2. Pat Stevens, who did the voice of Velma on Scooby-Doo and was “Nurse Baker” on M.A.S.H. directed a musical I was in in college.
3. Another family friend is the niece of Daniel Ellsburg
4. My friend’s aunt babysat for Gwynyth Paltrow when she was a kid
5. Julia Stiles’ parents and teenage brother were regulars at the restaurant I worked at last summer. I’m hoping to meet her this coming summer.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot… the guy who played the first Michael Meyers hit on my mom… so did Tom Savini.
Third cousin to Keifer Sutherland.
I thought of a few more while I was out with my mom.
My boyfriend caddies for a country club during the summers and he has caddied for both the former editor-in-chief of Time Magazine multiple times, apparently he’s this guy’s favorite caddy and for Meryl Streep’s brother-in-law.
My mother used to show dogs with Larry Niven’s mother. At a sci-fi convention, Larry Niven found out she showed dogs with his mom and was very excited to talk about his mom with her.
My grandmother shook hands with Evita Perron when she and my grandfather were living in Brazil.
I have met a good number of important people in their own homes while doing engineering design work. Once I met Kareem Abdul-Jabbar at his home who was remodeling his house back in the mid 90’s. I also met Carol Little, the clothes designer at her cottage home mansion to me who was doing a huge expansion in her home. I also met the owner of Guess Jeans. I met. Once a contractor pointed to Vadim Perelma film director from afar when we were studying the blue prints for the 99% remodeling he was doing on one of his homes in the Santa Monica mountains.
My father’s family was intertwined with the Pantages family who built theatres up and down the west coast from Vancouver to California.
My husband’s grandfather was the president of Woodwards (a now dead upscale retailer). He was the most magnanimous man I’ve ever known.
I’ve met and spent a bit of time with a Supreme Court of Canada judge. I was really interesting being able to pick his brain.
If infamous counts I lived two doors up from, and played at her house, someone that just had her thirteenth parole request denied this month in the state of California; Patty Krenwinkel.
Oh, I forgot one. I used to work at a convenience store that rented movies here in Spokane. Less than two weeks before he was caught, I rented a porno to Robert Lee Yates at 3 am. He paid with a check.
I used to live hear Homer Simpson. I saw that little ‘spawn of satin’ (Bart Simpson) almost every day. Kept him ran out of my yard. I had to move couldn’t take it anymore.
Just funning with you folks…I don’t know any famous people.
@KatawaGrey There’s our one degree of separation. Larry Niven insulted my handwriting once. I used to work at small, independent bookstore and we had a lot of book signings over the years. I had left a note for him about something, I don’t remember what and he told my boss that my handwriting was just atrocious. She said he went on about it for quite some time, at least a little bit longer than was really necessary, she thought. And my handwriting, my block printing which is how I generally write, isn’t that bad. I don’t know why he had such a problem with it. Maybe he’s OCD.
I know a professional skateboarder.
Most of my friends/people I know/work with are amazing, interesting, awesome, dedicated people, but sadly will never be “famous” for their work.
I grew up in the theater world, and have met many (old-school) famous people. Probably the most well known were Marvin Hamlisch and Sonny & Cher. The one I had the closest relationship with was Robert Goulet. He offered to adopt me when my single mother had me at 19, and sang to me in concert with Bing Crosby, when I was four years old. He interrupted himself, mid-song to pop his thumb in his mouth (humiliating me by copying me), and asking how I’d like it if he tried to sing while sucking his thumb. I last saw him 10 or 15 years ago, when he played King Arthur in Camelot at Wolf Trap theater.
My uncle played Jesus in Godspell, and was later Liberace’s personal driver in DC.
Goldie Hahn went to my mom’s high school.
My ex-husband was friends with a serial killer when they were teenagers (pre-killing days) and went to school with an actress whose name escapes me at the moment.
I know several professional cartoonists.
Faye Dunaway knew me well enough to call me a bitch. (This was before her movie success) I was doing props for a play she was in. The opening scene was a group of soldiers playing cards. The actors kept taking the prop cards to play bridge when they weren’t on stage, despite my pleas not to. So I removed all the aces from the deck. The actors were not too pleased, hence the epithet.
I remember when I first saw her, running on stage, I thought what a remarkably pretty girl she was. She did well for herself.
I suppose that would be my dad. :) He’s not that famous, but he does come up in Google searches (images and articles, etc.). My dad is acquainted with some reasonably famous business people like Tim Draper and Ann Baskins. My dad is actually at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland right now, so…yeah…
NZ is a smaller world than other parts of the globe…
My daughter’s closest school friend was the granddaughter of Brian Barratt-Boyes, who performed the first open heart surgery in NZ, 1958.
I dated someone who went on 2 dates with Julia Styles.
I had a class with one of the Gotti kids (does that count for anything? haha).
My dad’s mom (grandma who I never met) told my dad we were 4th cousins of the Kennedy’s… would explain that side of the family’s bad luck! But I don’t know how valid that is at all.
My husbands sisters first husband took Suzanne Sommers to the prom. Her name was Suzanne Mahoney then.
Costumer association with the Star Trek production crew, through my award winning designs; my son received onscreen credit on one of the Star Wars movies; close acquaintance with Michael Aquino.
Oh oh oh Uma Thurman went to my high school (long before my time). My mom (who teaches there) had her in study hall. She had to ask 13-year-old Uma to stop fixing her makeup in class.
I’m amazed at how many people have personal relationships with famous people. Although I haven’t heard of almost all of them. In that vein, I don’t have any relationships with anyone remotely famous. I guess I don’t get out that much.
I don’t either, I’m pretty much more comfortable by myself most of the time.
@Leanne1986 I did! I don’t know why I’ve never thought to mention it to you before, knowing how you adore her. I was very young, and she and Sonny performed a number of times at the Capital Center (I think it’s the MCI center, now, near Washington, DC), where both my parents worked. I practically lived there, saw all shows for free, and met many of the performers. Prior to that, my parents worked at a smaller theater, which is where I first met Robert Goulet.
If we’re counting ancient history, I’m a definitely a descendant of the cousin of President John Adams and supposedly also William Penn.
Oh, oh, oh! How could I forget! My mom met and became friends with Jacques Pepin when his foodie cruise came to watch demos of Italian cooking. My mom and her best friend are attractive ladies and Jacques was pretty taken with them both. They kept in touch and when my mom and I came to tour the FCI (I was considering becoming a pastry chef), he came to chat with us in the school restaurant and invited us to his home for lunch the next day.
We spent an afternoon with Jacques Pepin, his wife, Gloria, and his best friend, Jean-Michele. We went walking along the shore with them and their dog and then had lunch at their house, prepared by Jacques and Gloria. I am totally a philistine, but I hate French cooking and none of the spread appealed to me. Two words: head cheese. Right?
Jacques was seated next to me and made me eat a raw clam. With my mom burning my face off with her hate-laser gaze, and the fact that, well, could I really say no to Jacques Pepin??, I ate it.
It was horrible and disgusting and frankly a miracle I even managed to get it down. ;)
I’m one of the descendants of U. Pyle (Cptn. Kidd) and Sarah Oort. Arhhggg!
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