So, this entry isn’t meant so much for bragging or name dropping as it is a chance for others to add their comments on famous people they’ve met & their impressions.

Famous People I’ve Met/Seen:

PATRICIA NEAL – Mentioned this before. 1980s, Boston. High school very small/elite drama class, Patricia’s daughter in the class & she visited for 50 minutes of comment & critique on the one act plays we had written and were going to perform. My play was a one-woman show featuring a character similar to Bette Davis in “All About Eve”. Ms. Neal, despite her regal accent and enormous fur coat, was very down to earth and pleasant. I was walking on air for days after that.

SENATOR TED KENNEDY – Had lunch with just him and my father in the 1970s when I was a kid, in his Washington DC office. Office was covered with pictures of him with various famous people and him doing good works. Met him again not too long ago, shortly before his death, when he arrived on my island in his big yacht to visit a friend of his, a client of mine, who has a summer house on the island.

SHIRLEY MacLAINE – My brother was a nightclub party producer in NYC in the 1980s and put on a star studded birthday party for her at The Limelight. I shook her hand as she was leaving. There were a lot of famous people at the party but she blinded me with her star power and I don’t remember all the others. Plus a lot of vodka might have something to do with not remembering everything else.

SOPHIA LOREN – I didn’t meet her but I walked within a couple of feet of her as she hailed her car/driver outside of the Royal Victoria Hospital, Montreal, in the 1980s. She had on an enormous black fur hat and what looked like a vicuna coat. And a shit-ton of makeup.

CORAZON AQUINO – Former President of Philippines and mother of the current President. In the privacy of my parents home in Boston, 1980s (so she was not President yet but was about to return to the Philippines to run for office soon). Very small dinner party.

JESSE JACKSON – Shook his hand at a political rally in Philadelphia in 1988. handsome at the time! And I voted for him.

SYLVESTER – Met him in NYC back in brother’s nightclub days. He had a very scrawny white boyfriend with him at the time and a big entourage. Talked with him for a little while.

MARTHA REEVES – Of Martha Reeves and the Vandellas. Again, NYC, 1980s, brother’s nightclub job. She was going to perform at the club one evening and my brother and I were there at the club (just her, her band, my brother, and I) the afternoon prior and she was doing a sound check. She asked me what song she should do for the sound check and I said : “Nowhere to Run”, which she then did and performed for me like it she was singing just to me. Awesome!

I’ve also met some extremely wealthy people in Montreal, Boston, NYC, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Europe, and the Caribbean but that’s different – I was thinking about celebrity/famous people encounters.

Who are some of the famous people have you met or had some kind of encounter with?