Similar to oldfort. A family friend was a dead ringer for a very famous actor most of our generation adored. On top of that, when standing next to him, his wife looked enough like the actor’s wife. They used to go to a restaurant in NY’s Little Italy where the owners always made a fuss, gave him a great table and comped the meal. For years, he tried to tell everyone, from mgt and staff to fans, that he wasn’t so-and-so. Mgt would wink back.
Finally, he figured that, whether they knew or not, this mistake made people happy, a win-win for the restaurant and other diners. So he gave up and started letting people take his pic. But stopped going there so often, since they never let him pay.
I am great with names, but terrible at recognizing faces (and it’s not a vision issue). If someone whom I haven’t seen in a long time would recognize me ( not that I am famous ), I would appreciate if he/she told me their name and how we know each other.
Through Facebook, I have reconnected with people from my HS and college years, and boy, some of them I wouldn’t recognize without a name tag. Twenty-five years can change a person to the point where they look nothing like they did when you knew them. There are also people who have varying degrees of “face blindness”, which is a real thing A friend of mine can’t even recognize her own kids’ faces if they change their hair or glasses, wear a hat, or something like that. My husband has it but not to that extent. He’s learned to ask a person’s name when they meet up with him and he hasn’t seen them for awhile.
I think it’s kind of sad and amusing that OP believe that of course someone who hasn’t set eyes on him in a quarter of a century would know who he is and that not recognizing him is a horrible slight-as if HE is the famous one!
To follow up, no I was not cursed. Just ignored as the guy walked right past me. It was just an extreme brush-off.
I did go talk to his father when he was alone.
And for what it’s worth @sseamom , I have little doubt that he would have recognized me if he had actually looked at me. To the degree my appearance has changed, I now look almost exactly like my father, who Mr. Famous knew well. Nobody else from days gone by seems to have trouble recognizing me. But maybe he didn’t look at me. When I was in college everyone knew me, and obviously someone who grew up with me knew me even more.
But do you understand the point of the responses – his default was likely NOT to look at you? It depends on how famous he is but if he’s at the level that people are approaching him every day, all day, his assumption truly is going to be “I don’t know this person.”
People I encountered & they could not have been more polite: Elmore Leonard, Jack Kevorkian, Willie Mays, Hilary Putnam, Joe Schmidt, Steve Smale. Dick Clark, Robert Mitchum, Abby Lee Miller, Mike Lopez-Alegria. If THEY can be polite, the dork who brushed you off has no excuse.
And do you know for a fact that all those people you encountered were polite to everyone they approached every day? I doubt everyone famous has a 100% success rate with being pleasant with people who treat them like they own them.
@EarlVanDorn , one of my closest friends from childhood looks exactly like her mother did when we were kids, only with a more modern hairstyle. However, she does not look like SHE used to look. If I saw her on the street , even back in my hometown, I would think, “Gee, that looks just like Mrs, B.” I wouldn’t necessarily think that it was my friend. In my mind, my friend has long dark hair and pale skin, not short salt and pepper hair and a deep tan from working outside at a nursery.
My point was that YOU may think you were instantly recognizable, but it’s quite likely that to your famous friend, you were not, and that’s IF he really was looking at you. As someone often accosted by fans, perhaps he was doing his best to just try and blend in without anyone talking to him.
“I now look almost exactly like my father”
When’s he last seen your father? Anything that should have placed your father at the top of his mind, when you called out to him? Remember, we’re telling you how easily we all have forgotten.
And if the complaint is that he didn’t even try, well plenty here have commented on that. It’s one thing to be bummed, another to plan future expletives.
So the title of your post was more an attempt to grab someone’s attention than an actual event. IMO there is a big difference between not being acknowledged and being cursed out. Based on the history that you gave it sounds like you had more of a history with other members of his family than the famous person himself . The fact that it affected you so much that the next time you see him you will " not greet him with anything other than expletives " is a little extreme IMO. Or is that an exaggeration for effect like the title of this post?
@MichiganGeorgia I wrote a column for two years for my campus newspaper and then was editor. My photo was on every column. I was a pretty outspoken guy, and a lot of people thought I hung the moon while others thought I was Satan incarnate. So yes, there was a time when lots of people knew me. I’m a nice guy and always talked to people who wanted to praise or condemn anything I had to say. I was in a bar once and a couple of people from another SEC school came up to talk to me because they said they liked to read my column in their campus library(!?).
Not my experience but one of my grandmothers friends lived next-door to a famous actor while he was growing up. He was around the same age as her children. Many years later after he was famous she saw him at a restaurant. She went over to the table and said “You probably don’t remember me but Im Mrs X from your hometown” And his response was " Mrs X I lived next to you for 17 years, of course I remember you!" He was super nice and asked about all of her kids.
It must be awful to be famous much of the time. Most of us would hate to lose our anonymity in public, or to be judged publically for a momentary lapse in memory, wardrobe, grammar, whatever. Famous people, even marginally famous ones, are often targeted by criminals or stalkers; all the mentions in the world wouldn’t make that worthwhile for me.
