Originally published in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, January 4, 2025
As we drew level with each
other, I glanced at the guy with the accent … and found myself looking at a startlingly
familiar face. It was Paul Giamatti, star of more great movies than you can
shake a stick at.
Giamatti must have registered
my look of amazement, for he gave me a smile and a little nod, as if to say, “Yes,
I am who you think I am, but let’s not make a big deal of it.”
I responded with a
tactful nod of my own, intended to convey my deep respect for the man and his body
of work. A guy like Giamatti must get gawped at by strangers about a thousand
times a day. I wanted to be one of the cool ones who let him continue on his
way, without bothering him for a chat or selfie.
You get a great natural
high when you see a celebrity in real life. We tend to feel that famous people live
in a different world from the rest of us – a better and more glamorous world. When
you bump into one of them on the street, you realise that you live in that glamorous
world too. For a fleeting moment you understand that life is more magical, and
fuller of possibility, than you generally give it credit for. You want to spread
the news to everyone you know.
The trouble with encountering
a star like Giamatti, however, is that when you say to people, “Guess who I
just saw down the street? Paul Giamatti!” they’re quite likely to burst your
bubble by replying, “Who’s Paul Giamatti?” Everybody knows the man’s face, but
not everybody knows his name.
To maximise the effect of
my Giamatti anecdote, I started showing people a stock picture of him on my
phone as the story reached its climax. Unfortunately, this created a fresh
problem. People recognised his face all right, but they seriously doubted that I
had seen him down the street. Maybe I’d only seen someone who looked like him.
I found this response
annoying. Obviously, I already knew that seeing Paul Giamatti down the street
was a freakishly unlikely occurrence. That’s why I was telling the story in the
first place.
I no longer live in northern
NSW. At this time of year I wish I still did, because summer is peak celebrity-spotting
season up there. The place is rife with famous people. Some of them live there.
Others descend on the beaches for the holidays.
Once, in Byron Bay
Woolworths, I saw Delvene Delaney buying some cold meat. In Bangalow itself I
saw a super-tanned James Reyne eating a sandwich on a bench. I once narrowly
missed seeing Elle Macpherson in the IGA. A friend told me he’d just seen her in
there. But by the time I got there she was gone.
I once had to use the town’s
only ATM to conduct an unreasonably lengthy transaction. I hoped that nobody
was waiting behind me. When I was finally done, I found that somebody was. It
was Kerry O’Brien, wearing an ancient T-shirt and a pair of cargo shorts. How
long had he been waiting there? He looked a bit ticked off, but maybe he always
does.
The first celebrity I
ever saw in the flesh was Jon English. I was about ten years old, and my mother
and I were waiting for a cab at Canberra airport. The monumentally tall English
came out to the kerb, with a couple of heavy bags slung over his shoulder. He peered
up and down the road, looking in vain for his ride. He uttered a single word:
“Shit.”
On the basis of that
encounter, I formed the impression that Jon English was an unusually
foul-mouthed individual. It took me many years to appreciate that it’s quite normal
for adults to say “shit” in an airport pickup situation.
Canberra isn’t a great
place for spotting celebrities, by the way. When I lived there I saw only two
kinds of celebrities: members of the Canberra Raiders football team, and
politicians.
The best Canberran celebrity
encounter I know of happened to my brother, not me. We were driving through the
nondescript suburb of Campbell when my brother found himself in urgent need of
a toilet.
We pulled into the local Shell,
and my brother made a beeline for the can. It was one of those old-school servo
toilets: a fibro structure tucked around the side of the main building, housing
a single unisex cubicle.
After a strangely long interval
my brother returned, laughing uncontrollably. It transpired that the toilet,
when he’d got there, was already solidly engaged. Whoever was in there was in
there for the long haul. My brother bounced from foot to foot outside the door,
cursing the unseen occupant of the lav. Finally he heard a muffled flush. The door
opened … and out walked the nattily dressed figure of Al Grassby.
You can’t pick and choose
which celebrities you encounter, or where and when you will encounter them. The
magic of the celebrity encounter lies in its unpredictability. All you can do, to
maximise your chances of seeing famous people, is go to places where they are
known to congregate. They rarely pay house calls.
In fact, I know of only
one time in history when this has happened. Again I can’t claim this story as
my own. It happened to a kid I went to school with. Both of us lived in the
obscure Blue Mountains village of Faulconbridge. The chances of seeing a
celebrity in our neighbourhood were about as close to zero as you can get.
One Saturday morning,
however, somebody knocked on my friend’s front door. My friend opened it.
Standing on the doorstep was Doc Neeson, lead singer of The Angels. “My name is
Doc,” he said. “Have you seen my dog?”
When my friend told us
this story he was met with yodels of disbelief. As if Doc Neeson had knocked on
his door! Soon, however, it emerged that we owed him an apology. Surreal as it
sounded, Neeson had indeed moved into our neighbourhood, along with his partner
and at least one dog.
And why not? Celebrities
have to live somewhere. They have to go to the shops, and the toilet, and put
out the garbage, and catch planes and trains.
I’m 95% sure that I once
saw Ian Moss standing on Strathfield station holding a guitar case. Once on an
intercity train, I sat down next to a guy with a white beard who was dozing in
the window seat. On inspection, he proved to be David Stratton.
Showing admirable
restraint, I didn’t wake him up to initiate a conversation. I waited for him to
wake up naturally. Sadly, he was still asleep when the train arrived at my
station. I still regret this, because I had the perfect ice-breaker. If anyone
would have loved my Paul Giamatti story, it would have been David Stratton.
