Almost related to a celebrity

[Olli]

Let's play a game called "Almost related to a celebrity". Here's the idea: you must post a true story of how you're almost, but not quite, related to a famous person. The trick is, your goal is to
1) make sure the famous person in question is at least somewhat recognizable...
2) ...but the less famous they actually are, the better. Include links if you want.
3) the less closely "related" you are to the person, the better...
4) ...but there should be some kind of closeness involved

BAD (fictional) EXAMPLE: "I'm a direct descendant of Charlemagne"
BETTER (fictional) EXAMPLE: "My brother went to middle school with J-Lo's backing dancer"

You can share as many relations as you can think of, as long as they're real.

I'll start:
* I once almost chatted up a woman at a rock festival but got cold feet. Later, I figured out that the woman was the girlfriend of Michael Monroe.
* My ex-co-worker is the father of music producer Jori Sjöroos

 

[Sprite]

My husband used to work at the Public Theater, which produced Hamilton, the musical that rocketed Daveed Diggs to stardom and got him a brief stint as Mr. Noodle on Elmo’s World, produced by Sesame Workshop, where my husband now works.

 

[ThornGhost]

One late night while very inebriated at DragonCon, I bumped into a cosplayer on the street that had a fucking amazing Billy Mitchell costume. (This was before Billy's current troubles.) I talked to him about his sick ass costume for a couple of minutes and the guy kept insisting he was Billy Mitchell, which I assumed was part of the costume. I never believed him, though he insisted it was true several times over.

Anyway, I found out later it actually was Billy Mitchell. womp womp

 

[Felicia]

A friend of mine has been in a movie with actors than can be connected by some degrees to Kevin Bacon, though I'm not sure exactly how many degrees there is between them. I myself once played a minor character in a short film with the same friend, but sadly that film have never been released, so I can't claim a Bacon Number of my own.

 

[Vaeran]

One time about 15 years ago I went into an Apple Store and spotted character actor and Philadelphia resident David Morse. We didn't make eye contact or interact in any way, but I choose to believe he remembers the incident fondly to this day

 

[Rascally Badger]

I substitute taught for an art teacher that was a first cousin of country music "star" Tate Stevens.

 

[JBear]

My former father-in-law went to school with Fred Penner.

 

[Mightyblue]

I am distantly related to Davy Crockett through my father's half of the family. Also the McCoys of Hatfield v. McCoy fame.

 

[muteKi]

I did a vacation Bible school in like 4th grade and was in some of the skits. The guy who was directing us looked a lot like Robert Altman and was addressed as "mister Altman" by some of the organizers so I have this uncanny suspicion he was Robert Altman

 

[Exposition Owl]

-My favorite elementary school music teacher would go on to become Lucy Dacus’s mother.

-When I was a kid, we had a family friend who used to be close friends with Sheryl Crow when they were in college together.

 

[jpfriction]

I share a name with a D list actor who had been in one thing I’ve even ever heard of.

I’d like his email address.

 

[Mogri]

I've done web dev work for a guy who's making a game with a track composed by Nobuo Uematsu. There's a better-than-even chance that my name ends up in the game's credits, which would allow me to claim to be credited in a game Uematsu worked on.

I was ten feet from Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, one time. He nodded at me.

 

[Becksworth]

I appear to be a magnet for these kind of offbeat celebrity connections thinking back. Off the top of my head...

• Last year, I was on a flight to Denver and sat across the aisle from Yakov Smirnoff and I’m guessing his daughter. He was trying to be incognito, but he was also working on some power point slides with his name on them on his American flag emblazoned laptop, so he wasn’t doing a good job of it.
• My sister went to grade school with Brad Pitt’s brother. He was apparently a little turd of a child.
• Some guy whose name I can’t remember but was on that dumb Strip Mall sitcom on Comedy Central in the early 2000s was doing a show at my University and I happened to be sitting at the table adjacent to him around lunch time.
• Some guy who I swear looked like Mel Gibson was staring at me from his his car as I was in line at a Hardee’s drive thru, suddenly flips me off for no reason, and then peeled out the parking lot.
• Some guy I barely knew from the local game store was mentored by the writer of the Men in Black comic book series. Somehow, this resulted in my friend and I actually meeting and hanging out with said writer for couple of hours at indie movie premiere. Bonus: Some anime/comics podcaster was later introduced to us and the said writer. He had brought a 80s guide to anime the writer wrote back in the day and proceeded to point out minor details the writer got wrong. We all agreed after he left he was a douche.

 

[Olli]

I've been at a house party with the current Finnish minister of education. I was pretty drunk, she wasn't.

 

[Tiers in Rain]

A drunken Britney Spears pulled up to the streetcar stop I was waiting at in New Orleans and told either me or the guy standing next to me to get in her limo with her.

On a sidenote, I am actually related fairly directly to a famous person but that's not as fun as the above.

 

[Valentein]

My uncle helped Neil Young's dad sell his house.

 

[Torzelbaum]

A drunken Britney Spears pulled up to the streetcar stop I was waiting at in New Orleans and told either me or the guy standing next to me to get in her limo with her.

Did either of you get in?

 

[Tiers in Rain]

Did either of you get in?

No. We just kind of looked at each other with confused expressions and then seconds later, before either of us had time to respond, the limo took off. Oh and, unbelievably, this was the 2nd time I met her that day.

 

[Tiers in Rain]

I've got a few more from my time in New Orleans. A few times I walked past Trent Reznor as he was walking his dog. Also he was standing in line behind my then girlfriend at Rite-Aid once. This was not that unusual since he lived down the street from us.

 

[Tiers in Rain]

Walking down Decatur Street after work one day, a man dressed all in black and looking like a vampire ran past me, followed by a small film crew. It turns out it was for final reshoots of a movie called Dracula 2000 and the actor was Gerard Butler. I always meant to watch it to see if I could be seen in any of those scenes but I never did.

 

[Kirin]

Apparently my partner is cousins with Tim Malcolm, a C-list rich and famous guy from the reality TV show "90 Day Fiance".

 

[Becksworth]

Some more I thought of:

• The original “The Bachelor” owns a bunch of restaurants where I live, so the whole town can claim a loose connection to a C-List celeb.
• Walter Day of Billy Mitchell/Twin Galaxies infamy was at a local arcade reviewing someone’s high score while I was there with a date. I was more focused on the date, but I distinctly recognized the guy.
• I think Laura Bailey asked me for directions at a con once. This was a long ass time ago, so when she was still just known for Funimation dubs, and it was late night, so my memory is hazy.

 

[Paul le Fou]

I worked with a girl named Nikki at the movie theater in high school, and Nikki's mom's best friend got her first kiss in 5th grade from a classmate named Brian Warner, now aged 51 and known more widely as Marilyn Manson

 

[Cadenza]

I'm pretty sure I sat next to Avery Brooks on the subway when I visited New York City a few years ago. I was with a few friends, and I wasn't 100% sure it was him, so I did my best not to bother the guy, but if it wasn't Mr. Brooks he was a dead ringer for him.

 

[gorha]

A friend of a friend of my mom's is AOC's uncle. I've had lunch with him a few times.

 

[Olli]

I just have to say I love all of these. Perfect.

 

[Red Silvers]

I once went swimming with Jeff Hornacek during his time on the Utah Jazz.

 

[Vidfamne]

Once upon a time, my mother had her hands full at an airport and Mrs. Second Toughest at the Eurovision Song Contest 1980 (Katja Ebstein) came up to her and offered to hold her baby (my brother) for a while.

Another time, my father got confused for Christian Audigier. He also starred in a photo commercial for some kind of substitute marzipan with a kid who would become the director of the Fugees' music video for "Ready or Not".

Also this topic is just bait for everyone to post their Erdös numbers, or to make them feel deeply ashamed that they do not have an Erdös number

 

[jpfriction]

I worked with a girl named Nikki at the movie theater in high school, and Nikki's mom's best friend got her first kiss in 5th grade from a classmate named Brian Warner, now aged 51 and known more widely as Marilyn Manson

The kid from the wonder years!?

 

[Nich]

When I worked at Atlus West (nee Atlus USA), in addition to localizing the game text I also used to answer the phones. One day someone claiming to represent Bruce Campbell called up to ask if we could supply Bruce with an Xbox, which we of course could not.