I'm a Celebrity Magnet, Get Me Out of Here!

You know, living in New York, you kind of get used to seeing celebrities out and about. Particularly me, since I seem to some kind of celebrity magnet. Seriously, I've seen both Katie Holmes and Michelle Williams at different, in their Dawson Creek days, riding the New York City subways. I once saw Sean Penn and Jewel sitting on the ground outside the old Time Warner building. And I'm totally Six Degrees of Seperation from Kevin Bacon. And my favorite celebrity sighting of all was seeing Giorgio Armani and his entourage at the SoHo Bloomingdale's.

But now I'm seeing celebrities in twos and threes. A few weekends ago, I saw both Tom Cavanaugh (star of Ed) and Miguel Ferrer (from Crossing Jordan) on Broadway and 68th Street. And then two nights ago on Fifth Avenue, I saw Michael Kors, designer extraordinaire, and a friend walking down the street. I almost plotzed and he looked exactly the way he does on Project Runway, wearing the black t-shirt and pants. I thought of going up to him and telling him I love his clothes even though I can only afford the bridge line and just barely but I normally don't bother celebrities.

But before that I saw a real life peer of the realm, the Earl of Albemarle walking down the street talking on his cell phone. Why was this exciting to me? Well I had just written a post on a distant relative of his, Violet Keppel Trefusis on my Scandalous Women blog. Rufus Keppel is also a distant cousin of the Duchess of Cornwall, the former Camilla Parker-Bowles. See Camilla's great grandmother Alice Keppel was married to the brother of the 8th Earl of Albemarle, George Keppel. The current 9th Earl, Rufus Keppel is the great grandson of the 8th Earl. So Camilla and Rufus are distant cousins of some sort (I always get confused once you get past first cousins).

Good looking guy huh? The woman with him is his equally beautiful wife, Sally Tadayon, a sculptor. They were married in Havana because apparently at some point one of Rufus's ancestors, the third Earl was the commander-in-chief of the invasion and occupation of Havana and west Cuba in 1762, which is interesting because I had no idea the Brits had ever been involved with Cuba.

The Earl owes his title to his ancestor, Arnold Joost van Keppel, a favorite of William III. This might explain why so many of the Earls have Arnold as a middle name. The current Earl owns a high end company that apparently makes shirts and suits called Albemarle of London. As I said I'm guessing because the only thing on the web-site is a picture of the Earl looking quite dapper. You can read more about the couple here.

It was kind of shocking to actually see someone from the society pages walking down the street in New York and certainly an Earl!

I love New York.

My close encounter with Charlton Heston (sorta)

So Moses died on Saturday which was also the birthday of Bette Davis (thanks to TMC for that information). I wasn't a huge fan of Charlton Heston. I liked certain performances of his, particularly Moses in The Ten Commandments (who can forget the scene where he's parting the Red Sea, and you can see his Rolex?), Planet of the Apes, and a few others. Most of the time, I thought he was a good looking man who wasn't a very good actor compared to other actors in the 1950's like Burt Lancaster and Paul Newman. I did however like his performances in Ben Hur and The Ten Commandments when he wore no shirt.

Remember The Colbys? The dreadful spin-off of Dynasty where he was supposed to be madly in love with Katherine Ross who was about as wooden as a spoon? I remember Barbara Stanwyck acting rings around him. I also had huge problems with his support of the NRA later on.

Anyway this post is about almost close encounter with Charlton Heston. After college, I went to study acting at the British American Drama Academy in London. That fall Mr. Heston was appearing in A Man for All Seasons playing Sir Thomas More in the West End. We all went as a group to see the production, sitting way up in the gods. I remember being so excited about seeing an icon like Charlton Heston on stage only to be sorely disappointed by his performance. His wig did more acting than he did. It was probably the only time that I actually rooted for Henry VIII to kill More.

However, what he did next, is something that I'll always be grateful for. He came to give a talk at Regents College for the students at BADA and a select number of other students who were from Northwestern University, his alma mater. It was fascinating to be in the same room with him, and hear him talk about acting and his career and how important Northwestern was to him. Almost made me wish that I had applied there after all.

I wasn't lucky enough to get a picture taken with him because I wasn't a Northwestern student, but I thought it was so nice of him to take the time out of his day to come and talk to a group of students, particularly when he had been performing the night before and had two performances that day. I thought he was very gracious to let us ask him questions, particularly since you could tell that most of the students (apart from the drama students) didn't really know his work as an actor.

So here's to Charlton Heston for giving so many people pleasure in the movies.