As Andy Warhol once said, we all have our fifteen
minutes of fame in our lives. We also
have our brushes with famous people and events.
With the advance of technology, anyone can end up on Twitter or YouTube
and be broadcast on the internet worldwide in an instant.
For a true celebrity, this means free
publicity, which could be good or bad.
Just recently, bad behavior has made the news on the part of Mel Gibson,
Paris Hilton, and Lindsay Lohan.
Recently, I was at a Pronghorn fund
raising event and had the pleasure of meeting and talking to the actor Sean
Astin. His most notable movies are The Goonies (filmed in Astoria, Oregon),
Rudy, and most famously as Sam in the
Lord of the Rings trilogy.
A fact I didn't know was that his mother is
the actress Patty Duke, and his adoptive father is actor John Astin, most
notably of The Addams Family.
I found Sean to be delightful. He was very warm and seemed to really enjoy
talking with my wife and me. He
attracted a lot of attention, but took it very casually and appeared to make an
attempt to converse with everyone around him.
I suspect this treatment could really
overinflate one's ego, but I never sensed that about him; in fact, he seemed
almost surprised anyone recognized him.
During one of my sessions with Ann, I told
her about the encounter with Sean.
Always insightful and probing, Ann asked me what I learned from this
meeting. After some thought, I realized
that there was something to be learned from meeting Sean.
First of all, when I meet someone, do I go
out of my way to be warm and conversant? Or do I just go through the motions of
the pleasantries. How engaged am I in
the other person or I am looking around for more familiar faces?
Secondly, Sean is an actor and may have an
innate ability to appear to be warm and engaged yet wanting to be somewhere
else (although I doubt this.) Yet, don't
we all have the ability to be actors and appear interested in those with whom
we are talking, even if we don't feel up to it at the moment?
The old saying is true:
you never get a second chance to make a good first impression.
Lastly, when we are around a group of
people, are we being observed by others more than we think we are? Is our body language being scrutinized or our
vocabulary being analyzed by those around us?
I would suspect that celebrities adapt to this to some degree, but who
hasn't heard about encounters with famous people where people come away with
bad impressions of their idols.
In summary, I would encourage you to make
an effort to be like Sean Astin was with me when I met him. When you meet someone new, be warm and
engaged, consider yourself a "celebrity" trying to give a good impression with
your smile, firm handshake, and engaging personality.
