TODAY, a meditation on movie stars.
In the world of celebrity, there are some people who undoubtedly deserve to be famous. Hockey players come to mind. As someone who moves on ice with the co-ordination of a two-to three-minute-old deer, I can appreciate what it must take to do what the professionals do. They can stop; they can go backwards; they can manipulate a puck around other professionals - all without looking like something trying to claw its way out of an amniotic sac.
They're famous, and that's OK.
The same goes for big achievers in the non-athletic world. People know who Neil Armstrong is for a reason.
Admittedly walking on the moon isn't the hardest thing you could do - I've wandered around in places with six times the gravity pretty handily - and it's not clear what the trip did to improve either the Earth or the moon, but what he did was still at least moderately amazing.
Edmund Hillary, same deal: He climbed Everest. Christopher Columbus: He discovered the people who discovered the Americas.
Barack Obama: You may or may not agree with him, but he's famous for a good reason; he runs the United States! I drop the ball when I'm overseeing things like laundry. What the man does in a day is crazy. And you won't catch him leaving America's delicates in the washing machine overnight. He's famous, and that's OK.
It's when it comes to movie stars that celebrity as an institution kind of stops making sense. These are people whose only job is to pretend to be people like the people above. They don't actually do anything, and everybody loves them for it.
Much as he'd have us believe otherwise, Hugh Jackman has almost definitely never cut through a freight train with his fingernails; Jason Statham has almost definitely never won a gunfight with his fists; Sir Anthony Hopkins has very likely never eaten anyone.
Not. One. Person. Does anybody care? No. Famous anyway.
Then there's Arnold Schwarzenegger.
"Look everybody! It's the guy who pretended to be a robot that tried to kill someone's mom."
"Yay! He should run California."
Meanwhile, people who have done actual real, substantial things live in obscurity.
Surgeon whose name I don't know: "I performed the first heart transplant."
People everywhere: "Shut up, Dr. Boring. Bring back Patrick Dempsey!"
Imagine someone outside the world of acting trying to pull the same stunt.
Some guy: "I'm totally a doctor."
Credulous onlooker: "Oh thank god. I think I might have ruptured my appendix." Guy: "Just kidding."
Patient: "What?" Guy: "I made that up. Want me to write my name on this picture of me?"
Up until recently, my generally skeptical attitude and my own not inconsiderable acting experience had convinced me I was impervious to this way of thinking. (I played the Tin Man in my Grade 11 production of The Wizard of Oz. I had to pretend I didn't have a heart for like an hour and a half. Let's see you do that, Pacino.)
It turns out I just hadn't met anyone famous enough.
In the world of fame, there are degrees of famousness. Things start at the low end around the local weather personality range, head up through the C-list (this includes most of the Baldwins, Maru the Internet cat), reach B-list around about Sean Bean and hit "A" at Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, the Queen and so on. Reactions among fans tend to be proportionate, ranging from a raised eyebrow to spitting coffee to catching fire spontaneously, emotionally speaking.
The few brushes with stardom I've experienced over the years, in retrospect, haven't been drawn from the A-list, but rather the lmnop range.
Some time in the early 2000s, I walked past the doctor from Star Trek Voyager; a short time later I crossed a crosswalk with eTalk Daily host Ben Mulroney, and once when volunteering at a film festival, I checked original 80's-era Battlestar Galactica star Dirk Benedict's ticket stub (it was legit).
My low-key reaction in each of these instances, I thought, was a function of being impervious to celebrity. Turns out I was wrong.
One day not long ago, I was standing at one of those long, high tables at a pub downtown when it came to my attention that Hollywood A-lister and star of the upcoming Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, Jude Law, was standing at the bar maybe two or three paces from me.
My reaction was to observe to a friend in an unnecessarily loud voice pitched somewhere in the seagull/band-saw range that this was the greatest thing ever.
It's not that I'm a giant
Jude Law fan; rather, I think, the sheer magnitude of his famousness just overloaded my brain.
I didn't realize what I was doing until a complete stranger standing across the table from me guffawed and then parroted back everything I had said in a derisive, falsetto voice not unlike a 12-year-old Justin Bieber fan's.
"Ohmygodit'sJudeLawlookeverybodyit'sJudeLawIcan'tbelieveithejustlookedatuswejustgotseenby-Jude-Law. What-are-we-going-to-do? HewasSkyCaptainIneversawSkyCaptaineither-it's-not-possible-holy-cow!"
It was an uncannily good imitation. I looked at him and after a short, tense pause I said: "I deserved that."
He agreed. And then, by way of softening the blow, they acknowledged that it was pretty cool. We high-fived and made up.
As irrational as it is, it turns out I'm as big an idiot in the face of stardom as the next guy. I guess it's something I have to work on.
I still wish I'd got him to write his name on something.
jweldon@nsnews.com
