As for the live ones, I’ve got that down. My friend Rob Weintraub was in town for the weekend, and Friday night, as we sat at the counter at Apple Pan, Rob Lowe came in by himself and sat next to us.
I idolize Rob Lowe, and very much wanted to talk to him, but I followed my foolproof rule #1: don’t bother celebrities while they’re eating. I waited until he’d finished his burger, fries and Coke. (He’s not the maniac healthy eater his character was on “Parks on Recreation,” and in fact is so handsome at age 56 that I may never stop eating burgers and fries.) Then I told him I loved both of his autobiographies, and he lit up.
Rob Lowe is a big sports fan, and Rob Weintraub is a sports writer, so we talked NFL football for a half hour. And that is rule #2: Don’t ask celebrities cliché questions about their work. If you want to talk about a movie an actor was in, go with something obscure. A friend of mine met Ben Stiller and told him he loved him in Permanent Midnight, a very heavy drama, and Ben was thrilled. My friend didn’t shout “blue steel!” at him – Ben gets that 17 times a day.
If you sense they’re nice enough and have the time to take a photo with you, go for it. I figured Rob was done with a long day of shooting around the corner at FOX studios, so I let it go, only taking the one of him surreptitiously. Of course, he didn’t make it out the exit without someone else asking for a photo, and he very sweetly obliged.
