Celebrities who you believe are, deep down, normal people

Ben Affleck and Matt Damon Heather Locklear Lisa Kudrow (friend grew up with her and is still in touch) Katie Couric (ditto) ...who else?

• Damon for sure.

• Conan, Kimmel and Fallon.

• Sandra Bullock

• Mariska Hargitay

• I think Clooney has a fair dose of normal.

• Heather Locklear is a Republican drug addict with mental problems.

• Jennifer Lawrence - acts exactly as someone her age would act. Loved her in Winter's Bone and enjoy her general exuberance in her off-camera moments.

• Lindsay Lohan.

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• Shania Twain reminds me of the small town women and farm girls I grew up around. She seems very practical and guileless...girls into horses usually are.

• None of them. Seriously. How could they be normal? I've encountered and befriended a number of celebrities over the years, and they're just...different. Not better, not worse. Just different and far from normal. There's some sort of narcissism that drew then to acting or singing, etc, and making SO much money and being around people who yes them to death changes them even more. It's inevitable, and I don't think it's possible to be "normal" in that kind of circumstance. Sure, many of them are "nice" but that's not really quite the same thing as normal.

• Dorothy Hamill is a regular customer, very kind and sweet. I look forward to seeing her on DWTS.

• John Sebastian from the Lovin Spoonful.

• Madonna (joking). Meryl Streep, Jennifer Lawrence, Colin Firth.

• Taylor Swift

• From personal experience: Philip Seymour Hoffman Alanis Morissette Lisa Kudrow Shania Twain is a homophobic twat.

• Amen R6, and surely you jest R14. I agree with you about Meryl Streep R13 and with Colin Firth. Not Jennifer Lawrence though.

• Sandra Bullock, Lisa Kudrow, Michael J Fox, Mandy Moore, David Letterman Not Heather.

• no on the Michael J. Fox.....he was an egomaniac back before the Parkinsons.....maybe he is humbler now

• Michael Keaton grew up with a friend of mine. An incredibly nice guy.

• Usually the ones that move out of LA. Julia Roberts stays out of the limelight and raises her kids until she has to promote her work.

• Regardless of what M says Glenn Close is a wonderful person....I know from personal experience--- When I was 19 I was attacked and beat up. I kind of developed that selective mutism thing (like the guy in Big Bang Theory)and started hating people. For like six months I only spoke to my parents and doctors. Friends of my parents knew her and invited us over. They informed her that I was a big fan and what had happened to me. She sat next to me for a long time and talked about her career and let me ask all sort of questions. I was like deathly afraid of speaking but I so much wanted to talk to her I was able to do it. She was really patient and really helped me. Wonderful woman.

• Two things: 1. Nobody is "normal". 2. Many celebrities suffer from Narcissitic Personality Disorder, and if they don't come to Hollywood with it, they aquire it. The nature of the business, where you become a product because of your "specialness" and are surrounded by people who reinforce that idea because they want to make money off you, all but guarantees it.

• Brooke Shields.

• From my experience - Frances MacDormand, Ricki Lake and Heather Locklear are cool and kind people.

• Demi Moore

• Jennifer Aniston Winona Ryder Gwenyth Paltrow J-Lo

• I have hung out with Laurie Metcalf a few times. She's wonderful.

• I follow Rob Thomas on Twitter and he seems like a regular guy. He could be living so much more rock star than he does.

• Halle Berry

• Tom Cruise Rosie O'Donnell Dr. Amy Fisher Rick Santorum Madonna Gwyneth Paltrow Bashar al-Assad Chris Brown Donald Trump

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• [quote]She seems very practical and guileless...girls into horses usually are. Why, thank you!

  Empress Catherine of Russia

• Michael J. Fox = Egomanical Shithead.

  Mallory

• R11 Dorothy Hamill? Really? I had a friend who as a child saw her in a parking lot at an ice rink in the Valley... she asked for an autograph and Dorothy basically told her to fuck off. I thought I remembered hearing some story about her buying Ice Capades and the performers/staff all hating her too.

• R20 Are you trying to imply that Julia is a normal person? I can assure you that she behaves nothing close to normal. She's not out of the limelight by choice, she's out of the limelight because she got older and no one really cares about her any more.

• Ill throw in Tina Fey.

• Heather Locklear taught me how to shove fried in my McD's cheeseburgers. She was normal until the meltdown.

• I agree with Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Francs McDormand and Laurie Metcalf. Seth MacFarlane, Busy Phillips and Jon Hamm seem normal to me, too.

• I think guys like Taylor Lautner and Colton Haynes are deep down normal gay guys who love nothing more than to go into their private gay hiding places and just be themselves hanging around the people they trust to keep things private.

• I agree with r10. One I know is charming, funny, smart, and handsome and can be generous, compassionate, and the nicest guy you could ever hope to know. He can also be rude, insensitive, temperamental, cold, and dismissive. He's a very complicated guy with so many issues. Trust issues in spades. We were friends, and he's doing things to get my attention again. He can't simply apologize and/or say he wants to be friends again. No, he's playing games and doing whatever he can to make sure I'm the one who rekindles the friendship. He doesn't know how to be normal. Sad but true. He was normal before Hollywood got to him. I see glimpses of the guy he was before all the bullshit. That guy is a great person. That guy is why I care about him and why I put up with the games. I wish I had met him before he became famous. No, I will not say who he is. Trust me when I say celebrities are not normal (if my experience is anything to go by). He tries his hardest to be normal, but he can't. World he lives in has different rules, and you don't survive if you don't play the game. The game warps you. If you don't have trust issues you develop them. You can't trust the person you eat lunch with every day and share scenes with. Your best friend may rat you out to tabloids. Especially if the best friend is famous and has secrets to hide. No wonder he wants to be friends with people who don't live in that world and no wonder he is reaching out to me again. It's a cycle with him. He starts to worry if he can trust us non-famous folks and shuts down. It's a very lonely life. Our dance isn't done. I know it isn't. He is doing what he did before. Instead of picking up the phone as a normal person would he sent me a gift but hid who it came from. Only he would know to send what he did. Is this normal? No. See what I mean? He doesn't know how t be normal.

• R37 Jon Hamm is totally normal... if you don't count his penchant for exposing his bulge every chance he gets.

• r40, you must be a straight girl. r38 must be closeted.

• I'm a girl, but I'm not straight. Bi if I must choose a label.

  R41

• Oh I'll add Chris Pine (new Captain Kirk) to my list. He is so normal that I forgot about him being famous.

  r37

• R42 was me. Sorry! I meant to identify myself as r39.

  R39

• I waited on Morgan Fairchild back in the mid 1980's at probably the height of her stardom. She was as beautiful on the inside as she was on the outside, which was very beautiful. She is an all around kind and nice person, who also tips very well by the way.

  Greg

• Roseanne Barr

• These people are actors by the way, which means they are especially good at "acting" a certain way when they feel like it, which means if you encounter them while working as a waiter in a restaurant, see them on a talk show couch, or meet them in an elevator, you don't "know" them.

• NO one. If they were normal, they would not want to be a celebrity.

• OP, What is your definition of normal? Posters are all over the board naming celebrities they consider normal based on public images and wishful thinking (projecting) mostly.

• I've only known one person who was a celebrity before I met her (Jodie Foster), but I've known more than a few people who got famous (or semi-famous, or famous in some circles--like NY theatre ones--but not to the public, or temporarily famous; many of them would be lucky to get "Dancing with the Stars" these days!). What I know is that 1) only one of them was what I would call normal, nice, and likeable in the beginning, and 2) reports state that even she has changed and become... none of those things. I think it's a dual mechanism: many of the people who become celebrities have a laser-focus on achieving fame, which makes them brittle and not-so-nice; and fame changes people, because how could it not? I read that Christopher Reeve was extremely down-to-earth and what-you-see-is-what-you-get, and I knew a close relative of his who thought a lot of him. But then again, fetishboy listed him as a closeted gay who cheated on Dana until he was unable to do so. Again, maybe not as nice and normal as he was rumored to be (and I read that at a time when I still trusted interviews with celebrities... many years ago).

• Billy Campbell

• Donna Mil-- HAHAHAHAHA!!! I tried to say it with a straight face, really I did!

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• Marlo Thomas,

• Have heard nothing but good about Glen from several, unconnected people. Sorry, M.

• Linda Ronstadt...smart, funny, and a bitch...but in a good way... Im sure once you get past the "what do you want from me" attitude (which is to be expected), and they trust you enough to let their guard down, any celebrity COULD be normal

• David Strathairn. Love him. He is so handsome, kind and level-headed but he strikes as almost boringly normal.

• NYC based celebrities are more down to earth than LA based ones. Megan Mullally seems normal (even though she's in LA, obviously I didn't mean it as a blanket statement for everyone) Bernadette Peters Jennifer Garner

• Does anyone know Meredith Viera? She seems pretty 'normal' to me.

• Lily Tomlin

• Bette Midler...surprisingly opposite of what I expected...somewhat quiet and reserved

• I agree r57. In NYC celebs are more likely to see reality around them. They have to be around other people to get to and from, even if on is just waiting for a car or a ca. They have to use the sidewalk like everyone else. People in NYC see celebs everyday so they're not going to treat them as something too special. Whereas in LA, they're more sequestered in their own neighborhoods, and mansions. They don't ever have to interact with the public if they don't want to. There's much more sense of entitlement and isolation in L.A.

• Justin Bieber.

• R57 I nearly choked when I read that. Megan Mullally normal? Not by a long shot.

• David Strathairn looks very, very normal. I'm always surprised to see him in a movie he looks like he doesn't belong there This isn't to say he is a good or a bad actor - I don't really know

• r64, if you're watching movies where people don't look normal, you're watching bad movies.

• He would look normal in a European movie perhaps or in a play. But the movies I've seen him in, he was co-starring with Norah Jones, Julianne Moore, Sigourney Weaver... I don't know, they seem to be in different worlds...

• r65, have you ever heard the phrase "s/he looks like a movie star"? You realize that 99% of movies portray most characters with 'beautiful' or extraordinary features? The women are always fit, younger, and hot, the men are usually handsome and fit, if not young or 'hot' - they appear wealthy and put together. Even if someone is supposed to be 'ugly' they're not or they're extremely ugly and their character is made up for by extreme wit or charisma. You don't see many movies with a majority of everyday plainness, bored, slightly obese, or asymmetrical people in them. 99% of speaking roles are given to atypically attractive and charismatic people. All that aside, I think this thread is about how the celebrities behave in real life. Strathairn is very handsome with beautiful dark eyes and thin body - he would turn heads in a room but his persona seems pretty plain. Not bad, but ordinary and approachable.

• I ran into Christopher Lloyd in a restaurant bar once. He sat almost next to me and talked a bit. Seemed pretty normal to me. Didn't talk Hollywood. I never told him I knew who he was and loved his work on Taxi and Back to the Future. It was my first trip to southern california and he made suggestions about places to go and things to see. Museums and such. After about half an hour I paid and left. No different from other lunches I've spent single at a restaurant bar when I'm on the road.

• Number 50, how was Jodie Foster?

• Very movie stars are today stunningly beautiful, R67. Just well groomed and well maintained. The ordinary person could look the same if they had surgeons, trainers and stylists.

• r58 - I worked with Meredith when she was with the CBS local affiliate in New York before the network tapped her high profile news shows. She was a major, self-absorbed bitch, who seriously didn't think her shit stunk. My contacts who still know her now say she's even worse.

• Sorry, I meant aren't beautiful.

  R70

• Jeff Bridges and Cherry Jones are two celebrities who seem to have no dirt or anything. I've not met either one, but I think they both seem like decent sorts. Kathy Bates I have met on more than one occasion and she is a very kind and compassionate lady and so I will add her to the list as well.

• you can pretty much tell whos self absorbed and whos not...not in all cases, but typically if youre arrogant and self absobed you surround yourself with lackeys and an entourage. The grounded celebrities tend to do "normal things without all the ceremony and hooplah of making it "known" theyre around.

• Heather Locklear is very down to earth person and very sweet. Yes, she has struggled with drugs over the years but so have many other celebs who are no where near as nice. She is not a republican. She is socially liberal.

• I've met quite a few "celebrities" in my long life in NYC and in general, yeah, they are pretty indistinquishable from other people. They are after all, human beings. You know, for every well known wealthy and/or successful famous person, there are 10 (?) just as rich or richer and more successful unknown people. They too are not that different from normal people.

• from personal experience Alice Cooper and AL Franken. Also Mary CHapin Carpenter, Maya Angelou, Oscar Arias, John Glenn, Al and Tipper Gore

• Seth Myers Justin Long Chris Paul Lisa Kudrow Jim Parsons

• I totally believe Heather Locklear is down-to-earth. And despite the bad plastic surgery, Linda Evans.

• [quote]Whereas in LA, they're more sequestered in their own neighborhoods, and mansions. They don't ever have to interact with the public if they don't want to. There's much more sense of entitlement and isolation in L.A. bitch please....as if celebs in NY don't go from limo to front door and back again.

• I've met Emma Caulfield and Feist, both were sweethearts, and Emma's really funny in person, natural comedian. And I haven't met her personally, but I've heard from two different people that are acquianted with her, that Heather Graham is an absolute doll.