Kiefer Sutherland. Tom Hanks. Hilary Duff.
What do these celebrities have it common? My friends met them instead of me.
I seem to have a real knack for missing celebrity sightings.
My celebrity curse started fall quarter of my freshman year, when I asked a friend to come to that night’s Bruin football game. She politely declined, saying she had to study.
When I returned to Westwood and called her, gloating about what a good time she had missed, she replied nonchalantly, “Oh, well, I went to In-N-Out for dinner and met Tom Hanks.”
Ugh. If only I had been more studious as a freshman.
Celebrity sightings began to multiply like rabbits among my friends. One of them met Hilary Duff while shopping at Whole Foods. Another was stopped by Kiefer Sutherland, who pulled down his shades and stealthily asked for directions to Corner Bakery Cafe.
If Jack Bauer had asked me for restaurant directions on a break from saving the world, I would have fallen over in a swoon.
In fact, I nearly did just that a few times.
My celebrity curse morphed into a full-fledged disaster when I got a job working at a local Westwood movie theater during winter quarter of my sophomore year.
I knew that one of the perks of working at that theater would be the frequent movie premieres, aka guaranteed celebrity sightings.
So I was all set, right? My chance to meet Orlando Bloom loomed delightfully near in my future.
The first premiere I worked for was “The Upside of Anger,” starting Kevin Costner, Joan Allen, and Keri Russell.
My job seemed simple enough: All I had to do was to fill cups of soda and bags of popcorn as quickly as possible so that the rich premiere attendees could have some refreshments to take to their seats.
As wave after wave of people showed up to grab Cokes and butter-drenched munchies, however, I began to feel like they were the stampeding herd of wildebeests from “The Lion King,” and I was little baby Simba, about to be trampled to pieces.
I was so completely in the zone of soda-filling that I barely noticed the crooked-nosed man standing in front of me.
I looked up and handed him a cup, and suddenly I realized it was Owen Wilson!
I gasped at my first up-close-and-personal celebrity sighting. Only my gasp came out more like a cross between a dying seal and a squawking parrot.
Owen Wilson gave me a strange look, quickly grabbed his soda, and left.
Each sighting got worse. It was like I was a giant walking bottle of mosquito repellent, and the celebrities were mosquitoes.
Nevertheless, I signed up to work at the premiere of “Robots,” because my favorite light saber-wielding, rooftop-singing celebrity was going to be present: Ewan McGregor.
The fateful day finally arrived, and I swore I’d be suave and sophisticated. I even elected to do just the soda filling, so that I would have more time to watch for the arrival of my celebrity crush.
After thirty minutes went by, a short brown-haired man accompanied by a lithe blonde-haired woman walked in. The blonde woman asked me for a Coke. As I grabbed a cup and went to the soda machine, she said “Wait a minute,” and walked back to the man.
“Do you want regular or diet?” she asked him, and suddenly I realized I was standing inches away from my celebrity idol.
My jaw dropped and I clutched the cup like it was my newborn child. I was frozen ““ I couldn’t move. I could barely compute the woman’s words when she told me it was “diet for Ewan.”
Diet. He drinks diet. I don’t like diet, but that’s OK. Maybe if we get married, he can convert to regular soda, and…
“Are you all right, love?” Ewan McGregor’s words exploded through my reverie like fireworks.
Oh no. Back to earth, and back to my mouth in the shape of an O. I’d done it again.
Since then, I consciously started to avoid celebrities for fear of a repeated attack of humiliation.
Recently, my boyfriend and I went to Enzo’s, our usual haunt, for a “romantic” dinner. As we waited for our pepperoni pizza, my boyfriend whispered excitedly, “Look, there’s Adam Sandler!”
But I had learned my lesson well. I just left him alone and watched from afar, giving him peace and quiet.
After all, that’s all celebrities want.
Fylstra follows celebrities via PerezHilton.com now. E-mail her at jfylstra@media.ucla.edu.