I’m gonna tell you about the time that I didn’t meet Daryl Hannah. It’s got a good ending in the end. So, when I was living in Virginia, there was a movie being filmed at a place about an hour away from where I was, called Smith Mountain Lake. I can’t remember what it was called, maybe What About Bob or something? I never actually saw the movie. Anyway, Daryl Hannah was in the cast, and we had heard rumors that actually, that they were in the area and since, I dunno, I guess Lynchburg where I was was maybe the closest big town. I don’t know if they were staying here or what – we didn’t know the whole story but we heard she was around. Well I was out at the bar with some friends and they — in came Daryl Hannah in a group of four people. And the rumor whipped around the bar. Or, I shouldn’t say the rumor, the news that she was there whipped around so fast, it would’ve been a very interesting study in group dynamics because, ’course no one wanted to say anything really loud, so the people would say like, under their breath like, “Oh my gosh I think — isn’t that Daryl Hannah over there?” and you could just see that everything got kind of like hushed and people were like doing furtive glasses – glances, and the whole energy in the bar got really weird for a minute and then they found their table and they just sat down and they were really tuned into each other and not looking around at all. Because I think they’d seen the fuss that was made.
So, conversation in the bar kind of recovered and, I can’t remember who exactly I was with, but it was like a big enough group and some of the guys were posturing in this really dopey way like, “Oh,” like, “I’m gonna ask her to dance,” you know, or – I can’t remember specifically what it was, but it was just really — a lot of the guys were just really obnoxious about it. And, but here’s the thing. A good friend of mine who went to a nearby college had always been a huge Daryl Hannah fan. He had a picture of her from the movie Splash like up in his room in the fraternity house, and just made no bones about the fact that he had been a fan of hers for a really long time. And so I was watching all these guys strut around, puffed up, trying to figure out how to ask, you know, this very famous and beautiful woman to dance and I got it in my head, I was like, “You know what? I’m gonna go talk to her.” And what I felt — I guess I felt like I was more entitled to talk to her or had a more noble reason to talk to her because I wasn’t gonna talk to her for me. I was gonna talk to her because I wanted her to see if she would like sign a napkin or something that I could give to my friend. So I went up to their table and I was like, “Hi, don’t mean to bug you, but I was just wondering if I could have Daryl Hannah’s autograph for a friend who’s a huge fan.” And then, of course — and I want to specify, I did not have the guts to ask her directly. So I asked the dude that she was sitting next to. And he was really cool about it. He said, “Hi, look, I — we’re just trying to — we’re out here like as a group of friends and we’re just trying to have like a nice evening. So, you know, she’s not doing autographs or anything.” And he was super nice about it and didn’t make me feel embarrassed that I asked, and I was like, “Okay, I get it thanks,” you know, and I left.
So, later that same night, people were saying, “you know, I think that was John F. Kennedy Jr.” And I was like, “No, it was not. Like that’s impossible.” It’s a big enough deal to get Daryl Hannah in this, you know, small Virginia city that is not really close to anything else and doesn’t have a big airport and you know, has no night life or whatever. It was weird enough that she was here. There isn’t also going to be someone as famous as John F. Kennedy here like at this exact same time. But what I didn’t realize is that they were in a relationship at the time. I don’t know if they’re friends, dating, whatever, so I completely scoffed at that.
So fast forward that – this happened when I was a student, not when I was working. But fast forward a year and I start working in the admissions office and one of the people in the admissions office, at one point said something about her having — that she knew Daryl Hannah. That they were childhood friends, they’d gone to the same camp, and — the same summer camp, and they had always stayed in touch. And I said something like, “Wait a minute,” you know, “last year, when I was a student, I was at a bar and Daryl Hannah walked in, like, was she here visiting you?” And [name] said, “Yeah, that was — actually, I was there that night.” We were — of course, I didn’t recognize her because I didn’t know her. I didn’t know the full admission staff at that point. And then I said, “You know, people said that, ya’know, she was with JFK Jr. that night.” And she said, “Yeah, she was.” And so at that moment I realized that the handsome nobody that I was willing to talk to that night because I was too embarrassed to approach Daryl Hannah was in fact somebody who’s arguably more famous than Daryl Hannah. It was JFK Jr. Too funny.