On 09/07/2012 08:49 AM, turquoiseb wrote: > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "sparaig" <LEnglish5@...> wrote: >>> ...it reminds me that I once gave a TM intro >>> lecture to Raquel Welch at 1015 Gayley in L.A. She >>> was "dressed down," and so I didn't even recognize >>> her during the talk itself. I don't think she ever started >>> TM, but for those who dote on "celebrity meditators," >>> she at least expressed interest. >> I recall you telling that story years ago. You said she >> asked some of the most intelligent questions of anyone >> you had met as a TM teacher. > Indeed she did. She was also FAR more attractive in > person than she ever was onscreen, something I cannot > say about many movie stars I ran into in L.A. She was > wearing jeans and a nice white silk blouse and thick- > rimmed glasses and looked like a UCLA student half her > real age. I honestly didn't know who she was until she > walked up to me after the lecture and asked if I had > time to answer a few more questions. > > Naturally, I said yes. How many times in one lifetime > do you get asked to have coffee with Raquel Welch? :-) > There was no flirting, no movie star posturing, just > a remarkably intelligent and well-spoken woman asking > remarkably intelligent and well-considered questions. > I was impressed. > > I know that she didn't start TM in the weeks immediately > following that lecture, because I was teaching them. She > could have found someone else to teach her, one of the > TM teachers who specialized in teaching celebrities and > keeping it private so that the movement wouldn't hound > them and hit them up for endorsements and donations, > but if so I never heard of it. > > I have seen her since on talk shows and she's just as > intelligent and well-spoken today as she was then. Go > figure. Someone's image is not always who they are.
I written here before about how PR for media companies like movie studios, record companies, etc, like to create a more Horatio Alger story about a star as if they were discovered by agent working as a waiter or waitress. Thing is they may serious "geek" training in their field. I recall one TV star of the 1970s who was a guest on the weekly TV show where the band I was in played. He had just gotten a TV series but was uncomfortable with not being able to just go the grocery store without being mobbed. Fame ain't everything it is cracked up to be. He also was a graduate of an east coast college and drama was his major. The PR folks don't like to tell the public that if they want to be a star you probably need the serious training. Also James Woods didn't study drama or at least it wasn't his major at MIT, it was math. He thought acting might be more fun than teaching college math classes. Of course a story that extreme wasn't buried as is that Anna Faris has a MA in English literature, but then she was raised by a couple academics.
