Whether we like to admit it or not, our society is pretty obsessed with celebrity culture. Almost half (44%) of UK adults admit they spend too much time caring about celebrity gossip. What's more, 80% say they know more about celebrities' lives than about their own parents.
But you don't need to obsessively follow a celebrity to form an opinion about them. Sometimes, all you have to do is to meet them and you'll be able to immediately clock whether they're cool or mean. Recently, one netizen asked in an online thread, "Who is the worst celebrity you have ever met and why?"
And people didn't hesitate to spill the tea on the rudest and most entitled celebs they have personally met. Perhaps these experiences might squash the perfect image you've had in your head of some famous people?
#1
After reading so many of these depressing stories I just have to say something nice and positive.
Robin Williams was an amazing person.
We had our daughters as extras in Death to Smoochy. At the end of the first day of shooting with kids, he went and thanked every single family and even hugged the kids and took photos.
A few days later, our youngest wasn’t feeling well so they had her sit out filming in the on set daycare.
Robin Williams heard this and went over and played cards with her for an hour and a half and told her jokes to make her laugh.
Image credits: Canuck-In-TO
#2
I make it a point of not bothering high profile people when out. The only way is if I just talk to them normal in a subtle manner, and not acknowledge that I know who they are. I’ll just say have a great night and leave without really making eye contact or fanfare - just to give them the treat of being treated normal in public. They actually respond better to that.
One good story was when I was getting off the Pod at Heathrow (just flew in from Paris). I was alone and had a huge backpack and some luggage. I was struggling and people were just walking by. And though it’s no one’s obligation to help/assist me, I was hoping someone would because I was struggling hard with everything on me.
Suddenly, my bag gets lifted up by one of the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen - and she had a buzz cut. It was Sinead O’Connor. She was with this guy at the time. She helped me with my luggage to my next destination, we talked briefly. Was one of the kindest people I ever met.
Image credits: HamSammich21
#3
To counter all of the bad, Weird Al is one of the genuinely nicest people I have ever met. Just a super cool, kind, down to earth guy.
Image credits: yetchsir
#4
It’s NOT Stephen king. He’s wonderful.
Image credits: senormcrib3
#5
I almost got in a bar fight with Danny Masterson because I cut him off. My coworkers were closing the bar and I told him we couldn’t legally serve anymore
and we were trying to go home. He cussed out my barback and I confronted him about it and he played the celebrity card on me and tried to intimidate me. His friends calmed him down and he didn’t do anything This was back in 2017 before he was arrested so seeing the scandal unfold later was icing on the cake because the way he talked to me and my staff was so entitled and immature. Glad he’s rotting in jail.
Image credits: GravityRides
#6
Worst was Michael Jordan, I spent around four months in a Chicago children’s hospital in the mid 1990s. We often got local celebrities who visited the hospital. Most of them came alone or with a few friends/family but Michael Jordan walked in with an entourage including reporters and photographers from two different newspapers. He refuses to play wheelchair basketball with us because he might get hurt. He refused to sign autographs because his autograph was worth $200 a pop. Only pictures allowed were the ones taken by the photographer and those were only really done with a few paraplegic teenage boys who played wheelchair basketball. He was there for maybe 20-30 minutes.
Contrast him to my two favorites: Chris Farley and Brittney Spears. Mr. Farley came in the mid 1990s through a back door. He read to the kids in ICU or the toddlers after surgeries. He did character voices. He was the best giant in Jack and the Beanstalk when he read it to me after my scoliosis surgery. He even preformed “Lunch Lady Land” for us teenagers with the props borrowed from our lunch lady. Brittney came one day in 1999 and hung out with us. We white girl danced to her songs with her, made and ate homemade pizza with us and then we watched a girly rom com. When she saw that our teenage rec room was kinda sad she donated money to redo it.
Image credits: hisamsmith
#7
Dakota Fanning was bored out of her mind and looked like she wanted to be anywhere else when I interviewed her for a college newspaper, I felt like a slug. Kristen Stewart on the other hand, despite her image in the press at the time, was so sweet and thoughtful in her answers and even told her publicist (who was trying to rush her along) to basically leave her alone while she continued to chat with me. She even remembered my name at the end and said it was great talking. I was smitten!
Image credits: SaltyMcCracker2018
#8
Jlo is horrific , you are not allowed to look at her if she is shopping in your store and only communicates to her personal assistant.
Image credits: Stunning-Painter1049
#9
I delivered a pizza to Chris Brown's tour bus in my hometown. He didn't tip, but he also didn't slap me around so I chalked it up as a win.
Image credits: Mystic_Waffles
#10
Got called to David Spade's room for a wifi issue once at like 3 am. When i told him he needed to wait for I.T. in the morning he said "I didn't think you would be able to fix it. I figured they don't put their best and brightest on the graveyard shift". Lmao.
Image credits: Worried_Lobster6783
#11
I served Michael Keaton at a yogurt shop when I was in high school. It was the early 90s so he was at peak celebrity status. He was very kind and gracious. He asked where the tip jar was which was very nice.
#12
My uncle used to own a chain of theaters and had a few movie premiers hosted. He said Kevin Costner was extremely rude to all employees and staff and Jackie Chan was one of the most gracious people he’s met. The Costner thing always surprised me.
Image credits: Duchess721
#13
Tippi Hedren came into the diner 30 minutes after 2pm closing. All the lights were off, all the grills were cold, everything was put away, we just hadn't locked the door yet. She walked straight to her favorite booth with her friends and they started to sit down. I walked over and said "sorry Ms Hedren, but we closed at 2pm."
She huffed and puffed and stomped out, hissing "this is unbelievable!"
Also, Alice Cooper took a picture with my kid in the baggage area at Burbank airport about fifteen years ago, he was elegant and gracious and really nice to my kid.
#14
Jared Leto
He was absolutely furious that we were short on a can of soda that was requested in the rider. (5 diet cokes instead of 6)
He spent two seconds in the green room the whole night and didn’t touch anything.
He refused to speak to anyone directly and tried to get tough with security when they wouldn’t let some young women in the back.
Rest of his band was nice as hell though.
Image credits: BoltThrowerTshirt
#15
Also Ray Manzarek, keyboardist of the Doors. My stepsister saw him at Universal Citywalk, she was suffering from leukemia and had undergone a lot of chemotherapy so she very much looked like a 13 year old cancer patient. She asked him for an autograph and he said “$100 no matter what’s going on in your life.” To this day I can never listen to the Doors the same.
Image credits: gabeonsmogon
#16
Never met a celebrity, but my aunt says Jennifer Lopez is one of the rudest people on the planet. Apparently, when she goes to restaurants, she refuses to look servers in the eye, and orders through her personal assistant. She is also horrible on planes for yelling at flight attendants apparently. And beyond that she just glares at people and never says please or thank you.
#17
I only have a second hand nice story.
Daniel Day Lewis and my mom had the same cleaning lady when he was filming The Crucible. He left this cleaning lady notes thanking her for various little things, or hoping she was over her cold, stuff like that.
#18
DJT in Houston Airport in 1990's yelling, cursing, and throwing a tantrum at his entourage.
Regardless of political issues, would never vote for a toxic sociopath I witnessed IRL.
#19
Had a terrible experience with Lizzo at my last job. Really rude to me & my fellow female coworkers who worked the venue of an event she was the special guest at. Then got on stage talking about how much she empowers women.
#20
Gary Busey. He grabbed my butt while I was holding my infant son and called me a hot mama. I looked at him like I was offended and he looked back at me, offended that I was offended.
#21
I once accidentally blocked in Zac Efron while he was leaving a Netflix movie premiere (I was an uber driver picking up someone who turned out to be the movie’s makeup artist.) He put down his window said “hey, you mind if we get out?” very politely, and gave me a wave when I pulled out.
It was just a 10 second interaction, but I just thought “wow, Troy Bolton was nice about that”.
#22
All the rumors are true about Reese Witherspoon. I used to work at a clothing store in LA and she would regularly shop with us. Just in a permanent bad mood - snarky, rolling her eyes, dirty looks for absolutely no reason as we were all very kind and discreet. Met many celebrities working there and that's my only bad experience.
Image credits: cohesilver
#23
James Corden, had the displeasure of bumping into him London Bridge Experience and he treated everyone there bad. Kept acting like he deserved special treatment.
Kept taunting staff and acting like the massive jerk he is. Even managed to use the: 'Do you realise who I am' line a couple of times.
Long story short: James Corden is an obnoxious, talentless PoS.
#24
This is a nice story about someone who is often cited as rude, but my wife had very pleasant interactions with him.
Harrison Ford came into a restaurant my wife worked at regularly while filming something in the last few years. He kept going in because the restaurant staff did not make a fuss about him coming in.
As long as you treated him like a normal person, he would engage in really pleasant conversation, ask questions about the staff’s lives, and even gave my wife 90% of a bottle of expensive wine that he decided not to drink.
#25
Pre-Big Bang Theory I met Johnny Galecki at a Magic: the Gathering weekly game at a small bookstore at the mall. Nobody recognized him (I did, since he was David on Roseanne) and I was cool enough not to bring it up.
He liked MtG but didn't have a deck. I offered him one of my extra decks, but as I was a poor 14 year old, it wasn't amazing.
He kept insulting it nonstop and was rude! Like, you were on a major TV show and I'm a child. I was giving you a deck (not my main one) to be nice. And you shat all over it and kept insulting me for its stupidity.
The fact that they have an MtG episode was salt on the wound.
Image credits: ReadingRainbowRocket
#26
I ran into Brooke Hogan & her mom Linda at the Tampa Airport right when she released her first album. I tried to say hi and she was SO rude, looked at me like I was a peon (her mom was sweet). Well, fast forward to about six months ago, I told this same story on a Tampa area famous radio DJ’s Instagram page. Brooke ended up DM’ing me a couple of months later apologizing and saying that her entire childhood she was on pins & needles and was probably just really stressed 🤷🏻♀️ it made me sad for her and I forgave her….
#27
Opposite of the prompt but on my first day training at a restaurant kenan thompson came in with some friends and the server i was training under had their table so i was tailing her the entire time. they were super kind and only got ~$100 worth of food but tipped $400 on top. as they were leaving kenan leaned in to me and whispered good luck 😭😭.
#28
I waited on Clarence Thomas in the summer of 2002. Easily the rudest person I’ve ever dealt with in my life.
#29
Darryl Strawberry came in for a repair at the tech shop where I used to work, and treated everyone on the staff like absolute dogshit.
Meanwhile, Viggo Mortensen was the kindest, most gracious man you could ever hope to meet.
#30
Many many years ago, I got the opportunity to meet Danica Patrick at a photo shoot she was doing for some magazine (I was 17, my dad’s friend was the photographer who offered to take me along). At the time, she had had her license revoked due to reckless driving. Her mom had to drive her to the shoot.
Danica did NOT want to talk to me when I said hi - but I could let that go, she was working and I’m sure didn’t want to entertain some random kid. What made her the worst is she was SO MEAN to her mom! Constantly yelling at her and putting her down. I was so upset by her behavior, her mom was trying her hardest to de-escalate but Danica was just determined to be awful.
#31
I've told this story so many times, but Drake and this was when he was still Degrassi
Was working at a local movie theater in the city and we get celebrities occasionally because we're not from downtown. Anyways by pure chance not only does Drake show up to the theater, a few moments after him Hillary Duff comes in. Because Drake was wearing a black shirt with the word SECURITY in bright yellow and I didn't recognize him he yells at me for assuming he's Hillary's security person.
He did the whole "Don't you know who I am" spiel too.
My manager, after I told him what happened, he was also like WTF did he expect wearing the shirt?
Hillary Duff was super nice though.
Image credits: blondebeaker
#32
2 Nicki Minaj stories. One time her and Drake came into a convenience store I was working at in dtla. Their security strong-armed all actual customers so they could film a little video where Drake pretends to buy her hot chips.
Another time she was performing at Staples. Friend worked as a red coat/usher there, and told Nicki “you look very pretty.” And Nicki replied “Never in your life speak to me again.”
Machine Gun Kelly tried to lowball my friend that tattooed him.
#33
Toni Collette. I work for an airline, and if we see her name on the passenger list we are filled with dread. She’s notorious.
My colleague made her bed on a night flight. She ripped up the bedsheet, threw it aside, and said “that’s not how you make a bed”.
I’ve had my own run-ins with her too, although nothing as extreme as the above. She yelled at us for serving her the wrong type of tea (it was the correct one).
Very disappointing as I really rate her as an actor, and she always comes across as warm and grounded in interviews. Clearly she’s not just acting on set!
#34
Alan Alda, I recently posted aboyt this but ill add it here too.
Yep, i got to be on the set of mash for a day when i was 5 because my uncle was an extra or something to that effect, I idolized him at that time, my nickname WAS Hawkeye as a kid, I wanted to go into the army because of the show. I had a poster with the cast on it, every. Other. Cast member. Signed it. Some were friendlier than others, but everyone took the time to sign and give me a handshake or high five, i had on an outfit my mama made me. Camouflage jacket that said "Hawkeye Jr." On the back, with matching pants. Alan was the last one to come out i ran up to him and was starstruck I smiled and babled about the army and wanting to bw like him and asked him to sign, he took my poster, ripped it in 4 pieces and said "don't chase that dream, ite pointless" and walked off. I was sobbing and everyone around me, producers and all were in shock. My dad looked like he could've killed that man lol.
IDK how she heard, but Loretta swit (Margaret Houlihan) came back, took me from my dad's arms held me until I stopped crying, she gave me her own personal notebook, and made every other cast member sign it or leave me a little note. She apologized for not having a poster and gave my dad a fiver to get me a new one.
#35
I had a friend who went to Syracuse when Carmelo Anthony was there. One day early in the fall semester she went to the student fitness center and there was a long line where students scanned their IDs for entry.
Her group investigated and saw that Carmelo was holding everything up arguing with the front desk. Carmelo didn’t have his student ID. He told the desk hadn’t even gotten one yet.
Finally the whole small crowd heard Carmelo say “don’t you know who I am?” And the student worker, who was a skinny dude like 1/4th Carmelo’s total size, said “yes but the rules apply the same to you as any other student.”
Edit: wow I didn’t realize telling one slightly negative story about a famous athlete would get under some people’s skin.
#36
Serena Williams
Always extremely rude and nasty to the (nice) deli clerks in palm beach gardens, fl.
#37
Stephen Baldwin is an insufferable person who doesn’t tip, tries to get service workers to go to his dumb skate church and insults people’s tattoos.
Image credits: rooroopup
#38
Paris Hilton. I work for a major US airline and she used to fly us (said airline no longer exists) and she was known to be a huge C U Next Tuesday to everyone. Once showed up for a flight going to LAS she decided that she needed to bring on 8 bags to accommodate her stuff (she had a round trip for 2 days) and when we told her she couldn’t bring more then 2 items on board she threw a fit and threatened to call our CEO. My managers response was “go ahead, he is out of a job in a few months. You can call the FAA to complain to them” she proceeded to miss the flight and call all of us at the gate bitches for ruining her trip.
She ended up buying the next flight (last flight to LAS out of LAX) and bought the entire first class seats so her bags could all go in the overhead. Truly weird and bizarre woman.
Jennifer Garner however is the sweetest nicest person I’ve ever met out of everyone I’ve interacted with.
#39
I’ve met quite a few. Hands down the worst is Steven Seagal.
#40
Guy Fieri is the worst! I signed an NDA but I don’t even care anymore.
#41
No surprise here -Gene Simmons. I was working a booth at Comic Con for a company who was doing a collab with him. We were all dressed up like the characters and he came in with his sunglasses on and his dry frizzy fun fur hair and snapped “ Just take the pictures already !! “
Then as he was leaving, a little girl around 9 and her older brother probably 14 came up all starstruck (the brother was dressed up like Gene) and asked for an autograph and photo. He just brushed them aside and walked away. The kids were devastated and the girl started to cry. He just kept on walking.
#42
I have bad luck with science guys I guess. Bill Nye was a total jerk on the plane in the seat next to mine. Just a miserable dude. Neil Degrass Tyson harassed my wife who was a bartender at a hotel so bad, that she had to have the cooks walk her out, and he was lurking in the banquet area when they did.
#43
Mike Wolfe from American Pickers. He was in the same cemetery tour group as me in New Orleans. He kept rudely interrupting the tour guide demanding to be taken to the tomb from Easy Rider. The tour guide kept telling him we’d get there closer to the end of the tour but Mike Wolfe threw a hissy fit and was ruining the tour for the rest of us so the tour guide gave in, stopped our tour to take him to the tomb. His tantrum inconvenienced 10-12 other people and he couldn’t care less.
#44
Gwyneth Paltrow. Rude. Obnoxious. Ungrateful.
Made the cast and crew wait hours for her. Lied about walking around in a fat suit during Shallow Hal.
#45
Kris Jenner. The woman is a nightmare to work with. Kim had an attitude, but she knew what she wanted and could verbalize it without derailing into multiple unrelated tangents. Kylie was sweet. Started every conversation with "How are you and your kittens?".
#46
Ezra Miller.
Ran into him at a bar in East Village. He was lurking watching my friends play pool..we didn’t know it was him yet. I offered him my turn because he looked like he wanted to play
Dude hits the pool ball so badly, takes the pool stick and messes up the entire table, picks up a ball and throws it down the hallway, then almost impales my friend with the pool stick before running away
Woman at the bar scoffed at the situation. Turns out she was an off duty bartender at the bar and he comes in and does stuff like that often
This was 2022/23ish.
Image credits: Fine_Line6475
#47
LeBron James. Nice enough but he doesn't tip. At all..Anywhere..The more offensive thing to me was he didn't want to pay 275 for a bottle of Grey Goose so he pulled a Karen and made me go and get the manager.
#48
My friend was a theater major at our Cal State school. They got the chance to go to the set of the Gilmore Girls for one of their directing classes, as apparently that episode's director was a friend of the teacher's. The director asked the cast if they wanted to have lunch with the students and Lauren Graham said "why would i want to have lunch with a bunch of nobodies?". She was not a nice person.
#49
Christie Brinkley.
Unless you were one of the rich and/or famous, she'd treat you with sneering contempt for no reason at all. Absolutely the worst celebrity I've met, and I've met many.
#50
Jennifer Lopez
If you happen to be a member of the staff working a venue she performs at you are not allowed to look at her and are supposed to physically turn away from her if possible (as of 2016 when this happened).
