Blog profile
After learning that my high school stint at McDonald’s wouldn’t get me a job at a mag, I worked as a freelance journalist for a few years. With much haggling and many annoying phone calls, I got a job at Cosmo! As web ed, no two days are the same – some days I’ll be at a video or photo shoot, others I’m interviewing celebs or updating myself on the latest goss (all for research purposes, obviously).
Apart from that, I have a healthy addiction to cupcakes, clutches and Christian Bale. I once watched a VH1 countdown of ‘The 50 Most Awesomely Bad Songs Ever’ and was proud to announce that I loved every last one of them. I’m very good at tripping over, talking too loud and saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. Oh … and in an acrostic poem that my friends wrote about me, the “e” in my name stood for “embarrassing.”
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Tue 29
The vicious circle
Like animals and small children, celebrities can sense fear.
As web editor, I am occasionally called on to interview minor celebrities. For me, these are a source of equal amounts of excitement and deep-seated, unnerving fear.
They invariably begin with me asking inane, often irrelevant small talk questions ("How are you?", "What's the weather like?", "How about that local sports team?" and the like) and end in pretty much the same way.
The problem? I'm too starstruck for my own good. On a flight from Sydney to Los Angeles, I couldn't sleep because I knew that The Devil Wears Prada star Simon Baker was on the plane. When I saw Hilary Swank in line for cupcakes in New York, I joined the queue, despite the fact that I was actually already eating a cupcake at the time. And before he was PM, I was once seated next to Kevin Rudd at a Sydney restaurant. I didn't eat a thing.
My most tragic starstruck moment, though, occurred late last year. Entourage star and all-round super-spunk Adrien Grenier was in town - and I spotted him. I was on Sydney's Crown St, carrying balloons (it was my boyfriend's birthday) and many, many shopping bags, dressed in a long, flowing maxi dress. I think I must have looked a little like a gypsy - a style that I think, in fact, would suit a meeting with Adrien Grenier. But my "cute gypsy" look became decidedly "bonafide crazy" when I spotted Adrien on the other side of the road, hailing a taxi for he and his lady friend. Dodging traffic and ignoring car horns, I sped across the street (and believe me, I do not speed) toward Adrien. As he climbed into the taxi, I realised it was now or never. I knocked on the taxi door and waited for him to roll down the window. When he did, I greeted him somewhat breathlessly with a sentence I'm certain he's never heard before: "I'm such a big fan."
All of this goes a long way to explaining why I am rubbish at interviewing celebrities. I get starstruck, then nervous, and finally, really, really, really nervous. And celebrities, sensitive and perceptive people that they are, pick up on this and often become quiet, abrupt and unresponsive. Which then makes me even more nervous. It's a vicious circle...and pretty much ensures that, despite my childhood dreams, I'll never pash Robert Downey, Jr.
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