How to be famous

I was in a security line in Prague, standing next to my mom, who was in a wheelchair recovering from an injury that happened while she was vacationing there with a friend. This was the whole reason I was in Prague. To help her while she recovered and then to get her home safely. Behind me, I overheard a man ask his wife if they were in the right line and that their flight was about to board. I turned my head to answer,

“I believe you are. They put us in this line too. Are you headed to New York?

He nodded and that's when my brain did a flip flop…

It was Jesse Eisenberg.

And underneath that realization, a quiet voice emerged: he's just a guy asking a question, I thought to myself, while probably grinning from ear-to-ear and trying to maintain a level of cool.

We ended up talking. He asked about my mom, and was genuinely concerned. The conversation kept going the way conversations danced back and forth while standing in a moving line and somehow, in the conversation, it came up that I was headed to Budapest next month to deliver a keynote at an AWS (Amazon Web Services) community event.

"What do you speak about?" he asked.

"Communication. Improv."

​He lit up and shared with me he'd always wanted to try improv and never had. I really didn't expect that. I expected polite interest, not genuine curiosity from someone who spends his life with some of the biggest names on screen. I was genuinely surprised that he hadn’t done improv!

During the conversation, as we were putting our belongings into trays and trying to avoid the puddles of vodka on the security counter from a broken bottle left behind from the person in front of us, his son, who looked about 8 years old, shared with me that he'd just come back from Poland, where he now has citizenship. He put it the way a kid puts things: he has more than one passport now.

​I already knew this.

I'd read an article about it somewhere or saw an Instagram post, it’s fuzzy. But at that moment, I had a choice to say "I know," and prove I'd done my homework, or let him tell me himself.

I smiled and said he was lucky to call two countries home.

That's the whole reason for this post, really. Not the fact that I met someone famous in an airport. The fact that for about ten minutes, neither of us was performing.

I've been in rooms with CEOs, influencers, people whose faces you'd recognize, maybe? Almost every time, it's awkward, because one person in the conversation knows far more about the other than the reverse. That imbalance changes how people talk. The famous person braces for it. The other person either overcorrects into a fan or overcorrects into acting like they don't care, which is its own kind of performance.

Both are a kind of armor. The line in Prague worked because neither of us put one on.

This interaction got me curious, because as a speaker, there will be a time when you are the famous person in the room. Yup! I said it and it’s true. You might be thinking, “Me?” I’m not famous, I’m just the speaker. And you’re right, you might not be spread across the tabloids, but I guarantee there is probably more than one person who is drawn to your message, your personality, the fact that you are up there on that stage.

So when you are confronted with your celebrity moment, how do you negotiate this?

Because here is what I will say about my interaction with Jesse.

Before meeting him, I liked him. I have always thought he was a talented film actor and creator, but after that interaction, I not only like him as an artist, but I respect him and have become more curious about his work. Why? Because he was incredibly kind and showed genuine curiosity in me and my mom. He was just a cool person who I could easily see myself being friends with.

​It can be really hard to not wear your armour after a presentation or public appearance. Maybe you didn’t feel like you did your best, or you are running to the airport or you are negotiating the energy of multiple people at the same time. Maybe you're an introvert and all of it is simply just overwhelming.

So, I did a little research to see what one can do to negotiate this, and here is a snapshot of what I found and some ideas for the next time you are the celebrity, because you will be.

To start, I am so happy I followed my curiosity. As an actor, I was always told that auditioning felt like being in a minor car accident and I would say this is true for performing as well. Almost every time I got off of stage I would feel foggy, flat and a little off regardless of how well or not well I felt my performance went. According to Dutch psychologist Elly Konijn, this was because I was crashing from the spike in adrenaline and cortisol from when I was on stage.

This same feeling has happened to me after delivering a keynote. Oftentimes, immediately after my presentation, I am standing in the lobby and talking to people before giving myself time to ground in and regulate. And as a result, I don’t feel present and am probably missing moments of genuine connection.

There's also a simpler reason the two of us connected so easily. Sociologist Erving Goffman said we all have two selves, a front stage self, the one performing for whoever's watching, and a back stage self, the one that gets to rest. Being famous means living front stage almost all the time. That security line worked because neither of us had an expectation for the other to perform.​

Psychologist Donna Rockwell studied fifteen famous people and found the same thing over and over. Fame costs people their privacy and puts them under pressure to be "on" for everyone else. I imagine this would be exhausting to have the feeling of being constantly watched like you're in a live performance, only it's your life!

In 1956, two researchers named the exact imbalance I felt with Jesse's son. They called it a parasocial relationship, when a fan feels like they know someone who has no idea they exist. I already knew about his citizenship before he told me. The trick isn't hiding what you know. It's not making the other person feel like they have to carry it.

Oh, and if you're the one working up the nerve to walk over and say hi, this might help. People overestimate how much they're being noticed, by roughly double, so that nervous feeling isn't about them being famous. It's just what nerves feel like. Yours are just screaming louder in that moment.

So here is what I took from all of it:

Know your hours. Decide ahead of time when you have the energy to be "on" and when you don't. Don't figure it out at the moment. For example, If you know a full day of back-to-back sessions drains you, you might decide in advance that evening dinners are optional and not a given.

Redirect and don't shut down. If someone wants a piece of you and you don't have it to give, point the conversation toward them instead of just saying no and bowing out.

Take five minutes. Right after you're off stage, give yourself a few minutes before you talk to anyone. Your body needs it and will thank you!

Remember it's not about you. The person talking to you probably knows more about you than you know about them, and that’s ok. You just owe them what you'd owe any stranger, real attention and a little connection before one of you is divided off to coach and the other into first class.