Celebrity Encounters of the Third-Rate Kind

Posted by Cynical Sarah on September 4, 2006

On Friday I had my first experience with actually being out on the street while they were filming something near my work. In the past few weeks, I’ve seen places where they’ve built sets, and seen actors’ trailers being hauled all around the city, and seen the production assistants waiting at the side of streets with walkie-talkies in hand waiting for everything to fall into place and film something. But in the year and a half that I’ve lived in “Hollywood North,” I haven’t had any sort of celebrity encounter until this past Friday.

I was on my way to grab some lunch and walked right through people and equipment that were getting all set up to film something. It could have been anything from a commercial to a television show to a movie scene. I’d walked past many, many areas like this in Vancouver that looked like something should be going on, and then nothing really was, so I wasn’t paying all that much attention.

Then someone caught my eye. It was some guy. He sparked some recognition in me, but I couldn’t place where I’d seen him. Definitely not starring role in a movie kind of celebrity, but I was sure I’d seen him in smaller roles in movies.

When I got back to the office, I was racking my brain trying to think of something, anything, that I might have seen him in and try to look him up. I wanted to be able to validate this as a celebrity experience, and not just me thinking some set worker was actually a celebrity.

I tried looking up some of the obvious movies I knew were filming in town. I didn’t recognize him as anyone on the cast list for Fantastic Four II or the one or two other movies I know had been filming.

I kind of surprised myself with how obsessed I was being about it – looking up lists that tell what productions are being filmed here, checking IMDB to see if I could spot him on cast lists for those shows, wasting a lot of time on a Friday at work.

I consider myself to be a fairly well-grounded person, so it’s not like me to be so into the celebrity scene and wanting to have that celebrity encounter. It turns out, deep down I would totally be an autograph junkie, given the chance, and I would display my collection proudly for all to see if I had one. I guess we all want to feel like we’ve come close to greatness or something special like that, even if they are just regular people too who just happen to do a high-profile job.

It wasn’t until I was on my way home at the end of the day that I spotted a sign on a door for cast members of the show that I figured out what was filming. As much as I wanted to just rush home and google it right away, I had a date with the hubby for dinner and a movie, so I had to put my obsession aside for a few hours first.

The production happened to be for a new Canadian television series called “Intelligence.” The guy I walked right past is the actor playing the main character, Ian Tracey.

As I suspected, he’s the kind of actor who, in the United States, we’d all be saying “who?” I checked him out and most of his credits that I recognize as shows or movies I’ve seen are things like “Pool Shark” from the movie Elektra, and parts in 4400 and Taken. But in Canada he’s played major roles in a couple different television shows including this new one.

Of course, now I’m going to be able to spot him in movies and be like “That’s Ian Tracey. I walked right by him on the streets once.” So if you’re out there Ian and happen to read this, you have the honor of being my first celebrity sighting here in Vancouver.

- Sarah L. Polson

Filed Under: Blog - Comments: Be the First to Comment

Tags: celebrities, humor

top