Movie star Philip Seymour Hoffman was once starstruck when he found jazz legend MILES DAVIS swimming in the pool where he was a lifeguard.
The COLD MOUNTAIN star played it cool and pretended he didn't know who the mysterious man was and his indifference earned him an afternoon chat he'll never forget.
The actor recalls, "I was a lifeguard in my early 20s at this place, the Metropolitan Towers... in Manhattan, and no one swam at this place.
"Somebody told me that Miles Davis lived there and so Miles Davis walked in and I didn't want to make him feel uncomfortable so I pretended I didn't know him.
"He was wearing a Speedo (swimming trunks) with sunglasses and he had a towel and he got in the pool with his sunglasses and doggie-paddled about five laps, got out, took his sunglasses off and started talking to me because I don't think that he knew that I knew who he was.
"For about half an hour we sat there and looked out over Manhattan; he told me buildings he owned... accidents he got into, girlfriends, everything except music... and at the end of it he said, 'I'm Miles...' and he walked away."
bionicfeetgrl on May 10th, 2018 at 04:35 UTC »
Interesting. I was walking down a NYC street one day and saw Hoffman. I decided to play it cool. We made eye contact and he realized I knew who he was, but I was being cool about it. He gave me this head nod with a “knowing” look. We both kept walking. It was just one of those moments.
I’ll always remember that, and think of it every time someone posts/runs a story about him.
shandro on May 10th, 2018 at 04:31 UTC »
My dad has an extremely similar story. He was a poolboy at a hotel, and Bruce Springsteen showed up at the pool. Thing is, my dad hates Springsteen's music. So they just shot the shit about sports for an hour or so instead of talking about music.
C1K3 on May 10th, 2018 at 02:36 UTC »
He got lucky. Miles (my all-time favorite artist) was a notoriously temperamental and objectively horrible person.