Bumping into Claire Danes at Pusateri’s in Toronto

On Sunday, after receiving the first pedicure of my life (It was called the Sports Pedicure, and it may now become part of my pre game Super Bowl ritual) I went to a gourmet food store in the Yorkville district of Toronto called Pusateri’s. It was here where I saw actress Claire Danes.

I’m a huge fan of Homeland, the show in which she’s the star, and it was startling to see her. I think that the thing that was most surprising was that she looked exactly like she did on TV.  This shocked me, as I always imagined that in real life celebrities were somehow unrecognizable. You know, they were all much smaller than you would have imagined, much more average and disappointing– just less.  However, Claire Danes looked exactly as she was supposed to look.

She was in a bit of a hurry, like she always seems to be on Homeland, and was rushing to add some sort of “healthy potato chips” to her checkout pile. Nobody else in the place seemed to be paying any attention to her, but I was trained on her like an owl. I was giving her a suspicious look (are you actually Claire Danes?) while also trying to give her a receptive, warm invitation to small talk. No doubt, she had seen my type before, many thousands of times, I suspect, and managed to avoid creating anything that might be misinterpreted as space in which a conversation might open.

It was driving me fucking crazy, that.

She was just four feet away from me and when I felt the moment slipping away, I blurted out, “That Mandy Patinkin (one of her co-stars on Homeland) sure can sing!”

I wasn’t quite looking at her when I said this and the declaration clearly caught her off guard. She gave me a quizzical look, like she does on Homeland when she’s trying to figure out a complicated mystery, and then nodded her head, a wary smile on her face, “Yes, yes he can.”

“It’s like God just filled the man with talent,” I continued.

Claire Danes gave the cashier a look that suggested it was very difficult to be a star, and then handed her a credit card.

“Personally, I think he should be doing the Super Bowl halftime show and not Beyonce.”

As she was passing by me she said in a clipped and sarcastic voice, “I’ll pass that on to him.”

“Enjoy your Super Bowl party!” I shouted cheerfully.

Claire Danes did not look back at me.