Where celebrities roam, ordinary 'stars' shine bright

In California, it's common to see celebrities out and about. But sometimes the brightest 'stars' are right at home.

from the March 8, 2007 edition

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Her wish came true almost immediately.

On our first walk together through the Westwood district of Los Angeles, we got caught up in a throng of people eagerly peering over police barricades. It turned out that they had their eyes wide open for the array of celebrities arriving for the world première of Stanley Kubrick's last film, "Eyes Wide Shut."

That night we spotted many members of Hollywood's A-list: Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Steven Spielberg, Sylvester Stallone, Jodie Foster, and Dustin Hoffman.

They seemed as dazzling as the gold stars we saw the next day on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Therein lies the allure of fame: It seems to offer immortality even when ordinary people are as Virginia Woolf described them, "but bones with a few wedding rings mixed up in their dust."

Fast forward five years. Maria and I have just moved into our first condo in Los Angeles. Celebrity spotting has become almost routine on the streets near our new home.

The irony that many stars might actually yearn for the chance to lead a normal life had always escaped me in the past, but not any longer.

I recently saw Harrison Ford leaving a restaurant with carryout bags in one hand and a grinning child in the other. Indiana Jones he was not. Rather, he was just a real person going about his daily life.

Marriage has also shown me that you don't have to step outside everyday life to make it meaningful.

Shortly after I had proposed to Maria, we flew back to Spain to visit her family. We decided to take a walk through the Parque de María Luisa as we had done so often during that first year. Only this time we happened to run into several of Maria's friends. They were immediately able to guess the reason for her glowing smile.

"I'm starting to feel famous," Maria jokingly remarked as she held up her engagement ring for the umpteenth time.

As I stood there and looked at my soon-to-be wife with admiration and pride, it suddenly occurred to me that there are plenty of reasons for us to have stars in our eyes: Buried beneath the humdrum routine of our daily lives are moments that still shine.

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