Chris Noth Celebrity Spotting on Eighth Avenue

On my way to the gym today about 5:30pm I saw the actor Chris Noth at the corner of Eighth Ave. and 54th St. looking exasperated while on his cellphone and out in the street waving his hands in an excited fashion. He didn’t look like the calm, collected rich guy he plays on Sex and the City…”Mr. Big.” He also didn’t seem like the cool-headed cop he played on Law & Order or the arrogant lawyer/politician he plays on The Good Wife. I recognized that look….it appeared he was trying to locate his car service driver and was on his cellphone frantically trying to talk to either the driver or the dispatcher. I know that look…I’ve been there myself! What did we ever do before cellphones? I suppose he was trying to meet someone for drinks or dinner before he was due at the theatre on West 45th St where he’s one of the stars of the Broadway hit THAT CHAMPIONSHIP SEASON. I thought to myself “why don’t you just walk, take the subway or just go to the theatre and chill out”…he only had 90 minutes or so before he was due there anyway.
He finally closed the cellphone and tried to flag a yellow cab, of which none were available. Cabs flew past him for several minutes and he finally appeared to give up and marched down W. 54th Street and disappeared into the Café Iguana Lizard Lounge. Accordingly, I disappeared into my gym next door…finished with my little “celebrity snooping” incident. Just wondering: Who tries to get a cab at Rush Hour in midtown Manhattan? I wondered why he didn’t just take the subway? Does he think he’s too famous? At Rush Hour, nobody cares who you are…they are all just looking down at their papers and counting the stops till they get off the train. Besides, I’ve seen lots of famous folk on the subway--people more famous than Noth: Julia Roberts, John Lithgow, Caroline Kennedy and others. In fact, just that morning I’d seen his Sex and the City co-star Mario Cantone on the Eighth Avenue subway platform (I’d seen him there before).
Incidentally, Noth also needs to hit the gym again (I should talk)…that nice slim body he had for the last Sex and the City film is gone and he’s got the middle-aged man’s gut again, pooching out under his beige polo shirt. I heard the filmmakers told him to get a trainer and get in shape a few months before principal photography began. Perhaps walking would have done him good.

Sarah Jessica Parker moving across from Mr. Big?

OMG-- I just saw an item that Sarah Jessica Parker and Mathew Broderick, who have been hunting for a new house for a long time, have apparently bought a 19th century townhouse on East 10th Street next door to where I once lived! And...wait for it....directly across the street from Chris Noth's apt. in the Brevoort East Apartment Building on University Place near NYU in Greenwich Village!!

Sarah and Mathew have lived in the Village for years over on Charles Street...Mathew grew up in the Village at nearby 27 Washington Square North (same building as my acting teacher, the late great Uta Hagen) and their Charles Street home is, by coincidence, right around the corner from the location used on SEX AND THE CITY as "Carrie Bradshaw's apt."...66 Perry Street.
Funny how these things happen!
In my mind's eye I still remember Sarah and her Mom and family...we all worked together in the Alvin Theatre back when a young teenage Sarah was the third "Annie" on Broadway, promoted from her role as "July" in the orphan chorus. I'm sure she doesn't remember me at all, even though I used to hang out in her dressing room with her brother Toby and his friend Robert Klein. As a teenager in acting school, I sold souvenirs and Annie dolls in the lobby for Ray Fanning and lived in a cold-water flat on nearby Ninth Avenue. I also helped Sarah & her Mom and Brooke & Teri Shields empty out her dressing room and load the car on Sarah's last day as Annie (she was growing up too quickly) but I'm sure nobody remembers me. Now I'm one of New York's best guides with wonderful memories and stories. I worked as an extra on Sex and the City several times, even though I begged my old friend Camille Hickman (Sex and the City co-casting director) several times to give me a small part---and Sarah Jessica looked at me on the set as if she remembered me, but it wasn't the time or place to go into "old time remembrances from our childhood." She was the "star"...I was the "extra."