Celebrities And Their Stuff

by carol

Fans of actor Alex O’Loughlin can readily tell you he is a collector of watches and Alex himself has explained why.

“I collect watches. I love them. I’ve been obsessed with watches since I was a boy. My grandfather had a watch. Before he died, he used to turn wood, make beautiful tables. At his workshop, he had this old watch. It was, like, stainless steel with a black face, some old Swiss watch.

“It was cold, and I’d put it to my face. It was cold, metal, heavy. It was like a story in his life. It had dings in it. I remember looking at it when we’d go fishing. So from that point, I’ve always had this thing with watches.”

I’m happy to say that I still possess my original Dale Evans watch and I was fortunate to be given my grandfather’s wind-up timepiece. Made by Century USA, it is also stainless steel and still has the bit of twine on it he used as a fob.

So what do other celebrities collect? We may have to guess why they do.

Actress Jean Smart collects Roseville pottery and McCoy pottery. Jean will be working with Alex this fall portraying the governor of Hawaii in CBS’s reboot of Hawaii Five-0. 

Whoopi Goldberg and Lily Tomlin collect Bakelite jewelry. Bakelite was the world's first plastic. Lilly wore some of her own jewelry when she was in the TV show West Wing. I also recall Ernestine the Telephone Operator wearing it.

Director Quentin Tarantino collects and plays vintage board games, especially spin-offs from TV shows such as The A-Team, The Dukes Of Hazzard and I Dream Of Jeannie. 

George Clooney collects pipes, vintage wind-up metal toys, motorbikes and cars. He recently bought himself a limited edition $78,000 Tesla electric car.

Tom Hanks hunts down vintage typewriters and admits he spends more getting them in working order than he paid for them to begin with. OSCAR winner Tom has more than 80 portable manual typewriters from all over the world. But he can't find a rare model called a Skywriter, made specially for using on fold-down trays of the first continental jets. Seen any lately? 

Brad Pitt, Richard Gere, Joel Silver, and Steven Spielberg enjoy buying furniture from the Arts & Crafts Movement.

Comic books are the passion of Nicholas Cage, Quentin Tarantino, Robin Williams and Samuel Jackson. Jackson was at last week’s San Diego Comic-Con and announced the stars of the 2012 Marvel Comic’s movie “The Avengers.” Cage’s stack includes the incredibly rare 1938 Action Comics No 1 - the first to feature Superman and valued at $1 million.

Angelina Jolie, perhaps not surprisingly, likes daggers and knives. I just hope she keeps them locked up and away from all the kids.

Big Little Books are collected by none other than Clint Eastwood. For some reason, this makes me smile.

 
Johnny Depp is known to collect pigeon skeletons as well as insects and bats. He also once bought a shabby raincoat belonging to author Jack Kerouac for $16,000. 

There is a persistent rumor that he collects dolls as well. However, this story might have been precipitated by an interview he once did:

The star regularly played with Barbies and other dolls with his seven-year-old daughter, Lily-Rose, who had to tell him not to be so over-the-top during playtime.

He explains, "There were a number of years where I would sit down to play Barbie dolls with my daughter.

"I'd start playing with these dolls. It's good fun, it's a great way to explore characters. I'd start to do these voices, start playing characters as these dolls and she'd just look up and go, 'Dad, could you just do your own voice, OK? You don't have to play it like that...' "So she was like directing me! I'm like, 'Sorry, sorry, honey, I'll just be me.'"