My Top 3 Interviews of 2011

With 10 days left in the year, I am going to start doing a few "Best of 2011" posts to highlight some of my favorite moments of the year.  Today's feature is my favorite Top 3 interviews of 2011.  This was a hard one to whittle down since I had everything from the Oscars to the Tonys to countless other red carpets and gifting suites to choose from.  The interviews were chosen for particular reasons, whether they were funny or poignant, they just resonated with me this year.  Here are the Top 3:

1.  Joel Grey from Anything Goes at the Tony Awards:  I spoke about this interview at length in this post, but nothing was ever better than having the opportunity to speak to someone who was one of your childhood heroes.  I know, I know, I was a musical theatre geek, so I wasn't looking up to Molly Ringwald, it was Joel Grey.  Here is the unedited footage so you can see how it all went down at the Tony Awards while I was working for Starpulse:



2.  Josh Sussman from Glee at GBK Productions MTV Movie Awards Gifting Suite:  I think this was easily my funniest interview of the year, no one made me laugh more on camera than Josh.  He's just quick with a quip and he and his super cute girlfriend, Tess, are incredibly nice......even though he still owes me a Justin Bieber movie viewing! You can see it all here on Red Carpet Report:



3.  Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds at the press junket for The Change-Up:  I don't know if your day can get any better when you walk into a room and two really good-looking guys are waiting for you to sit down.  I thought my heart was going to belong to Ryan that day, but Jason was a big flirt who won me over.  I should have known better, I loved him on Silver Spoons. Here's my interview for iVillage:



So, there you have it, my Top 3 Interviews for 2011!  Who was your favorite out of my Top 3 or is there another interview I missed?  I would love to hear from you, so don't forget to leave a comment below.

My Favorite Celebrity Interviews

Lately, I have been getting asked this same question over and over.  I think it is a natural question given the nature of my job.  Can you guess what it is?  The question is "Of all of the celebrities you have interviewed, who is your favorite?"  I always feel like I disappoint people because the answer isn't the person they expect.  I think they want me to say Ryan Reynolds or Gwyneth Paltrow or Jeremy Piven.  While they have all been exciting people to interview, it is the people who have touched my life in some way that usually stand out in my mind.  People like Michelle Kwan, the two-time Olympic medalist who had me obsessed with the sport of figure skating for a decade and who, at the time, was flirting with a final comeback.  Or Dick Van Dyke of Mary Poppins who obliged me with a little soft shoe dance step on the red carpet. I mean, he's the guy who sang "Chim Chim Cher-ee" and "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious". Or even, Keith Dorrington, the Academy Award nominated writer of The Fighter. We are both from neighboring small towns in Massachusetts and we were standing together on the red carpet at the Oscars in February.  It was hard not to get choked up as he talked about the overwhelming night and how his dreams were coming true.  This doesn't happen to you in small town Massachusetts, so I was with him every moment of that big night.

Yet, those incredible interviews don't hold a candle to the exchange I had with Joel Grey, the legendary Broadway performer, whom I had the opportunity to speak with on the red carpet at the Tony Awards.  I was sixteen years old all over again and I did my best not to cry my fake eyelashes off. When I have a discouraging day, I remember this exchange because it reminds me of where I came from and how far I have come.  I've shared this video before, but since it answers the top question I get here at Red Carpet Closet, I am sharing it again.  This is the raw footage from my interview with Joel Grey:



Who are some of your inspirations in your life? Let me know in the comments below.