My Brush with Fame: Part Two of my Aveeno Weekend (Anne Heche, Nicole Kidman & More) #isa2011

Yesterday I posted about the beginning of my fabulous trip out to LA last weekend  This post contains the best part – the pictures of the celebrities!

After spending a relaxing morning taking a run and walk along the beaches of Santa Monica, I boarded a bus for the short trip (two blocks!  ha!) over to the beachfront area where the Independent Spirit Awards were being held in several outdoor tents.

Upon walking in, we got to walk the red carpet!  What an experience!  The carpet was actually gray, which was kind of funny.  And the paparazzi were EVERYWHERE and boy are they aggressive.  They were screaming the names of various celebrities as they came out, and I got yelled at on more than one occasion to move.

It was a little dizzying.  I snapped a few photos including this great one of me with my good friend Colleen from Classy Mommy:

Surprisingly, no one other else was interested in snapping photos of us.  (How rude!  Didn’t they know we are famous bloggers?!)

In the midst of all this snapping, I literally looked up and look who was standing within a few feet of me:

I’ve actually been a watching Anne Heche since high school, when I was a huge fan of the soap opera Another World.  More recently, I also just adored her in Men In Trees so it was of course also neat to see her current beau, James Tupper, who also played her love interest on Men In Trees:

We got to the end of the red carpet and headed through the crowd.  Many people were oohing and ahhing over this couple.  The guy is apparently Jon Hamm from AMC’s Mad Men, but I only recognized his girlfriend, Jennifer Westfield, from the moving Kissing Jessica Stein.

Samuel L. Jackson was also in and out of the tent next to ours pretty often so I was able to snap several great photos of him including this one:

For my last celeb photo, I had to include this one because I think it’s funny.  I ran out of the Aveeno tent at one point to go to the bathroom and I heard people screaming, “Nicole!  Nicole!”   Upon looking over, I realized, hey, that’s Nicole Kidman walking hand in hand with her  bestie, Naomi Watts.  As I was a fool and didn’t have my nice camera, I raced to grab my iPhone and set it to camera… at which point I got this lovely shot of the two of them walking away, flanked by the big shoulder of the dude next to me who clearly got the better shot (Nicole’s the one on the left in red)

I had many other celeb sightings too, including a cold Aaron Eckhardt who was complaining into his cell phone about how freezing it was, Dwight from the Office, Natalie Portman, Mark Ruffalo, Amanda Peet and Amber Tamblyn.

Lastly, while it was freezing, we at least had some great company and food in the Aveeno suite.  Aveeno was one of the sponsors of the Independent Spirit Awards and it was a thrilling experience to be a part of it all.  Here’s a few photos from the suite itself:

Disclosure: As a Brand Ambassador for Aveeno, Aveeno & Recycle Bank paid for my travel expenses so I could attend the Independent Spirit Awards. All thoughts and opinions are my own.