Cyndi

I’ve known Vicki over 10 years now through an Ironside message board. She’s been really fun to talk to through the years!

I saw Toni Morrison speak live from CC and saw her get into her limo, but I can’t really count those as “meeting” her. She is an amazing person that a person could learn a lot from, and is widely renowned as the greatest novelist alive today. I would love to take one of her classes someday (I think she teaches at Princeton and Yale).

I’ve seen his show twice in Vegas… extremely entertaining! And he is always available after the shows for pictures and to sign autographs on his dvds, movies, and show apparel.. the proceeds of which benefit the Make A Wish Foundation. I’m glad I got a second chance to meet him… since the first time I went to Vegas and had my picture with him my film was lost!

Mickey has a fun and personable quality that makes his characters that he portrays on film memorable. Most of my “gen x” friends remember him from his character of Pete on Home Improvement. “You know… the long-bearded guy who played the trash can drums and said, ‘That would be me’ whenever they mentioned his name on Tool Time?” A few even remember his Certs commercial on the Subway that came out around then. His other memorable characters include the adventurous Chris from the series V and the kind-hearted biker in the Oscar-winning short “My Mother Dreams the Satan’s Disciples of New York.”

Besides film, he has an impressive music career that includes playing with Kenny Rogers and the First Edition and greats like Bob Dylan.

Chris is also extremely charitable and often participates in bike rides and celebrity golf tournaments to benefit various charities across nation.

All of these qualities make Mickey Jones admirable, but the quality that stands out to me most is the way he relates to his fans. For instance, he personally gave me advice on approaching the Hollywood market when I was graduating high school and that advice helped shape my career goals, and he has answered many of my letters over the years.

I would look forward to meeting Mickey someday in person, maybe after I get my motorcycle license and can ride with him on one of the charity events!

was at the Denver Starcon. It was really, really brief though. Usually the stars talk to the fans but he’s really a professional at moving the line along. Nothing really special.

When you discuss the characters that Michael Ironside has portrayed during his impressive career, it’s often the bad guy roles or the bad guys fighting on the good guy’s side roles or just plain tough guy roles that often come to mind first… but one striking character trait of his that often gets forgotten is this: LEADERSHIP.

NO other actor has found the niche for portraying leadership roles in a sci-fi or horror genre like Michael Ironside. Even Star Trek Captains rarely portray a similar role in another series the way Ironside has. He’s been Captain of the SeaQuest, Lt. Ratazchek in Starship Troopers, a Resistance Leader in V, and is filming to play a captain in Ice Planet. Even when he’s not at the top giving orders there’s usually people under him taking them, like in Total Recall, Omega Code, ER, Free Willy, Top Gun, Highlander II and so many others.

In a world where most heroes are often portrayed as lone gunman, it’s rare to find someone who can fill a “leadership” niche as nicely as Ironside can, who repeatedly convincingly portrays men that others will follow into battle and die for (and often do, in these movies).

In a SeaQuest episode he tells a shipmate that true leaders would never give an order that they would not be willing to do themselves (and later that episode takes a suicide mission himself instead of ordering another man to take it). In Starship Troopers he sets the example and gives advice to Johnny on how to lead men (by setting standards high, risking his life to save his men repeatedly, throwing huge parties when they succeed, and being willing to put another man out of their misery when it’s too late to save him…). His characters are often marked by simple, straight-forward advice he has for those under them (“One rule: Everyone fights, no one quits” in Starship Troopers or “I may bring down the neighborhood, but they’ll eat it” in V), and by his ability to fight and work alongside his men (even as the bad guy yelling and pushing the guys under him in Total Recall, he’s running with them the entire time, pushing them along, taking the punches and dodging the bullets with them, instead of sitting in an office giving orders from afar).

One thing I can say for sure: there is a lot to be learned on how to lead others, and the importance of good leadership, through the works of Michael Ironside, who has shown us how to lead through a variety of works like few others have.