It started as just a typical day..I was having coffee with some friends on a beautiful spring LA day. My friends left me, and I noticed Aiden Turner was sitting at the table next to me. I knew who this beautiful man was, I just couldn’t for the life of me remember his name. “How can I possibly strike up a conversation with him if I don’t remember his name?” was all that was racing through my head.

So, I picked up my Blackberry and nonchalantly started to google “dancing with the stars cast list 2010”. With my head bent downwards towards the screen, I couldn’t possibly see Aiden walking towards me. “Are you getting any reception here?” whispered in the most beautiful British accent was all I needed to jolt me out of my search. I tried hard to cover my Blackberry, but not quite sure I succeeded. After a brief attempt to try to see why his phone had no reception, I thought I should introduce myself. “I’m Parisa by the way”.  “Aiden” was his response. And with that, the mystery of his name was solved.

I just had to have a picture with this man. And God bless him; he remained calm and cool as we tried to take 10 pictures together, each time failing as my stupid Blackberry was not cooperating. He just smiled bigger and bigger as each picture failed to save. Not that I minded either, because I got to hug him 10 different times. Finally, success. A picture was made and it is indeed worth a thousand words. Aiden and I then continued to speak for a while about his time on All My Children and Dancing with the Stars.

He was so surprisingly honest and open about his struggles in the industry. He admitted quite frankly that All My Children wrote him off of the show and he is now paving the pavement like all other actors looking for his next gig. When I met him, he was still on DWTS. As for DWTS, he said he gets nervous before each performance because it is “one take only” and it is “before a live audience.”  “I am not used to that; scares the crap out of me.” I told Aiden he needs to smile more when he is getting critiqued by the judges. “Aiden, it looks like you want to kill them!”  He laughed and promised to work on it. It was quite refreshing to hear such humility in Tinsel Town..and so, I fell…and fell hard. You know, in the soap opera kinda way; not for real 😉