By Sara Pintilie/entertainment editor

During the Lone Star International Film Festival, I stood on the stairway of the AMC in Sundance Square trying to get a signal.

As I searched for the allusive cell phone bar, two middle-aged women passed me.

They strolled by, giddy as school children, and I heard a part of their conversation.

“That Bill Paxton, he seems so … normal,” the brunette said with a weird pitch in her voice as though she couldn’t believe it. Her friend agreed with a nod as they disappeared upstairs.

I found myself laughing as I gave up on my phone call, went downstairs, weaved around the groups of fans surrounding their chosen celebrity and entered the theater.

Throughout the festival, prominent actors and directors (Martin Sheen, Bill Paxton and Robert Roderiguez among others) showed up to everyone’s delight.

But what I loved the most about that weekend, other than the movies, was the slow realization by the fans that celebrities are just normal folk.

Don’t get me wrong. I find my nerves spiking whenever I’m near someone famous, and I am pretty sure I said something incoherent to Jason Ritter (I partly blame sleep deprivation and hunger). But when you strip that celebrity veneer off, they are usually pretty laid back and fun to talk to.

I have always thought it was interesting how we view celebrities, seeing them not as normal people but as shiny objects. It’s like we are in a museum and they are the art.

We gawk as they appear in person because we have seen them on the silver screen or on TV.

But maybe we view the stars with a wide-eyed stare, not because they are famous, but because they can do something we wish to do—be someone else for a day.

They get paid to be our childhood dreams and our modern-day aspirations.

When I was little, I wanted to be Lois Lane. Kate Bosworth, Margot Kidder and a few others not only got to be her but got paid to be the Daily Planet reporter.

Fire fighters, police officers, Batman, musicians and even the occasional astronaut have been on someone’s “I want to be when I grow up list” and have been portrayed by some A-lister.

But unfortunately, this obsession with Hollywood’s stars makes that celebrity veneer thicker and thicker and makes it harder to see the famous as who they are—just normal people with extraordinary jobs.