“When the music stops, the rest is silence."

Living in New York City, I met a lot of celebrities. I sat with Leonardo DiCaprio at a Broadway show. I did shots with Brian Regan at a bar. I hung out with Mike Piazza in the VIP area of a club one Halloween night.

Yet one encounter has always stood out to me.

I was walking down a crowded Manhattan street one sunny afternoon. It was a super touristy area and absolutely packed. A tall, older man walked towards me and flashed the most striking smile. I'm not sure how many times my breath has been taken away. Not many. And I don't think ever before or since from a simple smile. It felt like a scene in a movie. As if for a second, the hundreds, maybe thousands, of people around us disappeared as he looked down and smiled at me. Time stood still. And then the world came back, the sounds of the city returned, and this tall, gorgeous man disappeared into the crowd.

It took my brain a good minute to put together who he was. That he was a celebrity and not just a man smiling at a young woman on the street.

I went through the rest of my day, and to some degree maybe, the rest of my life, with a little glow inside from the genuineness of that beautiful smile in an otherwise harsh world.

Rest in peace, Donald Sutherland. With you gone, the rest is silence.