Rest In Peace, Brittany Murphy

With all the negative speculation regarding Brittany Murphy in the aftermath of her untimely passing, I wanted to share with my readers something uplifting and positive about her…

My friend and I met her several years ago, while doing “Project Teddy Bear”. We waited outside Jay Leno (at NBC Studios) for whoever celeb guest would be kind enough to sign a bear.

Brittany was one of Jay’s guests that night, so we hoped to get her to sign. She was one of the nicest friendliest most down to earth people I ever met. :) She spent over 30 minutes talking with us and other fans who were waiting there that night. What a sweetheart.

I found the old Live Journal posts my friend and I wrote later that night, so I’m copy/pasting them below.

This was the Brittany we met, and she was a lovely person.

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April 7, 2005

My Post:

MY NEW BEST FRIEND ;)

I met Brittany Murphy tonight! :) Kelly and I went back to NBC to see who we could get to sign Lisa S’s bear this week. Brittany Murphy stopped and talked to her fans for a LONG time.. over a half hour! She is the NICEST person! So sweet, so considerate, taking her time with everyone. And she didnt feel like a “celeb”, but more like someone you could hang out and just have fun with! :) Anyway, I’m going to walk a bit with Lisa S. in September when she comes here to L.A to do the Avon Breast Cancer Walk. Brittany says she might join us!! :)

She is soo sweet! She was posing for a few pictures with these teenage girls who were obviously very big fans of hers. Right before she left, she told them, “you are beautiful, inside and out”. :) She made their day. :) And another really nice thing she did was she signed someone’s birthday card.. wrote a whole long message in it! Whoever gets that card is going to be so happy!

I am really so impressed with her. You hear so many negative stories about snobby celebrities.. it’s so nice to encounter some that are still unaffected and down-to-earth, and that are friendly. :)

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Kelly’s Post:

Oh my God.

Brittany Murphy is my new best friend. Totally.

We just hung out with her for a half an hour. She is the shit. One of the coolest celebrities ever. I mean it.

She totally wants to do Lisa S’s Avon Walk for Breast Cancer with us. If she’s in town then, there is going to be a PAR-TAY goin’ on.

Seriously. Brittany is awesome. There are no words.

Lisa and I headed over to NBC with Project Teddy Bear on our agenda. We knew Brittany Murphy was a guest on The Tonight Show but there was no sign of her. We figured we missed her, but we decided to go have some dinner and then come back … maybe catch Ellen DeGeneres on her way out.

We got back as the Ellen audience was letting out. An autograph hound had a book of photos and when limos went by, he’d ask, “Brittany? Is that you?” It was then that we learned Brittany went from Leno to Ellen (she gets around, heh) and she was on her way out. Rock on!

An SUV pulled up to us and Mr. Hound got her attention. Brittany rolled down the window a crack and squeaked out a “Gimme a minute” and then she pointed over to the curb, indicating she would stop. We were a much larger crowd than for Fallon, around 15 people, totally manageable and everyone was well-behaved. The SUV pulled over and after a minute or so of primping, she started signing autographs and taking pictures.

Talk about ADORABLE. As she was signing stuff, she was telling everyone about Sin City. She said they weren’t required to do press for it, but almost everyone was anyway. She also said, “It’s very gory” which got some people going, “Uhh … I dunno …” but then she said, “Oh, but it’s okay, it’s very stylized and cool. You’ll be fine!”

There were about 15 of us all casually huddled around Brittany and she was just chatting it up with us like we were all buddies. She’s the cutest thing, I swear! She’s honestly a nice, nice person. Mr. Hound was trying to get Brittany to sign a stack of photos, but Mr. Manager guy who was with her got midieval on his ass (but in a totally nice way), asking politely if they could wait until everyone else had a chance to schmooze with the princess of sweetness. I gave the guy a wink and he winked back, “Gotcher back.”

I waited my turn to ask her for her helping hand with the teddy bear auction. She took the card and was going to sign when I started to explain the whole thing. She stopped before she signed and was listening all intently. No sooner did I say it was for breast cancer research did she practically pounce on me! She held my hand tightly and was all big-eyed and totally into it! She was all, “Oh my God YES! I am so happy to help you out!” She saw the bear and wanted to take pictures with it before I could even ask. She said, “Oh, one minute, can I do hair & make-up check?”

Brittany then turned to her mom who adjusted her hair and did a few things, and we’re all laughing like, “You look just fine!” Some guys were saying, “Brittany you look great!” and I said to her, “Brittany, you could wear a gunny sack and you’d still look beautiful,” and she laughed and said, “Aww I love you.”

Aww. Me squishy inside.

When she was ready, I snapped a photo of her with the bear. It was cute. Then she asked if she could do another pose. Of course! For the second one, she looked at the bear and gave it quite the seductive look. This got quite a rise out of the folks around us, especially the dudes. (I’m posting this one.)

“Ooh! One more for good measure!” she said, now tucking the bear under her chin. Totally freaking cute. (I’m posting this one too.)

Brittany then told me that her mom has been fighting breast cancer so she was so supportive of helping out. (Later before she left she told me that they had to go home because her mom had just gone through chemo and was tired. Bless her heart.) I realized after I took the photos that the tag she was holding wasn’t signed yet (bahahaha! That’s funny!), so I had her sign the tag. (Side note: I noticed that the blue Sharpie she was using previously had the cap off, and she had a couple of blue dots on her blouse. Oopsie. Not gonna be happy with that one.)

I gave Brittany one of Lisa S’s calling cards that has the website with more information, and she took the card, hugged it, and said, “I will definitely check it out!”

This is where it gets good. Brittany took my hand and said to me, “If there is anything else I can do to help or if you want me to get involved, pleeeeease let me know!” We had a somewhat lengthy chat where I explained everything and then told her that Lisa S. is doing 8 walks — she was floored! Brittany asked if there was one being held locally and I said yes, in September, and that some of us were planning on walking with Lisa S. part of the way. Brittany got excited about that and said she’d love to join in on the fun! She then told me to contact her people and if she’s in town, she totally wants to do the walk with us. Kick ass.

She wrote down the person for me to contact and gave it to me. I also talked to the manager dude who was with her and passed along my contact info. It would be so much fun to have her walk around L.A. with us.

Lisa and I got pictures with her and she got all cuddly with us and really, why not. Nobody can resist us! We hung around and listened to her throw out random things to us while other people were taking pictures and getting autographs. And by random I mean things like, “Oh, I’ll bet you didn’t notice I don’t have matching earrings!”

She is so spunky!! I couldn’t get over how adorable and sweet she is. I nearly stuffed her into my pocket so she could come home with me and we could watch chick flicks and paint each other’s nails. But then I didn’t want —— to get jealous so I decided against it. (That, and the fact that I don’t really want a restraining order on my record.)

Brittany hung out with us for a total of a half an hour (28 minutes if you want to be anal about it). I swear, she just couldn’t get enough. Oh, and I took a picture of some woman’s two daughters with Brittany because they asked nicely if I would snap a shot and email it to them, which I’ve already done. I took their first photo and then Brittany said we had to do another one because she blinked (which the camera didn’t catch). Then some guy behind me was lurking and Brittany pointed at him and asked, “Do YOU want a picture?” He did, and he laughed about it and she said, “I could tell! Come on over here!” The guy was sportin’, you just know he was.

She was fan-freaking-tastic. At the very end, Lisa and I were ready to leave since we’d had our time, and Brittany started signing Mr. Hound’s stack of photos. She’s sweet like that. We had to walk by the SUV to get to the car so I stuck my head in there and said, “Oh will you just go home already?” and she laughed and made some comment I didn’t catch. The SUV finally started to leave so we waved good-bye and thanked her, and Brittany thanked US. I said to her, “God bless you and your mom” and she said, “God bless YOU!” and she blew us kisses as she drove off into the darkness.