Odd Friendship / Real Life

• There are many examples of this among animals:
  • There was one example in India where a cow and a large wildcat became inseparable friends. The villagers ended up tolerating the wildcat because its presence scared away other creatures that could be a threat to their farm.
  • Tommy the Golden Retriever and Salati the leopard, who one would think would take the traditional dog/cat rivalry to new heights, are fairly companionable with one another. They provide the page image.
  • Cheetahs raised in captivity will sometimes be paired with a dog from a young age. Cheetahs are naturally timid, easily spooked animals, so having a calm, relaxed dog as a playmate helps relax the cheetah, too. Zoos will often have to put up signs informing guests that the dogs in the cheetah exhibit are not food, they are the cheetah's friends.
  • Following the 2004 tsunami, a hippo calf (dubbed Owen by his rescuers) in southeastern Kenya was separated from his family. He was later taken to a wildlife sanctuary, where he developed a strong bond with an old Aldabra giant tortoise (named Mzee).
  • There is a documentary centering on an African painted wolf named Solo, who had lost her pack. These animals are very social, and she got so desperate for companionship that she somehow managed to successfully join a clan of spotted hyenas. She also helped a family of jackals raise their pups. This kind of thing is very rare in the wild, and it is almost miraculous the hyenas didn't try to kill her.
  • Rabbits and cats actually make very good companions, if the rabbit can tolerate the cat's attempts to play (or if the cat is too lazy or old to play), as they share quite a few behaviors and body languages. With cats, grooming is a dominant behavior, while with rabbits grooming is a submissive behavior, so they both think they're the alpha in the relationship.
  • The relationship between humans and domesticated animals, such as cats and dogs. When one considers our ancient ancestors and theirs, as well as our differences in general, the story of how we came to be companions is quite remarkable.
  • While it was originally thought that the two animals hated each other, wolves and ravens have friendships with each other in places where they coexist. It started out as a symbiotic relationship (ravens will lead them to prey so they can scavenge the remains after), but this eventually turned into something more. Ravens will play with wolf cubs, often picking a favorite, and the two animals will grow up together knowing each other. Some scientists have even theorized that these relationships have passed through multiple generations, and that these ravens teach their offspring which lineages of wolves they have a bond with.
• Boxers Max Schmeling and Joe Louis. They fought each other twice, and Louis was a very patriotic African-American while Schmeling was lionized by the Nazi Party. (Until he fell out of favor due to a high profile loss and sheltering Jews.) Many years after fighting each other, they became quite close friends. Schmeling even served as a pallbearer for Louis's funeral.
• Walt Disney:
  • He teamed up with Salvador Dalí to make an animated short film in 1945 called Destino; although the project didn't go anywhere in their lifetimes (it would be completed in 2003), the two remained friends for the rest of their lives.
  • Disney became friends with author Ray Bradbury near the end of his life; although their works were pretty far apart, they were both optimistic futurists and bonded over ideas to help make the world a better place.
• Aaron Funk from Venetian Snares and John Frusciante, given the former's reputation for misanthropy and abrasive music while the latter is best known as the guitarist for one of the most popular funk bands of the 1980s onward.
• Kanye West is friends with La Roux, Elton John, and Justin Bieber, in spite of rap being drastically different from the other musical genres.
• Malcolm Fraser and Gough Whitlam. In 1975, Fraser exploited a situation to get Whitlam sacked, and then took over his job. Which doesn't sound so bad, until you know that the job in question was Prime Minister of Australia, and that the incident in question is the Australian Constitutional Crisis of 1975. The two cordially hated each other for years thereafter, but by the late Nineties, they'd made up their differences — despite being from diametrically opposed parties, they weren't actually that far apart on the issues — and united against a common enemy: the then-current Australian Prime Minister, John Howard. They also both advocated making Australia a republic.^note This would have abolished the office of Governor-General, around which the Australian Constitutional Crisis of 1975 revolved, since the Governor-General is the appointed representative of the Queen.
• Australian Prime Minister John Howard appears to have developed an odd friendship with one of his fellow former PMs — Labor Prime Minister Bob Hawke, who defeated Howard in the 1987 election. They also share an enemy: Hawke's former treasurer Paul Keating, who rolled him for the Prime Ministership in 1991, and who Howard defeated in the 1996 election.
• Gloria Vanderbilt is very good friends with Kathy Griffin — much to the bewilderment of Gloria's son, Anderson Cooper (who is also close with Griffin, to his frequent bafflement and occasional chagrin). Gloria Vanderbilt is basically the closest thing the U.S. has to nobility, and Kathy Griffin is, well... Kathy Griffin.
• Steven Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick were good friends despite having completely different personalities and directing styles. Spielberg was an easygoing guy whose films focuses on the emotional aspects of life and are rather idealistic. Kubrick was a Prima Donna Director whose films were drenched in cynicism and almost always finished with a downer or bittersweet ending. While the two would occasional disagreement (Kubrick himself complained how the ending of Schindler's List was too idealistic and not depressing enough), they tended to get along very well given how they spent hours talking to each other about their love of cinema. Before Kubrick died, he personally chose Spielberg to direct A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, Kubrick's last film.
• Eminem and Elton John, respectively popular in musical genres that are pretty far apart, became good friends after the former went to Elton John for help kicking his drug addiction. Elton John, who had been there, helped him through the worst of it and continues to help keep him clean. John also defended Eminem in the media against charges of homophobia. Eminem even has pet names for him - he calls him "Uncle Elton", and "Cunt" - and bought him and his husband matching diamond-studded cock rings for their wedding gift.
• Kurt Cobain:
  • Cobain and Billy Ray Cyrus, as explained in this article, which makes the backlash over Billy Ray's daughter covering "Smells Like Teen Spirit" in concert all the stranger.
  • Cobain was also good friends with author William S. Burroughs, despite their age difference. Burroughs even introduced Cobain to Lead Belly's music, hence giving the world Cobain's famous rendition of "Where Did You Sleep Last Night"
• Loud, brash, urban party-boy Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and quiet, nature-loving family man Joseph Haydn had a long, profitable correspondence, and shared a great deal of mutual respect. Mozart even dedicated a suite of string quartets to Haydn. Overlaps with Intergenerational Friendship, as Haydn was nearly thirty years older than Mozart.
• Richard Wagner was notorious for his anti-Semitic views, but Jewish people were among his closest friends at various points in his life: the scholar Samuel Lehrs while in Paris, the pianists Karl Tausig and Josef Rubinstein (the latter shared a house with the Wagners for some time), and several others.
• The worldly, larger than life, and arrogant Richard Wagner also befriended the humble, meek, and rather uncultured fellow composer Anton Bruckner.
• Yes is a Revolving Door Band notorious for drama amidst members coming and going. One totally unexpected result is the friendship between mystically inclined vocalist Jon Anderson and dirty joke-telling keyboardist Rick Wakeman. Wakeman left after clashing with Anderson over Tales from Topographic Oceans, among other things. ^note Although the famous occurrence of Wakeman ordering (and receiving) a curry during one of the live shows of "Topographic Oceans", it was lightly dealt with by Anderson popping over to pinch a popadum, and to remark to Wakeman "It is a bit long-winded, isn't it? It's a pity that you're leaving after the tour, I could have made sure it never happened again". Wakeman said "That was the moment I realised I had a really good friend". They became better friends after Wakeman rejoined in the late 1970s.
• Oscar-winning Dame Maggie Smith and the late Carry On alumni/comic actor/radio veteran Kenneth Williams. They worked together on a few projects in Smith's early acting years, and were very close. Williams often talked fondly about her during the final years of his life, saying that their friendship was like a knot that he didn't ever want to untie.
• Mel Gibson, an ultraconservative traditionalist Catholic, is very good friends with Jodie Foster, a lesbian atheist, and Robert Downey Jr., a self-described "Jewish-Buddhist". The two have stuck with Gibson even in the midst of his drunken anti-Semitic episode and the resulting public backlash, with Downey Jr.^note while explaining that Gibson made sure he was fed and sheltered at a time everyone else would have let him end up on the street asking that people cut him some slack.
• Groucho Marx maintained a lengthy correspondence with poet T. S. Eliot. Their pen-pal friendship is particularly remarkable given Eliot's extreme conservatism, his alleged dislike for "lowbrow" vulgar mass culture, and his reputation as an anti-Semite. When they met in person, Groucho wanted to discuss poetry while Eliot was more interested in what show business was like.
  • Marx also was, during the latter days of his life, friends with Elton John, Alice Cooper and Bud Cort (Cort even lived at Groucho's house for a while).
• Martha Stewart, she of the homemaker empire business, and gangsta rapper Snoop Dogg. Seriously. They even have a TV miniseries called Martha and Snoop's Potluck Dinner Party.
• Mark Twain with Joshua Norton, Nikola Tesla, and most of all with Henry Huttleston Rogers, an oil tycoon who epitomized the ruthless pursuit of wealth that Twain was satirizing and demonizing around the time they met. Twain had a similar friendship with uber-wealthy Andrew Carnegie. When asked "How can you be friends with Carnegie? His money's tainted." Twain was heard to remark "That's right; 'taint mine and 'taint yours."
• Televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker and notorious porn star Ron Jeremy became close friends after filming VH1's The Surreal Life together, and after her death, Ron Jeremy spoke of her with respect and affection.
• Harry Chapin and critic Dave Marsh, who frequently slammed acoustic singer-songwriters in his reviews. Marsh interviewed Chapin for Rolling Stone and they realized they had similar political and humanitarian concerns.
• On the US Supreme Court:
  • Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg were known for their diametrically opposed political and judicial philosophies and their frequent snark wars in opinions; Scalia was an "originalist" conservative famous for turning his (numerous) dissents into screeds against modern trends in the law, while Ginsburg (often known as "the Notorious RBG", a moniker she accepted herself with amusement) was at the cutting edge of those very same trends, and when they wrote opinions on the same case, they were likely to fire a few shots across the metaphorical bow at each other. They went to dinner together every week and every New Year's Eve, their families vacationed together, and they were fixtures at the opera in DC, usually sitting near each other.
  • Somewhat similarly, Justices Clarence Thomas and Stephen Breyer. Thomas is an arch-conservative who at times outdoes Scalia; Breyer, like Ginsburg, is a classic liberal Justice. They're reportedly the best of friends, and even exchange notes and whisper jokes at each other on the bench during oral argument like schoolboys (both are known in the legal community for their dry but sometimes somewhat droll senses of humor outside of their official writings and speeches,^note And sometimes within them; Thomas in particular is famous for (1) calling a statute being reviewed by the court "uncommonly silly" (it was the Texas sodomy statute, reviewed in 2005's Lawrence v. Texas, in case you're wondering; the statute banned gay sex and heterosexual anal and oral sex) and (2) never speaking during oral argument, except that one time he made a joke at the expense of his law school alma mater Yale. and Thomas' low, rolling laugh is famous in the Court).
• The titular host of The Rachel Maddow Show, a notably liberal and openly lesbian MSNBC commentator, has fairly close friendships with several notable conservatives:
  • She is good friends with former Fox News host and member of the notoriously homophobic Church of Happyology Greta Van Susteren. Van Susteren even suggested that Maddow should have replaced Brian Williams on NBC Nightly News, and Maddow often refers to her as "my friend" on the air, stressing that the description is not ironic.
  • Maddow is also very close to arch-conservative Pat Buchanan, even calling him "Uncle Pat".
  • She and Rick Santorum, a very conservative and notoriously anti-gay rights politician, have this dynamic as well, with both speaking fondly of one another; considering that he only disagrees with gay marriage but is openly friendly to gay people themselves, this isn't entirely surprising.
  • She is close friends with Nicolle Wallace, a Communications Director in the (G.W.) Bush White House and senior campaign staffer on the late Sen. John McCain's 2008 campaign. Nicolle, an MSNBC host^note with Deadline: White House at 4pm and political analyst, is a mainstay on election-night coverage and a frequent guest on Rachel's show, and their close friendship is readily apparent any time they interact.
• Nicolle Wallace and Valerie Plame made peace and developed a good friendship even though Wallace served in the George W. Bush administration, which was involved in the scandal that burned Plame and exposed her as a covert CIA operative, destroying Plame's career and putting her family at risk.
• Kristin Hersh of Throwing Muses became friends with Golden Age of Hollywood actress Betty Hutton when Hersh was 19 and Hutton was in her mid-60s, and remained so until Hutton's death 22 years later. There's an amusing moment in Hersh's memoir Rat Girl/Paradoxical Undressing in which Hersh sees the cover of one of Hutton's films in a video store and realises that Hutton's Hollywood career was real and not something she invented in order to distance herself from a past she didn't care to think about.
• France and Britain after 1815. Also the Boxer Rebellion (1900), during which all the European "Great Powers" plus Japan and the United States were allied. They even agreed to a unified command. This alliance (naturally) included all major powers on both sides of The Great War, Russia and Japan (who would go to war against each other in 1905 and again in 1945) and "hereditary arch enemies" France and Germany then in the interwar of a string of four wars against each other. European and European-adjacent powers really had no patience for a colonized country being "uppity"...
• Seth MacFarlane has quite a few odd friendships.
  • MacFarlane, an outspoken left-wing atheist, was friends with the late Rush Limbaugh, an outspoken right-wing conservative. Limbaugh even appeared in two episodes of Family Guy making fun of himself.
  • MacFarlane is a long-time friend of fellow animator Butch Hartman, in spite of MacFarlane being a liberal atheist and Hartman being a evangelical conservative. They've worked together numerous times in the past, and MacFarlane reportedly named Family Guy character Dr. Hartman after Hartman.
• Full House (and consequently, Fuller House) stars Candace Cameron Bure (an evangelical conservative who wrote books about how women should submit to their husbands) and Andrea Barber (a women's studies scholar) are still said to be as close in real life as they were on the show.
• The Pop Punk band Fall Out Boy gets on really well with various rappers, and they have collaborated with artists such as Kanye West, Jay-Z, Lil Wayne, 50 Cent, Big Sean, and 2Chainz.
• Snoop Dogg has some interesting friendships to say the least; he's close to Willie Nelson (they bonded over their love of marijuana), Martha Stewart (as mentioned above, he has a cooking show with her) and Miley Cyrus.
• Miley Cyrus herself has a few interesting friendships of her own, such as Elton John, Kanye West, Sheryl Crow, Lady Gaga, and even Barack Obama.
• The respected and feared Livia became surprisingly close to her great-grandson Caligula. Caligula's major debut to the Roman world was giving the funeral oration to Livia. It's odd as Livia is to this day a respected figure of history, while Caligula is synonymous with mad rulers.
• Bill Maher, the pot-smoking, staunch atheist and consummate leftist, has a longstanding friendship with Ann Coulter, the outspoken, liberal-baiting conservative provocateur. Maher has implied that sexual tension has more than a little to do with it.
• Not only Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev worked together to ease the nuclear tension during Cold War, but Brezhnev was among those who expressed sympathy for Nixon during the Watergate scandal. And then there's this gem.
• Long-running TV actress Florence Henderson and shock-rocker Marilyn Manson, as revealed when they appeared together on the aforementioned Bill Maher's talk show. The full story and videoclip can be found here.
• In Britain there is the brash, left-wing, feminist, Northern Labour MP Jess Phillips, and soft-spoken, conservative Catholic, Old Etonian, Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, who have become something of national odd couple. They get on like a house on fire despite their opposing politics, backgrounds, and personalities.
• In the cooking world, Michael Roux Jr. and Gordon Ramsay. They met while apprenticing at Le Gavroche and have stuck together in spite of their fire-and-ice personalities. Gordon is a Jerk with a Heart of Gold with a Hair-Trigger Temper and a spectacularly salty mouth. Michael, on the other hand, is upbeat, affable, polite and perpetually cheerful.
• Lorde and Taylor Swift are really close friends, despite Lorde herself saying they have nothing in common. Despite their totally different music styles and public personas, they're very supportive of one another, and Lorde has been known to get snippy with people who insult Taylor online. (In one memorable instance, she responded to a mean-spirited Kickstarer to "give Taylor Swift a booty" by saying, "Maybe we should do something about your tiny penis first.")
• Waylon Jennings and Caroll Spinney became good friends after they worked together in Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird. Jennings even talks about it a little in his autobiography.
• The introverted, melancholic Hideaki Anno is friends with the straightforward and outspoken Hayao Miyazaki and the incredibly flamboyant Kunihiko Ikuhara. Miyazaki notably helped Anno overcome a severe depressive relapse during production of the third Rebuild of Evangelion movie, and Anno's friendship with Ikuhara extends to Heterosexual Life-Partners territory, with Anno referring to Ikuhara as "Kuni-chan" in public. There are even persistent rumors that Ikuhara was the basis for Kaworu in Neon Genesis Evangelion, which puts the Ho Yay between him and Shinji in an interesting new light given how Shinji is based in part on Anno himself; note that Ikuhara's stance on the rumors is an outright Shrug of God.
• Edward Elgar, a notable conservative, was a close and long-time friend of outspoken Marxist and contrarian George Bernard Shaw.
• Former US Presidents have a tendency to bond with each other despite their political differences, since each has had an experience that even other national leaders can't share.
  • George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton became good friends despite originally being political opponents, bonding over games of golf and going on humanitarian tours around the world. They once got so caught up chatting and laughing during an official White House luncheon that George W. Bush had to ask them to hurry up and join the assembled group because people were getting hungry.
  • Despite their staunch political differences, George W. Bush and Barack Obama reportedly hit it off almost immediately with Bush going out of his way to make sure his successor had all the help he needed during their presidential transition. Michelle Obama also gets along with Bush famously well, with the two of them often making the news for the hugs and jokes they share during official events.
• Former senators Russ Feingold and John McCain. One was a conservative war veteran, the other was a liberal anti-war activist best known for being the only senator from either party to oppose the Patriot Act. The pair became friends while working on a 2002 campaign finance reform bill and, despite their many differences of opinion, maintained a personal friendship and professional camaraderie for the rest of their lives, even as the partisan divide in the Senate continued to grow, and both appreciated the way that the other forced them to really think about their beliefs; McCain allegedly even told Feingold that if McCain won the presidential election, he intended to put Feingold up for a Cabinet position ("just not as secretary of defense"). When McCain died in 2018, Feingold served as a pallbearer and also wrote a tribute to him that was published in the New York Times.
• Islamic warlord Timur the Lame is reported to have regarded the very Catholic king Henry III of Castille like a son to him. Of course, interfaith friendships aren't so odd nowadays, but back in the Medieval Era with Christianity and Islam being at each other's throats, its kind of an big deal specially considering how brutal Timur himself could be.
• Similarly, Richard the Lionheart and Saladin, despite being on opposite sides of the Third Crusade, had such a healthy respect for each other that they came up with the idea of becoming in-laws, wedding Saladin's brother to Richard's sister, and anointing them rulers of Jerusalem. Unfortunately, the idea fell through due to Richard's insistence that Saladin's brother convert to Christianity, but that the attempt was even considered is extraordinary.
• When cat litter scientist Lin Wang passed away, one of the people who showed up at his funeral was basketball star Charles Barkley, much to the bewilderment of Wang's family and friends. His daughter wrote an article about the odd but touching friendship.
• Francisco Franco and Fidel Castro. Despite the former being a fascist quasi-medievalist and the latter a communist, they were reported to get along quite well and be very fond of one another, to the point that the latter ordered three days of official mourning and put Cuba's flag at half-mast when the former died. Both being dictators of Spanish-speaking countries who seized power by military means and both of their families having their ancestral origins in the northwestern Spanish region of Galicia probably has something to do with it, as well as Franco (an anti-American at heart, just like Castro) not entertaining American requests to isolate the then-new Castro government after they won the Cuban revolution. Fidel's father, Ángel, having a photo of Franco by his bedside also factors in, as well as Fidel himself considering José António Primo de Rivera^note founder of the Falange, which was to become Franco's single party as one of his ideological influences. Another factor was that Franco did not want to happen what happened to Mexico: their government never recognised Franco's until its demise, instead having official diplomatic relationships with the exiled Republican government and taking in Spanish exiles, neither of which Fidel ever did. Another factor was Fidel and Franco's shared hatred of Fulgencio Batista, as Fidel, of course, led a revolution against Batista's 1952–1958 government, while Franco, on the other hand, didn't like him for having proposed, back during his earlier 1933-1948 New Deal-style popular and democratic goverment, that the Allied nations of World War II raise an army to invade Spain and overthrow Franco.
• Skateboarders and rockstars hanging out are hardly uncommon, but you won't find a more oddball pairing than that of Bam Margera and HIM lead singer Ville Valo. The two are incredibly close — Valo once remarked, "Everything we do [as a band], we do for Bam" — but you wouldn't think Valo's over-the-top flowery metaphors for romantic love would appeal to someone as hard-edged as Bam, who describes HIM as his favorite band and lists tons of other, much harder acts like Dimmu Borgir among his favorites too. Some might think some manager or record exec introduced HIM to Bam and wanted them to associate themselves with the guy in order to help themselves break out internationally, but Valo denies any such thing, saying simply that Bam came knocking and the friendship was instant. Valo even makes a cheeky cameo in Jackass Number Two.
• Speaking of “Jackass”, Steve-O is a stuntman known for doing outrageous and sometimes incredibly disgusting stunts, and for years before his sobriety, maintained an image as an unstoppable party animal, which while downplayed nowadays due to getting clean, is still willing to at least take on thrills and excitement. On one of his podcasts, he got Steve Wozniak, yes, the co-founder of Apple to be a Guest star. Oddball guests on his podcast are not exactly new, however, to the shock of many, he explained that he and Steve have been friends for YEARS beforehand.
• Pat Buchanan, the arch-conservative political commentator, traditional Catholic, and former Nixon speechwriter never let politics get in the way of personal friendship. In addition to his friendship with Rachel Maddow (noted above), Pat was friends with several people who obviously didn't share his rightwing political views:
  • Hunter S. Thompson, who famously satirized Richard Nixon and promoted drug use and debauchery was close friends with Buchanan, who later attended Thompson's funeral and eulogized his friend.
  • Along similar lines, Buchanan was also friends with the politically left-wing Norman Mailer.
  • Despite being a social conservative known for making anti-homosexual statements, Buchanan was the only prominent political commentator to send a card wishing good health to openly gay Andrew Sullivan when he made his HIV-positive status public. Buchanan and Sullivan have since become friends, and Sullivan was one of the only people on MSNBC to speak out against the network firing Buchanan for making controversial remarks.
• William F. Buckley Jr., one of the founders of the modern American conservative movement, and former Democratic Congressman Allard Lowenstein; who among other things was an early leader in the "Dump Johnson" movement that led to LBJ deciding not to run for a second term, to the point where Buckley not only endorsed Lowenstein in subsequent campaigns but also had him as a frequent guest on his show Firing Line until Lowenstein was assassinated in 1980.
• Christopher Reeve and Robin Williams. They first met as roommates at Juilliard, and they were a mismatched but deeply close duo who swore to each other that they'd have each other's backs through thick and thin. One of the first times anyone got Reeve to laugh after his horseback riding accident came when a bearded Eastern European doctor barged into the hospital room and started jabbering in an indecipherable accent about all the rectally invasive procedures they were going to perform on Reeve - who then burst out laughing when he realized it was Robin.
• In 2005, Australian satirist and documentarian John Safran, a 33-year-old non-practicing Jew, featured 71-year-old Catholic priest Bob MacGuire on his show John Safran vs God. They went on to host a radio show together and remained friends until MacGuire's death in 2023.
• Ronald Reagan and the man largely responsible for his entrance into politics, MCA head Lew Wasserman, were very close friends and remained so even after Reagan's tenure as President ended. This despite the fact that Wasserman was an outspoken liberal Democrat and Reagan, of course, was an outspoken conservative Republican.
• Henry Fonda was liberal and agnostic with a complicated personal life. James Stewart was conservative and Presbyterian who settled down to raise a happy family. Fonda had a "prickly" personality and could hold a grudge while Stewart was charming and easygoing. Despite those differences, the two men were fast friends who could truly relax when they were in each other's company and assiduously avoided topics where they knew they'd clash. Instead, they spent hours together building model airplanes, making kites, and dreaming up elaborate practical jokes.
• Bob Dylan has been a lifelong friend of Louis Kemp. Yes, the Louis Kemp Crab Delights guy. They met as adolescents while attending Camp Herzl, a Jewish summer camp in Wisconsin, and since they lived a short drive from one another in northern Minnesota (Dylan in Hibbing, Kemp in Duluth), they and their families spent a lot of time together. After Kemp took over his family's fishing business, Dylan reconnected with him and Kemp helped Dylan out with several of his concert tours in The '70s. Dylan was also the best man at Kemp's wedding. In 2019 Kemp wrote a book (with the help of Kinky Friedman) about their friendship called Dylan & Me, where he also discusses becoming friends with Marlon Brando after Brando's son went to work at his fishery.
• Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Earl Jones became friends while making Conan the Barbarian (1982). Jones gave Arnie acting tips, while Arnie gave Jones body-building advice.
• John Wayne befriended Montgomery Clift while filming Red River, bonding to a large part due to their shared enthusiasm and skill in chess. When John Wayne, who was known for his very conservative political and social views, was asked whether Clift's homosexuality (an open secret in Hollywood) or liberal political views bothered him, Wayne said that he really didn't care about either, especially since Clift was a good chess player.
• Chris Rock and Chris Farley both joined the cast of Saturday Night Live in 1990. Despite Rock being a high school dropout from a working class African-American neighborhood in Brooklyn, NY and Farley a college grad who grew up in a conservative, upper-middle class community in Madison, Wisconsin, they became fast friends and remained that way up until Farley's death. Even today, Rock frequently shares memories of Farley in interviews and on social media.
• In the literary world, we have H. P. Lovecraft the pale, neurotic and highly racist and pessimistic New Englander whose work became the famous Cthulhu Mythos and the Trope Maker for Cosmic Horror Story; and Robert E. Howard, the hard-drinking, manly and relatively fair Texan who mainly wrote stories about westerns, swashbucklers and boxers, as well as Solomon Kane and of course, Conan the Barbarian. They regularly shared correspondence through letters and by all accounts Howard's suicide in 1936 devastated Lovecraft.
• Fat Mike and M. Shadows have grown to be fast friends, despite Fat Mike fronting a far-left punk band and spending much of the George W. Bush years railing against him in music and activism while M. Shadows fronts a fairly conservative metal band that's supported the Iraq War and George W. Bush. Additionally, Fat Mike founded one of the largest independent labels in punk music and speaks out against major label politics while Avenged Sevenfold have enjoyed the benefits of being on major labels. It helps that Shadows was a big fan of punk bands during his teen years, NOFX included, and has supported more liberal causes recently.
• Robert Pattinson and Death Grips frontman Stefan "MC Ride" Burnett. They've been photographed hanging out together on several occasions, and Pattinson is apparently a huge fan of Death Grips. Pattinson is also apparently behind the electric guitar on "Birds".
• The members of Mötley Crüe, one of the most prominent bands of the 80s Hair Metal scene, and Papa Roach, one of the foremost Nu Metal bands of the early 2000s, are good friends. They've shared a label (Eleven Seven) in the past and Papa Roach participated in the Crüe Fest tour in 2008.
• Archetypal British Caustic Critic Simon Cowell and bubbly, heart-on-her-sleeve pop icon, dancer, and choreographer Paula Abdul. After spending the first two seasons of American Idol absolutely despising each other, something clicked for them and they became extremely close (though they never stopped squabbling). Their friendship is still going strong today; when Paula made a surprise appearance on America's Got Talent in 2019, Simon was openly delighted to see her.
  Simon: ...she and I are good friends, and will remain good friends. And you don't make many friends in this business, to be honest with you. People say they are, but they're not. But she — she's genuinely a good friend.
• Playwright Samuel Beckett and professional wrestler André the Giant knew each other, due to the fact that Beckett lived in André's hometown and would drive him to school (even at a young age, he was too big to fit in the school bus).
• David Letterman and Joyce DeWitt worked together in an Indianapolis comedy troupe before their later TV success.
• The tall thin middle-class public school and Cambridge educated John Cleese and the short stout, working-class school leave Les Dawson seemed a world apart. But they were close friends and John Cleese made a number of appearances in Les Dawson's shows.
• On a national level, Poland and Vietnam. The diplomatic relationship and cultural exchange kicked up towards the end of the Communist era for political reasons, but continued steadily after the capitalist reforms in both countries. This is especially visible in the listing of ethnic minorities in Poland. Poland is quite xenophobic and homogenous, and the only significant minorities in Poland are those of its neighbours... and Vietnam, which lies on the opposite end of the world.
• U2 frontman Bono, an outspoken liberal, and contemporary Christian music singer Michael W. Smith, an outspoken conservative Christian, are good friends. Bono was a guest on Smith's 2014 Christmas album The Spirit of Christmas and Smith has participated in the activities of Bono's One Campaign charity.
• invoked Reclusive Artist and Celebrity Is Overrated believer Sia has in recent years become close friends with the Famous for Being Famous Kardashian family, specifically Kim and Khloé.
• Maynard James Keenan of the dark progressive metal band tool is friends with several members of the 1990s alternative comedy scene, including Bob Odenkirk, David Cross, and Jack Black. This led to the members of Tool having a cameo in Mr. Show as the band "Puscifer," which was eventually used as the name of Maynard's solo project. Tool also toured with Tenacious D as an opening band before the musical comedy duo was widely known.
• Another example on a national level are two almost literal antipodes, Japan and Brazil. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as part of trade and diplomatic agreements, many Japanese citizens emigrated to Brazil, and later Japanese descendants up to third generation were allowed entry. Currently, both countries hold a significant number of expats and descendants thereof hailing from each other, and Brazil is home to the largest Japanese community outside of the country.
• Because of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Roger Ebert being friends with sexploitation king Russ Meyer is well-known, but many people aren't aware that his Siskel & Ebert partner Gene Siskel hung out with Hugh Hefner for a while. Hefner became a fan of Siskel's film reviews after he started at the Chicago Tribune, and contacted him. With Hefner starting to explore the film business in the first part of The '70s, Siskel decided their friendship was in danger of becoming a conflict-of-interest and decided to go separate ways
• Ronnie Corbett and the bassist of the first incarnation of Jethro Tull, Glenn Cornick, were close friends until Cornick's death in 2014. They met when Jethro Tull were fulfilling their last few small club commitments whilst having their first hits and Ronnie thought they were a jazz band. Although Tull was definitely not jazz, Ronnie stayed, enjoyed it, and offered the band a round of drinks during a short break. Cornick took him up on the drink, and they became friends, a friendship that was cemented by Ronnie politely asking whether he could guy Glenn's look on the early Tull albums for the comic character "Big Jim Jehoshaphat". Glenn was delighted to let Ronnie parody him in this way, and although Glenn mostly had his career in the USA after leaving Jethro Tull, whenever Glenn was in the UK, or Ronnie was in the USA, they'd meet up for a drink and a looo-ng chat.

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