Showbiz411

He wasn’t a figment of anyone’s imagination: John Forbes Nash, the famed game theory genius whose biography was the basis for the 2001 Oscar winning “A Beautiful Mind,” spent two days in the Hamptons this past weekend. He and his wife Alicia were guests of the Hamptons Film Festival for a showing of the Ron Howard film as part of the festival’s 20th anniversary classics series.

The Nashes attended several parties including the main cocktail party at the home of Silvercup Studios president Stuart Match Suna, the driving force behind the Festival.

Nash is now 84 years old. He is a quiet man, to say the least, a “close talker” in the “Seinfeld” vernacular. He speaks in a whisper. Physically he is as unlike Russell Crowe, the actor who played him, as could possibly be; he’s a little stooped and concave, with haunted eyes.

But he’s still at Princeton, a famous and legendary genius researcher who is constantly working on unlocking the nature of Game Theory. He told me that the economy “will recycle itself.” He added: “That’s what it does.”

Nash wouldn’t commit to a presidential candidate, but said his wife liked Mitt Romney. Atone point, “Inside the Actors Studio” host James Lipton came over and chatted with Nash a bit in the beautiful Suna backyard. But most of the stars coming and going didn’t recognize the most interesting guest of the weekend.

Roger Friedman

Roger Friedman began his Showbiz411 column in April 2009 after 10 years with Fox News. Friedman previously wrote the Intelligencer column at New York Magazine, He writes for Parade magazine and has written for Details, Vogue, the New York Times, Post, and Daily News and many other publications. He is the writer and co-producer of a film about R&B Music called “Only the Strong Survive,” which was released by Miramax in 2003 and was a selection of the Cannes, Sundance, and Telluride Film festivals.