Eddie Deezen, the 69-year-old actor known for Grease, WarGames and The Polar Express, is facing criticism online after sharing a Facebook post about approaching a teenage girl at a coffee shop. Screenshots of the post were shared to r/popculturechat with a trigger warning.
In the post, Deezen said he asked the girl out and she told him she was 16. The thread quickly filled with condemnation, with commenters focusing on the age gap and the way he described the encounter.
One commenter wrote that he 'mentioned Grease to a teenager like it was Euphoria'. The thread also revived attention on a 2021 controversy involving a waitress in his hometown.
What Deezen Posted
In the post, Deezen described walking up to a girl's table, introducing himself and telling her she was the most beautiful girl he'd seen in a long time. He mentioned that he'd appeared in Grease and asked if he could take her out, adding that he'd understand if she already had a boyfriend.
The girl told him she couldn't go out with him because she was underage, and when he asked how old she was, she said she was 16. Deezen wrote that he'd assumed she was in college. He told her to think of him next time she watched Grease before leaving.
Why the Story Hit a Nerve
Several commenters said they'd initially assumed Deezen was describing something that happened decades ago, before realising partway through the post that he was recounting a recent encounter. 'The way he said "I'm in Grease" made me think this happened back in the day when Grease was still relevant, not in the big year of 2026,' wrote one commenter, a reaction echoed by several others in the thread.
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Once the timeline became clear, the reaction shifted to the age gap itself. 'He mentioned Grease to a teenager like it was Euphoria,' one commenter wrote. Another said leading with his film credit, as though that alone should make a teenager want to date him, made the story feel even more uncomfortable, adding that his later comment about understanding if she had a boyfriend ignored the far more obvious reason she might say no.
Several commenters also pushed back on Deezen's claim that he'd believed the girl was older. 'I am also so over men pretending that they can't tell the difference between a young teen and someone in their mid-twenties,' one reply read. 'A 16-year-old looks like a literal child, because they are.'
Not Deezen's First Controversy
This isn't the first time Deezen's public behaviour has drawn criticism. In 2021, he was accused of harassing a waitress in his hometown of Cumberland, Maryland, after posting a lengthy Facebook rant fixating on her appearance, including her use of false eyelashes.
The waitress, Kara Lashbaugh, publicly called him a 'creep' who repeatedly asked her coworkers for her schedule. Deezen's PR manager, Steve Joiner, dropped him as a client over the incident, telling Fox News the behaviour was 'immoral', 'sexist' and 'unconscionable'. Deezen later posted an apology, writing that he had 'required this girl to wear false eyelashes' and that he'd made her feel 'objectified, cheap, not human'.
That history resurfaced throughout the new thread, with several commenters citing his past conduct as evidence of a pattern rather than an isolated lapse in judgement.
The Bigger Picture
For a performer best remembered for playing awkward, lovable nerds on screen, the scale of the reaction to his own account of this encounter suggests audiences are increasingly unwilling to separate nostalgia for his old roles from how he's described behaving in real life.
