Best Celebrity

Britney Spears' Ex Under Felony Investigation

2009-02-12T22:59:00.000-08:00

By: TMZ

We've learned Adnan Ghalib -- the one-time boyfriend of Britney Spears who is under court order to stay away from her -- is under investigation for felony assault with a deadly weapon with a vehicle.

Here's what went down. Yesterday morning, a process server went to Ghalib's Encino apartment to hand him legal papers ordering him to appear in the restraining order case.

The process server was waiting for Adnan Ghalib in the alley when Ghalib rolled up and allegedly hit the dude with his car. The process server says he landed on the hood of Adnan's car.

Adnan allegedly fled the scene and the process server called cops at 10:42 AM. Police arrived and noticed the process server had cuts and scratches, but he refused treatment.

The case is under investigation. Ghalib is the suspect and the alleged crime is assault with a deadly weapon with a vehicle -- a felony.

We spoke with Ghalib -- he had no comment.

All About Heath Ledger

2009-02-12T15:15:00.000-08:00

Name
Heath Ledger
Birth Date
April 04, 1979
Birth Place
Perth, Australia

Heath Ledger's untimely death at 28 took everyone by surprise. The Oscar-nominated actor, who died of an accidental overdose of prescription drugs, is survived by daughter, Matilda, whose mother is his Brokeback Mountain costar Michelle Williams.

The Australian-born actor first gained wide recognition in the teen comedy 10 Things I Hate About You. Instead of resting on his hunky looks, Ledger turned down a series of heartthrob roles before delivering a complicated, career-defining performance as a gay man in Brokeback Mountain, the Ang Lee-directed film about a tragic love affair between two cowboys. The Oscar-winning film revived his career and introduced Ledger to Williams, whom he dated for three years.

In one of his first acting roles, Heath Ledger wore green tights as the lead in a Perth community theater production of Peter Pan. "It took a lot of guts," he told the Washington Post. "For a 12-year-old kid, that can be damaging amongst your peers."

Brokeback Mountain wasn't the first time Heath Ledger played a gay man. In 1996, he landed the role of a gay cyclist in the Aussie TV show Sweat.

Heath Ledger had "KAOS" tattooed across one wrist. It stood for Kate, Ashleigh, Olivia and Sally, the names of his mom and three sisters.

Jake Gyllenhaal is the godfather of Heath Ledger's daughter, Matilda. "Heath and I made love, and they got a baby out of it!" Gyllenhaal joked to Entertainment Weekly.

Heath Ledger's secret ambition was to star in a Hollywood musical. "They're what made me want to do movies in the first place," he told Movieline. "I guess in some people's eyes, guys dancing around can look queeny, but I think it's very, very cool."

Gals: Hard at Work

2009-02-12T12:59:00.000-08:00

By: Gossip Girl

Back out for another day on the set, the stars of “bestceleb” were spotted readying for an afternoon of filming in New York City on Thursday (February 12).

Showing up one at a time, Blake Lively, Leighton Meester, Taylor Momsen and Kelly Rutherford were all booked for the day’s workload - as all four bundled up braving the chilly Big Apple weather.

Meanwhile, it was just recently announced that Miss Lively’s Serena van der Woodsen character will be landing herself a brand new boyfriend ahead of this season’s finale.

The new character is going to be a European socialite named Gabriel Serrano, who will be played by 22-year-old actor Armie Hammer - an oil tycoon heir with previous guest spots on Arrested Development, Veronica Mars and Desperate Housewives.

Mandy Moore Gets Engaged

2009-02-11T16:19:00.000-08:00

By: Jennifer

Mandy Moore will tie the knot with her musician beau Ryan Adams, her publicist confirms to bestceleb.

Details on the engagement weren't immediately available. Moore, 24, and Adams, 34, had dated off-and-on since March 2008.

Moore, who supported close pal and ex-boyfriend DJ AM in the wake of his plane crash, has also been linked to musician Greg Laswell, tennis star Andy Roddick, and actors Zach Braff and Wilmer Valderrama.

Adams, a singer, songwriter, producer and author, is best known for his song "New York, New York." Moore's next album, Amanda

All About Ashley Tisdale

2009-02-11T15:15:00.000-08:00

Name
Ashley Tisdale
Birth Date
July 02, 1985
Birth Place
West Deal, N.J.

Tweens first embraced Ashley Tisdale as sweet babysitter Maddie on Disney Channel's The Suite Life of Zack and Cody. But it wasn't until she went snooty as super-snob, super-spoiled Sharpay Evans in High School Musical that Tisdale became a household name.

Discovered at a New Jersey mall at age 3, Tisdale got her start in commercials before starring in productions of Les Misérables and Annie. Then came Disney stardom with The Suite Life and High School Musical. While her HSM costars Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens make headlines for their offscreen relationship (and Hudgens' photo scandal), Tisdale is making a splash with her debut album Headstrong and reprised her role – this time on the big screen – in High School Musical 3.

Ashley Tisdale wore silver Doc Marten boots to her junior prom with pink shoelaces underneath a bright fuchsia dress with six layers of tulle.

Ashley Tisdale used to ride horses in competition. "Nobody really knows that," she told Girls' Life magazine. "I stopped at, like, 13.".

As a tween, Ashley Tisdale had major crushes on the Backstreet Boys and Hanson: "I actually was into Zack Hanson back in the day."

Ashley Tisdale has a maltipoo named Blondie, which also happens to be her nickname on The Suite Life of Zack & Cody.

Ashley Tisdale is the first female artist to ever debut with two songs simultaneously on Billboard's Hot 100 chart. Both were songs from the High School Musical soundtrack.

Sandra Bullock InStyle March 2009 Cover

2009-02-10T22:09:00.000-08:00

Here is Sandra Bullock covering InStyle Magazine March issue of 2009. It’s a really nice photo for a very cool actress like Sandra Bullock, who says she hasn’t ruled out the idea of having her own children. The 44-year-old actress has a stable and low key marriage to All About Steve star Jesse James and though her husband has three children from two marriages, son Jesse Jr., 11, and daughters Chandler, 14, and Sunny, 5, meting Jesse made her think again of motherhood and all that comes with it. Here are some highlights from the InStyle interview:

Thankfully I married someone who loves me just the way I am – and all the nuttiness that goes into me. I have family in spades. Everything we do is about the kids. I haven’t had children biologically. I had shut that off; then I met Jesse, and it turned on again. I was like, ‘Oh, that’s that feeling.’

We realized we had to take care of some other things on this planet first. I hope to God when we get to a place where all is safe, calm, happy and healthy, it’s not too late.

If I waited too long, it’s because we were supposed to do other things. If it is just too late? There are millions of children on this planet that I would be honored to call my own.
- says Sandra Bullock in March issue of InStyle Magazine 2009 -

Rihanna Cancels Indonesia Concert Due to Injuries

2009-02-10T18:01:00.000-08:00

We all are in shock and disbelief over the fight between Chris Brown and Rihanna early Sunday morning. Everything seems to indicate that Rihanna is serious injured. She has pulled out of a concert she had scheduled in Indonesia and her rep reportedly informed the show’s promoters that the event would have to be rescheduled “in light of recent events involving Rihanna.”

According to other reports, Rihanna will go in Barbados for a while where she’ll recover from the physical attack under the care of her friends and family, while in she will fully cooperating with the police as the ongoing investigation continues. On the other side Chris Brown was spotted boarding a private plane out of Los Angeles yesterday and he will have to appear in court March 5th to face charges of making a criminal threat.

Monica Bellucci Sexy Curves

2009-02-10T13:46:00.000-08:00

Beautiful actress Monica Bellucci takes great care of her voluptuous figure and refuses to feel guilty about her body.

Monica Bellucci told Esquire magazine: "My body is so important to me. My face, my arms, my legs, my hands, my eyes, everything. I use everything I have. Today, if women look or feel voluptuous they feel guilty but beauty has no law and there is no one way to be beautiful."

Cate Blanchett gets Robin Hood role originally slated for Sienna Miller

2009-02-09T23:59:00.000-08:00

Remember how Sienna Miller was “too young”, “too thin” and “too beautiful” to be starring as Maid Marian to Russell Crowe’s Robin Hood in Ridley Scott’s Nottingham? All of that was according to Sienna’s strategic leaks in the on-going debate over was-she-fired or did-she-jump? Some sources (Sienna’s) claimed that Russell Crowe was bloated and overweight, and they just didn’t compliment each other physically. Some say (me) Sienna was just fired and had to say something to save face.

So the Nottingham film production was in desperate need of a new Maid Marian. Allegedly, the first actress that was asked was Kate Winslet. Coming after the revelations that Sienna was too “young and thin”, some saw Winslet’s name being mentioned as a possible replacement as a bit of an insult, as if Winslet was “old” and “not thin”.

Cate Blanchett’s name was also mentioned as a replacement, but the initial word was that Cate had no interest in doing another big-studio picture after Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Plus, Cate has obligations in Australia now with her theatre work. But word is coming out that Blanchett will be the replacement Maid Marian. Good. They should have gone to Blanchett first and not even messed around with Sienna. The Telegraph has details, including a bitchy back-handed insult from one of the actors about Sienna Miller. Hurray!

Cate Blanchett looks more and more of a certainty for the role of Maid Marian in Sir Ridley Scott’s forthcoming film Nottingham after Sienna Miller was apparently deemed too slim and youthful for the part. “I think Cate Blanchett is set to take the Maid Marian part,” says Mark Strong, who has already been signed up to play Sir Guy of Gisbourne, at the London Film Critics’ Circle Awards, at the Grosvenor House hotel, in Park Lane. “She is a wonderful actress and it would make it a much classier film if she was in it.”

From The Telegraph

Haha, “classier”. Everything is classier with Blanchett, but methinks that comment was about Sienna Miller. After being ejected from Nottingham, Miller is in talks to do a Broadway play, which I guess means that all of the married men in New York better watch themselves. Sienna Miller is still doing the on-off thing with Balthazar Getty, so who knows?

Kristy Swanson and Lloyd Eisler Get Married

2009-02-09T18:09:00.000-08:00

By: people

Skating with Celebrities winners Kristy Swanson and Lloyd Eisler were married on Saturday, the couple confirms exclusively to PEOPLE.

"It was awesome and I feel amazing," Swanson tells PEOPLE. "[The ceremony] was perfect even though Lloyd's cell phone went off at the end. He forgot to put it on vibrate!"

The actress and the Canadian skating champ, who met while competing on the FOX reality show three years ago, tied the knot in front of 100 family and friends at a hotel in San Luis Obispo.

"We wanted to celebrate Lloyd and I coming together as a family," says Swanson, referring to 2-year-old son Magnus, and Eisler's children from a previous marriage, Ethan Harley, 4, and Seth Keenan, 3.

Swanson, 39, wore a strapless ivory wedding gown by Amy Michelson and shoes by Carmen Steffens as she walked down the aisle to Van Morrison's "Crazy Love." Eisler, 45, wore a tux by Nicole Miller.

During the ceremony, the couple and their combined children placed individual flowers in a vase, symbolizing a family bouquet.

"It's about perfect happiness and unity," says Swanson, who lost 45 lbs. in time for her wedding with the help of The Medifast Diet and regular exercise, including martial arts, skipping rope and treadmill work.

The newlyweds danced their first dance to Edwin McCain's "I'll Be," a song they performed to on their reality show. At the reception, guests, including actors Paul Reubens and Maeve Quinlan, dined on filet mignon and a four-tier wedding cake.

"We're excited about the future," says Eisler. "Kristy is getting back into acting and I'm building my coaching career. Hopefully everything will work out."

Swanson is best known for her role in the 1992 movie Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Eisler is a former Olympic figure skater.

Chris Brown & Rihanna: A Fairy-Tale Romance Gone Awry

2009-02-09T15:46:00.000-08:00

Sunday night, R&B's hottest couple, Chris Brown and Rihanna, were supposed to light up the Grammys.

Instead, the normally affectionate twosome were embroiled in a domestic violence drama that left Brown, 19, booked on felony criminal threats charges and posting $50,000 bail after turning himself in to the LAPD on Sunday at 6:34 p.m. PST.

Sources say that Rihanna (real name: Robin Fenty), 20, was the victim in the alleged assault which occurred around 12:30 a.m. on Sunday. Responding to a 911 call about a disturbance, the LAPD took statements from a female with visible injuries, who named Brown as her attacker.

Just hours after the incident, witnesses spotted Brown and Rihanna leaving the London Hotel together around 7:30 a.m. on Sunday.

Later that evening, during the Grammy telecast for which both Brown and Rihanna were no-shows, bodyguards for the couple were seen moving their luggage out of the London.

The ramifications of Brown's arrest? Already charged with making criminal threats – defined in part as a situation where the victim "is in fear for [his/her] life" – the R&B singer may face additional charges at the discretion of L.A.'s district attorney's office.

To help him face the legal storm, Brown has hired attorney Mark Geragos, best known for defending convicted murderer Scott Peterson, Winona Ryder after a 2001 shoplifting arrest and Michael Jackson during his child molestation trial.

An R&B Romance Turned Sour?
Rumored to be a couple towards the end of 2007, the singers were first photographed at the Grammys on Feb. 10, 2008. Often coy about their yearlong relationship, the two consistently refused to talk about their romance during interviews.

But the pair offered up other signs of their closeness, from matching star tattoos on their necks to holding hands and kissing at concerts.

Even at the Clive Davis party at the Beverly Hills Hilton on Saturday night, Brown and Rihanna looked cozy and happy.

But over recent weeks, they seemed to have hit a bumpy patch in their relationship.

"They've been fighting a lot lately," a source told PEOPLE. "Lots of ups and downs. One second they're all lovey dovey and then they're fighting like crazy. They're both pretty stubborn."

All About Eva Longoria Parker

2009-02-09T13:02:00.000-08:00

Name
Eva Longoria Parker
Birth Date
March 15, 1975
Birth Place
Corpus Christi, Texas

The exact moment Eva Longoria became the country's water-cooler topic can be easily pinpointed: It happened when her Desperate Housewives character, Gabrielle Solis, seduced her teen gardener in the first season.

Soon after, Longoria appeared on the cover of nearly every women's magazine and lad publication, including Maxim's 100th issue. But it's her tendency to gab that has drawn headlines. Example: When she claimed to be "the experienced one" in her relationship with NBA player Tony Parker. The pair, who married in a low-key civil ceremony in a Paris City Hall, wed again in a historic French church on July 7, 2007.

Eva Longoria learned to shoot at age 4, hunting deer, turkey, quail and wild pigs on her family's Texas ranch.

Eva Longoria's grandmother disapproves of her Desperate Housewives sex scenes, yelling at her after watching her lusty rendezvous with the teenage gardener played by Jesse Metcalfe.

The youngest of four sisters, Eva Longoria says she was called "la prieta faya" or "the ugly dark one" as a child.

In 2006, Eva Longoria stirred up controversy when she told Allure that she's "the experienced one" in her relationship with Tony Parker: "I'm the teacher, especially about love. He's always telling me he's never met anyone who loves the way I do – wholly and freely and unconditionally."

A longtime pal of Dancing with the Stars' Mario Lopez, Eva Longoria broke the rules against endorsing a contestant when she showed up as an audience member wearing a homemade bedazzled "Vote for Mario" T-shirt.

Featured Top 36 Contestant American Idol

2009-02-08T23:07:00.000-08:00

By: mjsbigblog

Every day, through the end of this week I’ll be featuring contestants from the leaked list of the Top 36.

If you like surprises, you don’t want to click the jump.

But, if you’re like me, and can’t get enough American Idol spoilers, then click on the link!

Alexis Grace - Audition - AI Video - Louisville - 20 - Memphis, TN - Season 8 is Alexis’ third crack at auditioning for Idol.

Although she’s decidedly non-planty, Alexis has a great face (the camera loves her) and untrained vocals that are full of potential. A diamond in the rough, to be sure.

Grammy Awards nominations 2009

2009-02-08T21:39:00.000-08:00

By: 24timepass

The Grammy Awards 2009 will be on Sunday, February 8th, 2009 at Staples Center in Los Angeles. The original name Gramophone Awards was started by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the U.S in 1958.

51st Grammy Award Nominee 2009 announced on December 3, Wednesday as live concert on CBS. Nomination process includes reviewing sessions held by over 150 experts from the music industry

There are following Records:

Record of the Year
Chasing Pavements by Adele
Viva La Vida by Coldplay
Bleeding Love by Leona Lewis
Paper Planes by M.I.A
Please Read The Letter by Robert Plant & Alison Krauss

Album Of The Year
Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends
Tha Carter III
Year Of The Gentleman
Raising Sand
In Rainbows

Song Of The Year
American Boy from Shine
Chasing Pavements from 19
I'm Yours from We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things.
Love Song from Little Voice
Viva La Vida from Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends

Best New Artist
Adele
Duffy
Jonas Brothers
Lady Antebellum
Jazmine Sullivan

There are also following Awards
Best Female Pop Vocal Performance
Best Male Pop Vocal Performance
Best Pop Performance By A Duo Or Group
Best Pop Collaboration With Vocals
Best Pop Instrumental Performance
Best Pop Instrumental Album
Best Pop Vocal Album
Best Dance Recording
Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album
All the same awards for Rock, R&B, Contemporary, Rap, Country, jazz, and many more.

All About Shia LaBeouf

2009-02-08T15:02:00.000-08:00

Name
Shia LaBeouf
Birth Date
June 11, 1986
Birth Place
Los Angeles, Calif.

Sure, Shia LaBeouf earned an Emmy playing a poodle-haired goofball on the Disney kiddy comedy Even Stevens. But he fought his tween image by taking serious roles in such little-seen dramas as The Battle of Shaker Heights and A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints.

LaBeouf's risky choices paid off when director Steven Spielberg saw him play a boy sentenced to boot camp in 2003's Holes. Comparing LaBeouf to a young Tom Hanks, Spielberg cast him in the summer blockbuster Transformers and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, with Harrison Ford and Cate Blanchett.

While trying to break into acting, Shia LaBeouf asked a fellow actor for advice. "He said, 'In order for you to be an actor, you've got to be a model first.' I said, 'Dude, I'm not a model, all right? I look like Garry Shandling. That's not going to work,'" LaBeouf told the Boston Globe in 2003.

Shia LaBeouf's last name is spelled incorrectly. "In French, LaBeouf means 'beef,' but mine is spelled wrong. It should be 'LaBoeuf,'" he told Parade in 2008. The name Shia isn't well-received in France, either. "Shia is a bad four-letter word in French. So the literal translation of my name is 'S--t the Beef.'"

Shia LaBeouf's ''flirtatious hippie'' father hit on his son's Holes costar Sigourney Weaver during filming on-set. "That's the most embarrassed you'll ever be as a human," LaBeouf told bestceleb in 2003.

Shia LaBeouf said the set of Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle was more play than work. "When I wasn't laughing hysterically, I was learning how to pickpocket from Cameron Diaz," LaBeouf told USA Today. (Diaz learned the skill for Gangs of New York.)

Shia LaBeouf's father, Jeffrey, a one-time rodeo clown who opened for the Doobie Brothers, lived in a tepee on a $10,000 plot of land Shia bought near the Mojave Desert in 2003.

Jennifer Aniston doesn’t want to turn 40

2009-02-07T21:41:00.000-08:00

As Jennifer Aniston gears up to celebrate her 40th birthday next week, the milestone, it seems, is leaving her in a tizzy.

Although the former ‘Friends’ star says that she’s feeling great– she admits to a moment where she feels she doesn’t want to turn 40.

"I have to say really, I feel better than I ever felt in my life," People quoted Jennifer as saying on The Ellen DeGeneres Show .

"I did have a moment, though, over the weekend my first like huh. ... I don’t want to [turn 40].

"I found a really long gray hair and it kind of flipped me out. It’s not my first but it’s the fact that it was so long. I was like, ‘Oh that’s been there. How many others are there, and what does that mean?

“It actually brought me to tears slightly," she added.

Best Bikini Moments

2009-02-07T18:32:00.000-08:00

Bridal Bikini
Mariah Carey
After her Bahamas wedding to Nick Cannon, she frolicked with her new husband on the beach.

Bikini Over 60
Helen Mirren
"I'm always on a diet!" the 63-year-old star has said.

Bikini Over 40
Nicollette Sheridan
She keeps fit at 45 with daily runs.

Bikini After Baby
Jessica Alba
Only three months after giving birth, she had shed 35 pregnancy lbs. (PEOPLE readers voted Alba best bikini body; see page 126.)

Tweenie Bikini
Ashley Tisdale
"I worked hard for this body," she says, "so I want to show it off!"

All About Victoria Beckham

2009-02-07T15:02:00.000-08:00

Name
Victoria Beckham
Birth Date
April 17, 1974
Birth Place
Hertfordshire, England

As "Posh Spice" of Spice Girls, Victoria Beckham helped spread "Girl Power!" around the world clad in the shortest skirts and highest heels. After the departure of member Geri "Ginger" Halliwell, the British condiment du jour released 2000's Forever before disbanding.

Posh went on to become a part of another British export: the Beckhams – England's other royal family with husband, soccer star David Beckham. "Posh and Becks" became a world-renown fashion-fixated, goal-scoring, baby-bearing duo. As David set hairstyle trends and dominated soccer with Manchester United and Real Madrid, Posh focused on her fashion ambitions.

In 2007, David signed a five-year contract with the Los Angeles Galaxy, moving the Beckhams stateside, while the new L.A. mum reunited with the Spice Girls for a greatest-hits album and a world tour.

Victoria Beckham joked that her husband David "likes to borrow my knickers," and goes on to say that she would like to give him a Gucci thong of his own, according to BBC News. David tells PEOPLE in 2005 of the thong, "I wouldn't get them past my knees!"

Before they were Spice Girls, Victoria "Posh" Beckham, Emma "Baby" Bunton and Geri "Ginger" Halliwell all auditioned to be Jet Girl in the 1995 cult hit Tank Girl. Actress Naomi Watts landed the role.

During a solo performance for BBC Radio in 2001, Victoria Beckham had fruit and vegetables thrown at her when a small group in the crowd was unsatisfied with her vocals. "I can really sing," Beckham insisted to GMTV.

Victoria Beckham rarely steps out without her high heels. "What might feel like a nine-inch heel to most people is like a flip-flop to her," close friend Heidi Klum told Harper's Bazaar.

Victoria Beckham wore a fake lip ring during a live solo performance in 2001 that attracted negative criticism from the British Dental Association for setting a bad example to her younger fans. "I had no idea it would cause this much fuss," Beckham tells bestceleb.

Springer leaving as ‘America’s Got Talent’ host

2009-02-06T23:18:00.000-08:00

LOS ANGELES - “America’s Got Talent” isn’t getting more of Jerry Springer.

Springer says he won’t return as host of the NBC talent contest this summer.

In a statement Thursday, Springer said he’s leaving the show because of other commitments, including his syndicated talk show and a stage role. He didn’t offer details about the play.

Known for his freewheeling talk show, Springer got an image makeover when he appeared in 2006 on ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars” and won viewers’ affection with his self-deprecating humor. The stint on “America’s Got Talent” followed in summer 2007.

Springer called his job on the high-rated show produced by FremantleMedia “an amazing ride.” His replacement for the upcoming fourth season wasn’t announced Thursday.

Known for his freewheeling talk show, Springer got an image makeover when he appeared in 2006 on ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars” and won viewers’ affection with his self-deprecating humor. The stint on “America’s Got Talent” followed in summer 2007.

Springer called his job on the high-rated show produced by FremantleMedia “an amazing ride.” His replacement for the upcoming fourth season wasn’t announced Thursday.

Jessica Simpson forgets lyrics, fights tears at Mich. show

2009-02-06T18:18:00.000-08:00

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. – A bizarre 38-minute set by opening act Jessica Simpson inadvertently stole the spotlight from headliner Rascal Flatts in a show at the Van Andel Arena. The Grand Rapids Press said Simpson forgot her lyrics, struggled with her ear monitors, mumbled through songs and fought back tears during Thursday night's performance.

At one point, the 28-year-old singer-actress asked her backing band to start over on one song, and she forgot the words to another.

"Jessica had an off night," Cindi Berger, a representative for Simpson, said Friday. "She's a perfectionist, and wanted to start some of the songs over. She always wants to give her best performance to her fans."

Simpson apologized to the supportive audience of about 9,000 by mouthing the word "sorry" on two large video screens.

While introducing her last song, Simpson said she sometimes feels like quitting. She appeared to be wiping away tears after finishing the song and walking off the stage.

‘Idol's’ Bikini Girl weighing Playboy offer

2009-02-06T14:59:00.000-08:00

LOS ANGELES - Katrina Darrell didn’t make a lot of friends when she auditioned for “American Idol” in a bikini, but Playboy sure took notice.

According to the recently ousted chanteuse, known on the show as Bikini Girl, the men’s magazine is one of the many places that has expressed an interest in the booted reality hopeful following her “Idol” departure on Wednesday’s episode.

“[I’ve had] a lot of different offers, like Vegas promotion offers. Of course Playboy has called,” Darrell told Access Hollywood’s Tony Potts on Thursday afternoon.

Lily Allen wants to have sex with Lucian Freud

2009-02-06T14:17:00.000-08:00

The 23-year-old singer - who had a brief relationship with art dealer Jay Jopling, 45, over Christmas, and previously dated Chemical Brothers musician Ed Simons, 38 - has a penchant for older men, and wants to sleep with the 86-year-old painter.

When asked if she is attracted to a certain type of man, Lily replied: "Yes, someone older. 45, 50 is good. The other day I met Lucian Freud. And I thought, 'I want to sh*g Lucian Freud.' It would be funny. He's four times my age."

The singer - whose latest song 'The Fear' is currently topping the UK singles charts - was also asked if she is currently dating anyone.

She added to Britain's Glamour magazine: "I've sh**ged somebody a couple of times but I'm not saying who."

Lily has revealed she is planning to stay single for two years because the release of her latest album 'It's Not Me, It's You' has left her too busy for romance.

She said: "I'm in that mindset where I realise I'm going to be so busy for the next two years. Even if I was to meet someone, I don't have the time."

Cameron Diaz is contemplating move to England

2009-02-06T13:58:00.000-08:00

Cameron Diaz is contemplating buying a home in Essex, England and moving there with British boyfriend Paul Sculfor.

The couple have reportedly shown interest in a luxurious $3.2 million (2.2 million pounds) mansion in Sculfor's home county of Essex, Contactmusic.com reported.

"Cameron was reading the papers by the fire (at Babington House) and talking about how they needed their own country retreat," said a source close to the couple.

Added a friend of Sculfor, "Paul is keen to have a place in Essex, preferably close to his parents' home in Hornchurch. The couple has already checked out a 2.2 million pounds mansion in Basildon."

Hilary Duff Battles Faye Dunaway Over 'Bonnie And Clyde' Remake

2009-02-06T13:54:00.000-08:00

Hilary Duff has picked a new catfight with Oscar winner Faye Dunaway over her plans to star in the remake of Bonnie And Clyde.

After sparring with Lindsay Lohan and Avril Lavigne in the past Duff has decided to pick on the Hollywood veteran after she poked fun at the casting in the update of the classic film, which she won an Oscar nomination for.

Last week, the caustic Dunaway asked, "Couldn't they have at least cast a real actress?"

And, rather than take the high road, Duff has retaliated by suggesting her fans don't know who Dunaway is.

The singer says, "I think that my fans that are going to go see the movie don't even know who she is. I think it (what she said) was a little unnecessary, but I might be mad if I looked like that now too."

All About Sarah Jessica Parker

2009-02-05T23:10:00.000-08:00

Name
Sarah Jessica Parker
Birth Date
March 25, 1965
Birth Place
Nelsonville, Ohio

Before glamorizing the single life in her Manolo Blahniks, Sarah Jessica Parker couldn't land a role as the "pretty girl." Then Steve Martin cast her as his bubbly lover SanDeE* in L.A. Story, breaking her '80s trend as the frizzy-haired sidekick.

As a child, Parker nabbed the title role in the musical Annie on Broadway. Years later, she met actor Matthew Broderick; they married and had a son, James Wilkie. She is most famed, however, for playing Carrie Bradshaw on HBO's Sex and the City, collecting a full shelf of awards for her efforts as star and executive producer and turning her image into a worldwide brand of perfumes, clothing lines and endorsement deals.

After pulling the plug on Sex at the height of its run, Parker returned to the big screen with The Family Stone and Failure to Launch. But it wasn't until she came back to Bradshaw and Co. in 2008's Sex and the City movie that she really made her record-breaking box office mark.

Angelina Jolie 'Misplaces' Her Oscar

2009-02-05T21:01:00.000-08:00

Angelina Jolie needs to be careful if she wins her second Academy Award this year, after misplacing the first statuette she received at the prestigious ceremony.

The actress has been nominated for a Best Actress prize for her performance in Changeling and will go up against Anne Hathaway, Kate Winslet, Melissa Leo and Meryl Streep in the category on the February 22nd. However if she walks away victorious, she won't be able to pair the award with the Best Supporting Actress award she won in 1999 for Girl, Interrupted - because she has no clue where that Oscar is.

Jolie handed it to her mother Marcheline Bertrand, who hid it away, but has since died. She explains, "I didn't actually lose it. But nobody knows where it is at the moment."

Hilary Duff slams Faye Dunaway (Video)

2009-02-05T15:10:00.000-08:00

Hilary Duff, 21, seems to have had enough of actress Faye Dunaway’s criticism about whether or not she has what it takes to play Bonnie Parker in the remake of the 1967 flick “Bonnie and Clyde” entitled “The Story of Bonnie and Clyde.”

“I think that my fans that are going to go see the movie don’t even know who she [Dunaway] is, so you know. I think it was a little unnecessary, but I might be mad if I looked like that now, too,” the Lizzie McGuire star tells E! News.

68-year-old Dunaway, who played Bonnie Parker in the original movie about the world’s most famous bank robbers, allegedly said the following when she heard that Duff was going to play her old role (which she also got an Academy Award nomination for): “Couldn’t they at least cast a real actress?”

Keira's saucy sex scene

2009-02-05T13:58:00.000-08:00

Keira Knightley, who dazed all by leaving nothing to imagination after stripping naked for her role in ‘Domino’, is going to stun fans even further with the upcoming Blu-ray release of the film.

‘The Edge of love’ actress has gone topless for a saucy outdoor sex scene in ‘Domino’ and the Blu-ray release will show her kinky exploits in even finer detail.

‘ Domino ’ is based on the true story of a young woman, who ditches her uneventful life to become a bounty hunter, reports the Sun .

The flick garnered only mixed reviews when it was first released.

Meanwhile, Keira and Colin Farrell have signed on to star in a crime drama titled ‘London Boulevard’.

Cruz and Kate unique camaraderie

2009-02-04T13:38:00.000-08:00

Kate Winslet and Penelope Cruz have struck up a surprisingly close friendship in the run-up to this year's Oscars despite only having met three times.

The unlikely pair, who are both competing in this year's Best Supporting Actress category, have been offering each other phone support daily in the countdown to the prestigious show.

Penelope insists she and Kate enjoy a far-from-bitter relationship rubbishing their rivalry rumors. "Kate and I have become very close even though we have only met three times. Everyone likes to think there's rivalry between us but that's not true," Penelope said.

Penelope is nominated for her part in Vicky Cristina Barcelona , and Kate received the nod for her role in The Reader.

The Academy Awards ceremony will take place in Los Angeles February 22.

Emma is uncomfortable with sex symbol tag!

2009-02-03T18:38:00.000-08:00

Emma Watson feels embarrassed being seen as a sex symbol.

The 18-year-old star, who rose to fame with her role of Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter films, admits that she’s struggling to come to terms with the ‘sexy’ tag.

She said that stylists had tried to put her in mini-skirts, and she had been flooded with offers to strip off in films, but she vowed never to get into it.

"I’m not just getting my kit off for anyone," the Telegraph quoted her as telling the Mail on Sunday’s Live magazine.

For the teen sensation, the idea of ‘sexiness’ is that the less one reveals the more people can wonder.

Emma said that paparazzi would never see her in revealing clothes.

"I find this whole thing about being 18 and everyone expecting me to be this object. I find the whole concept of being ‘sexy’ embarrassing and confusing,” she said.

"If I do a photo-shoot people desperately want to change me - dye my hair blonder, pluck my eyebrows, give me a fringe.

"Then there’s the choice of clothes. I know everyone wants a picture of me in a mini-skirt. But that’s not me. I feel uncomfortable. I’d never go out in a mini-skirt. It’s nothing to do with protecting the Hermione image. I wouldn’t do that.

"Personally, I don’t actually think it’s even that sexy. What’s sexy about saying, ‘I’m here with my boobs out and a short skirt... have a look at everything I’ve got’?

“My idea of sexy is that less is more. The less you reveal the more people can wonder," she added.

The only arty director she would strip for is Bernardo Bertolucci.

"I have no plans to do anything for the sake of it, or to shock people,” she said.

"I might be willing to take my clothes off for a Bertolucci film, if it was a part that really made sense as part of my character.

“But I wouldn’t do it just to make a point, to move on from Hermione. I’d hate to be so tactical. I’m not just getting my kit off for anyone," she added.

Dakota Fanning Lands in LA, Talks “New Moon”

2009-02-03T14:38:00.000-08:00

Finished up with a short promotional trip to New York City, Dakota Fanning was spotted arriving back home at LAX Airport on Tuesday (February 3).

The 14-year-old actress was in the Big Apple as she promoted her soon-to-be released movie “Push” - which hits theaters this Friday (February 6).

Aside from “Push,” Dakota also spoke about her possible role in the “Twilight” sequel “New Moon.”

Talking about the book series, Dakota tells, “I haven’t read all four yet. I’m working on it. Getting there. I’m just about to finish the first one.”

Of her possible character, Miss Fanning said, “The character is what I would be excited about. It’s kind of evil, something I’ve never done before, and it’s a vampire,” she said. “You know, it’s really cool, so I really hope it works out.”

Telling of fan’s excitement over her possible inclusion in the film, Dakota adds, “I know that Twilight is so sacred to some people, and I know that when people cast certain people, people have their opinions and that’s their right. That’s very flattering that they think I’d be right for the part.”

Harry Connick Jr adores all-girl family, wrote letter to Brad Pitt

2009-02-02T23:53:00.000-08:00

Harry Connick Jr. is one of the most successful musician-to-actor transitions ever. He’s made some memorable television appearances, been in several great films (Little Man Tate) and several flops, like the new film with Renee Zellweger, New In Town. All of this isn’t Connick’s fault, however, because he’s just lovely. Even though New In Town bombed at the box office this weekend, Harry’s still dutifully promoting it to OK! Magazine. It’s a really sweet interview - he talks about his wife and daughters, and how he wrote a letter to Brad Pitt.

Harry, 41, and his wife, Jill Goodacre, 43, have daughters Georgia, 12, Sarah, 11, and Charlotte, 6. They live in New Canaan, Connecticut.

Harry Connick Jr., 41, is set to melt hearts again in the romantic comedy New in Town. He plays Ted Mitchell, a Minnesota union leader at a factory that’s being restructured by Miami hotshot Lucy Hill (Renée Zellweger). Of course, as soon as Lucy and Ted lay eyes on each other, misunderstandings, pratfalls and eventually romance ensue.

These days, the Grammy-winning artist lives outside New York City with his wife of 14 years, former Victoria’s Secret supermodel Jill Goodacre, 43, and his three daughters: Georgia, 12, Sara Kate, 11, and Charlotte, 6. Passionate about his native New Orleans, he has been tireless in his fund-raising efforts for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

OK!: In New in Town, your character is a blue-collar guy who’s surprisingly caring. Is he anything like you?
He’s methodical and patient. I am not those things. I am much more spontaneous and impulsive.

OK!: Like when you met your wife, Jill?
When I saw her, I did a triple take. I went right up to her and introduced myself. I had never seen anybody that pretty in person.

OK!: What are her best qualities?
She’s strong, very secure and extremely smart. I have learned a lot from her, and I continue to.

OK!: Do the two of you still manage to have date nights?
Yeah, for sure. I mean when I am home – we don’t really go out on dates. We are kind of boring actually. We like to stay at home a lot. We really kind of dig being at home. Then when we do go out, all we do is talk about our kids. We like to look at pictures of them in albums. It’s pretty silly. But we do go out on dates, hang, and we have a good time. I do think spending time together is important.

OK!: What are you planning for Valentine’s Day?
Valentine’s Day? I can’t stand it! You’re forced to do something that you’re supposed to be doing the other 364 days of the year. We’ve never been big on candy or roses. It’s corny.

OK!: What’s the best part about living in a house full of women?
I get to hear what girls really think. There will be a boy they go to school with who’s gawky or awkward, and I’ll hear one of my kids say, “Oh, he’s cute, though. I really like him.” That makes me feel good because that was me — I was the nerd who played the piano.

OK!: Do you ever take them all out shopping?
I love it! One of my favorite things in the world is taking my girls to get their fingernails done. I love it. I will just sit there, and read magazines. That’s my life! That’s the gift that I have been given, and I really appreciate it. I really dig it. I also love throwing a football with them too. But I love watching them try on clothes, and things. It’s just fun!

OK!: Do your girls ever travel with you when you go on the road?
I went on tour in Asia about a year ago, and I took my two older daughters with me. I yanked them out of school for about three weeks, which didn’t go over well in certain circles at the school [laughs]. But I try to keep their normal schedule going as much as I can. I can’t say I help them with their homework, though. I can’t even do my fifth grader’s math homework. My seventh grader is doing algebra — but my brain doesn’t work like that.

OK!: Like Brad Pitt, you’ve worked to build new housing in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Have you met him?
I met him years ago, very briefly. I actually wrote him a letter to thank him for what he’s doing. I don’t know if he even got it. But if I ever see him again, I’ll thank him again, because the benefit to the city is unimaginable.

From OK! Magazine

I love the part where he talks about taking his girls to get their nails done. It seems like some men just adore the all-female family, and Harry’s one of them. I also liked the love Harry showed to Brad Pitt’s Make It Right NOLA. As Brad recently said, by next year, 100 homes will be up because of the project.

Harry Connick Jr. and his daughter, Georgia, 12, are shown in the header at the Tony Awards on 6/12/08. Credit: PRPhotos. Harry and Jill are also shown on 9/23 and 9/24/08. He is shown out going to the Apple store in Soho in August, 2008 with Georgia.

Jonathan Rhys Meyers: 'I’m Not a Romantic'

2009-02-02T21:39:00.000-08:00

He plays a royal with very sensual tastes in the Showtime hit The Tudors, but don't expect Jonathan Rhys Meyers to emulate Henry VIII's romantic prowess in real life.

“I’m not a romantic guy at all,” says Rhys Meyers, 31.

But it's not all bad news for the Irish actor's female fans.

“It’s not that I don’t believe in romance,” the actor said Friday while promoting the new cologne HUGO Element at Macy's in New York City. “It’s that I don’t believe in dinner for two by the ocean, walking down the beach holding hands – that version of romance.

“I think I’m probably romantic, but I’m not outwardly romantic. I’m not a player.”

In fact, Rhys Meyers is quick to point out that the British royal wasn't much of a player either.

“Well, Henry was actually quite a prude," he says, "I don’t think he’d be remembered as sexy in history."

But the series is all about "putting a modern-day take on" history, he adds.

In fact, the third season, which premieres April 15, "is better than seasons one and two put together," says Rhys Meyers. "I go through three wives this season!”

Isla Fisher Good Genes

2009-02-02T18:52:00.000-08:00

Isla Fisher feels "sexier" since having a baby. The Confessions of a Shopaholic actress -who has a 15-month old daughter Olive with her fiance Sacha Baron Cohen -feels happier about her body now than she ever has before. She said:

"I definitely feel sexier after having Olive because even though everything's going south and essentially ruined, I feel like I'm a real women now. I'm a mum. I love being a mum, just love it."

Isla recently revealed she is delighted to have lost her post-pregnancy pounds, but admits her weight loss has more to do with "good genes" than hours spent working out. She said:

"Jerry Bruckheimer, the 'Confessions...' producer, hired a personal trainer to help me get rid of the weight I put on during pregnancy. He said I was lucky I was blessed with good genes because I had a really bad attitude towards exercise - like stopping when it hurt or got boring and having a cup of tea and a slice of cake. Apparently you are not supposed to do that in Hollywood!"

Jordan & Peter Check Out The Schools

2009-02-02T14:52:00.000-08:00

Katie Price aka Jordan and Peter Andre with Katie's six-year-old son Harvey visited a School for blind children in Los Angeles, USA.

Seeing as Katie Price and Peter Andre have moved to Los Angeles for quite a considerable amount of time, well 4 months to be exact, it makes sense that they should find a school for Jordan’s 6-year-old son Harvey as soon as possible and that’s precisely what they did earlier on today.

Katie’s mum Amy and the ITV2 camera crew, who are documenting the family’s entire trip, joined Jordan, Peter and Harvey when they paid a visit to the Junior Blind of America School in Culver City.

Peter recently admitted, “With the help of Kate’s mum Amy, we’ve found a great school for Harvey so he can continue with his learning.”

So while he’s at school what will Katie and Peter be doing? Well apparently glamour model Jordan is hoping to try her luck at modelling in the US while Pete is planning to kick-start his music career.

Simon fantasises kissing Cheryl

2009-02-01T23:08:00.000-08:00

Simon Cowell has revealed his ‘sexual desire’ for fellow X-Factor judge Cheryl Cole.

The music mogul admitted that he fantasises to kiss Cheryl, if she weren’t married. When asked who he would choose if he could kiss anyone in the world and the 49-year-old star revealed that he fancied the Girls Aloud star.

“I’m going to get into so much trouble after this. I want a disclaimer first of all that I’m going to say this person as if they weren’t married...so I am going to say Cheryl Cole,” The Sun quoted him as saying.

In the magazine interview he added, “Who wouldn’t?” He then said hastily, “This is just pretend, right?”

Cowell has been single since splitting from long-time girlfriend Terri Seymour last October. And his comments come weeks after Cheryl — married to Chelsea star Ashley Cole — admitted: “Simon’s the most charismatic man I’ve ever met — it’s like he’s trancing you.”

Lisa Loeb Is Married!

2009-02-01T18:29:00.000-08:00

Lisa Loeb tied the knot with Roey Hershkovitz, a music supervisor for Late Night with Conan O'Brien, on Saturday, PEOPLE has learned exclusively.

The couple exchanged vows in a Jewish ceremony in front of 275 guests at a restaurant in New York City, the singer-songwriter's rep, Janet Billig Rich, tells PEOPLE. Loeb, 40, wore a strapless pink wedding gown by Amsale Blue Label and the groom wore a suit by Paul Smith.

Loeb and Hershkovitz met two years ago in New York City during a business meeting in which he was looking for a host for a food show he was developing.

The couple got engaged in November 2008.

A Cozy Wonderland
At the reception, guests will be served a buffet-style dinner of jumbo lump crab cakes and Caesar salad with anchovy beignets prepared by chef Julian Alonzo. Pastry chef Martin Howard created the white wedding cake with chocolate mousse.

The decor, designed by Sherri Adler & David Sawaryn, features all-white centerpieces arranged in a variety of copper and glass vases accented with fresh moss and tiny deer figurines.

Loeb says she wanted her guests to "come in from the cold to a cozy winter wonderland."

Adds wedding planner Amy Shey Jacobs of Chandelier Events: "They wanted their guests to feel warm, relaxed and well-fed."

Jazz band The Blue Vipers of Brooklyn are scheduled to entertain guests after dinner and will be followed by DJ Mike C who will spin tunes.

The newlyweds will donate flowers from their wedding to the FlowerPower Foundation run by Nancy Lawlor.

Claire Danes Dazzles at the DGA Awards

2009-02-01T14:07:00.000-08:00

Arriving alongside boyfriend Hugh Dancy, Claire Danes was on-hand for The 61st Annual DGA Awards held at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza in Los Angeles on Saturday night (January 31).

Looking stunning in a flowing blue dress, the 29-year-old “Stardust” sweetheart was in attendance as one of the evening’s presenters, joining the likes of Sean Penn, Amy Adams, Christian Bale and Michelle Monaghan.

Teaming up with actor Michael Shannon for her onstage duties, Claire handed out the Outstanding directorial achievement in a comedy series plaque to Paul Feig for his work on the “Dinner Party” episode of NBC’s “The Office”.

Meanwhile, the night’s big winner was Danny Boyle, who won the top prize for his directorial work on the hit movie “Slumdog Millionaire”.

Sheree Murphy Opens Up About Her ‘Biggest Fear’

2009-01-31T23:09:00.000-08:00

Most parents harbor a fear about their children being home during a robbery, and Sheree Murphy is no exception. Unlike most parents, however, Sheree’s fears are well-founded. In a new interview with The Mirror the 33-year-old UK actress reveals that machete-wielding burglars recently attempted to break into her home; While Sheree and her two older children — Taylor, 7, and Ruby Heather Toni, 5 — were not there, Sheree’s mom was, along with Sheree’s then-infant daughter Matilda, now 10-months. “They jumped over our gates and were trying to kick the door in — then they started attacking the door with knives,” Sheree recalled. Although the intruders were eventually scared away by a house alarm, the incident left Sheree shaken. She adds,

“Our house is like Fort Knox now. My biggest fear is the kids waking up and finding an intruder.”

While the family could conceivably move to Turkey, where Sheree’s husband Harry Kewell plays football, such a move presents it’s own challenges. “The nearest international school was an hour’s drive away and the drivers in Istanbul are crazy,” Sheree explains. “I didn’t want to uproot the family.” For now, Sheree is staying put in England — and raising three kids primarily on her own. “It’s the sleepless nights that kill you,” she says. “This time I’ve had a maternity nurse and it was the best money I’ve ever spent.” Regardless, Sheree adds that she’d “like another one.”

“But not yet because I’d like to go back to work for a bit first. I’ve always wanted a big family and I must admit I’d like another boy. I adore Ruby but everything’s a big drama with her and I can see how Matilda’s going to be even harder work because she has a big temper on her.”

Sheree goes on to note that although “three [kids] is definitely a lot harder than two,” she is “so lucky” to have a family to call her own. “My life is Harry and the kids,” she says.

Britney Spears dad slaps Adnan Ghalib, Sam Lutfi with restraining orders

2009-01-31T14:00:00.000-08:00

Jamie Spears has obtained a temporary restraining order against Sam Lutfi, Adnan Ghalib and John Eardley, an attorney who, a year ago, attempted to challenge Britney Spears' conservatorship without having any legal grounds to do so. The three have been conspiring together to make a new run at the conservatorship, so Sam and Adnan can get their collective douchebeards on her money and toned sober ass. TMZ reports:

Sam allegedly was calling lawyers saying that Britney wanted to hire her own lawyer, presumably to fight the conservatorship. Sources tell TMZ that is definitely not what Britney wanted.
Under the TRO, Lutfi, Ghalib and Eardley must stay 250 yards away from Britney, her parents and her kids. The TRO also prohibits the trio from "acting on Ms. Spears' behalf...inducing or assisting another person to file legal pleadings" on her behalf.
Interesting fun fact: In the petition for the TRO, it says Brit has been communicating with Adnan and that "Ms. Spears innocently informs Mr. Ghalib of her destinations and that he then arranges for paparazzi to meet and film her to his financial benefit."

If there's anyone out there who thinks Britney should be left to her own devices, just scope out the pics I've included which are surprisingly not from Predator 3: Give Me Chalupas or Give Me Death. I'm not saying she was completely crazy back then, but I've seen crackheads at the bus station I'd leave a child alone with first.

Britney Wants Lutfi and Ghalib to Rot in Jail

2009-01-30T23:28:00.000-08:00

We've learned Britney Spears conservators have just obtained a restraining order against Sam Lutfi and Adnan Ghalib.

Britney's lawyers went to court this morning to obtain the injunction.

A source close to the conservatorship tells Britney asked her conservators to "protect her from Sam and Adnan." We've also learned Britney told her conservators she was afraid of them both and hoped they could be locked up in jail.

Britney SpearsA source tells the conservators believe Lutfi and Ghalib conspired to try and undermine Britney's conservatorship in a way that would have been extremely harmful to her. We're also told attorney Jon Eardley -- the dude Lutfi used early last year to mount a bizarre, baseless attack on the conservatorship -- was allegedly also in on the conspiracy and the TRO is against him as well.

Brad Pitt Angelina Jolie Academy Awards 2009 Nominations: Oscars 2009 Nominees

2009-01-30T21:09:00.000-08:00

Hollywood’s Most Loved Couple, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie received Best Actor and Best Actress nominations for their performances in ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’ and ‘Changeling,’ at the 2009 Oscar nominations ceremony in Hollywood early Thursday. Despite their bad lock at the Golden Globes, Brad and Angelina, who are currently promoting Brad’s latest movie in Europa, might leave next month’s 81st Annual Academy Awards with matching Oscar. The 81st Annual Oscars will air on ABC February 22.

Nominations for The 81st Academy Awards were announced at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Hollywood.

The nominees for the year’s best in film are:

Best Film: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Milk, Slumdog Millionaire, The Reader

Best Actor: Richard Jenkins, Frank Langella, Sean Penn, Brad Pitt, Mickey Rourke

Best Actress: Anne Hathaway, Melissa Leo, Kate Winslet (The Reader), Meryl Streep, Angelina Jolie

Best Supporting Actor: Robert Downey Jr., Philip Seymour Hoffman, Heath Ledger, Michael Shannon, Josh Brolin

Best Supporting Actress: Amy Adams, Penelope Cruz, Viola Davis, Taraji P. Henson, Marisa Tomei

Best Director: Danny Boyle, Ron Howard, Gus Van Sant, David Fincher, Stephen Daldry

Best Animated Feature: Bolt, Kung Fu Panda, Wall-E

For the full list, visit the Oscars website!

Lindsay Lohan loses film role to Amanda Seyfried

2009-01-30T18:28:00.000-08:00

Lindsay’s latest paying gig: posing for an ad campaign for Italian designer Fornarina. But where are the film roles? Photo credit: Bauergriffin.

And the hits keep on coming for troubled actress Lindsay Lohan. Last year, her guest spot on ABC’s “Ugly Betty” was cut short, her film “Dare to Love Me” was indefinitely shelved, with a possible release date of 2010, and her other movie, “Labor Pains” is also in limbo after test screenings didn’t go so well.

She was rumored to be starring in a new comedy with Jack Black, but that seems to have disappeared, too. Seems like the only work she can get these days is modeling for ad campaigns and playing sidekick to her girlfriend’s DJ gigs. Now, reports are surfacing that “Big Love” and “Mamma Mia” star Amanda Seyfried has beat Lohan out for a role in the much-anticipated adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s “A Woman of No Importance,” co-starring Annette Bening.

Mamma Mia! star Amanda Seyfried has beaten Lindsay Lohan to the lead role in a big-screen adaptation of Oscar Wilde play A Woman Of No Importance. Mean Girls star Lohan was first linked to the part in 2006, but she appears to have lost out to Seyfried, who will step back in time for the upper-class dark comedy, set in Britain’s Victorian era.

She will star opposite Sean Bean, who will portray womaniser Lord Illingworth, and Annette Bening will play his mother, according to Variety.

[From IMDB.com]

It certainly isn’t a big surprise - with questions swirling about Lindsay’s sobriety, and rumors about her on-set antics at “Ugly Betty,” casting her in a major role would be a huge risk that not many studios would be willing to take until she proves herself to be reliable. And Seyfried is a hot commodity right now, winning critical reviews for her role as the daughter of a Mormon polygamist family on the HBO drama “Big Love,” and gaining even more visibility as Meryl Streep’s daughter in “Mamma Mia.” As a veteran of the business, Lindsay should know all too well that there is always another pretty, talented young actress waiting in the wings if you should stumble.

Amanda Seyfried is shown looking smashing at the Golden Globe Awards. Photo credits: Bauergriffin.

Kilmer to be king of Bacchus in New Orleans parade

2009-01-30T13:27:00.000-08:00

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — "Batman Forever" star Val Kilmer will reign as celebrity king when the Krewe of Bacchus parade rolls through New Orleans on Feb. 22, two days before Mardi Gras.

Kilmer will be decked out in royal apparel as he rides through the city on a float in the annual parade.

"He's very excited," said Bacchus captain Owen "Pip" Brennan, who has been in contact with Kilmer about the event.

Kilmer will visit Children's Hospital, a tradition every reigning Bacchus has participated in for the past three decades, Brennan said.

"He loves coming to New Orleans," Brennan said. "He said this has always been a favorite destination of his."

Kilmer's screen credits also include "Top Gun," "The Doors" and 2006's "Deja Vu" with Denzel Washington, which was filmed in New Orleans.

Last year, wrestler and reality TV star Hulk Hogan was the krewe's celebrity king.

Danny Kaye was the first Bacchus in 1969. Past Bacchus kings also include William Shatner, Billy Crystal, James Gandolfini, Bob Hope, Nicolas Cage, Kirk Douglas, Charlton Heston and Ron Howard.

Bacchus organizers on Friday also unveiled the doubloon that will bear Kilmer's likeness. A doubloon is a souvenir coin thrown to spectators during the parade.

Lily Allen Attributes Weight Loss to “Happiness”

2009-01-29T23:39:00.000-08:00

Lily Allen has “happiness” to thank for her new slender figure.

The 23-year-old singer tells U.K.’s The Sun, “The only reason I have lost weight is because I comfort eat when I’m not very happy.”

Allen says booze didn’t help: “The last two years, even though I had a lot of success with my first record, I was … getting so drunk.”

Currently, Lily is promoting her new album It’s Not Me, but not too long ago the “Smile” singer was going through some pretty unhappy times.

“I was on tour with people I didn’t know, and I was all around the world working really hard and was really confused and lonely,” she tells the paper.

Last year, Lily suffered a miscarriage, went through a breakup, and recently opened up about also having spent time in a mental institution.

Lily also dished on the latest man in her life, art dealer Jay Jopling, 45, and her track record for continually dating older men:

“Lester was 20 and had no money, Seb was 30 and had a bit more, Ed was 40 and had a bit more, and Jay is pushing 50.”

Jokingly, she added, “That means the next one’s probably gonna be 60, I like them old … and rich.”

Britney looks awesome, but hates K-Fed’s girlfriend

2009-01-29T22:55:00.000-08:00

New pics posted on the official Britney Spears website show the rehabbed pop star looking fierce in rehearsals for her upcoming “Circus” tour. Clad in a skimpy bikini top and low-rise sweats, Spears is shown dancing up a storm and looking seriously hot. But she’s still getting steamed under the collar about the amount of time her ex-husband’s new girlfriend, Victoria Prince, is spending around their two boys - and she has no problem letting K-Fed know it.

On Monday, a longtime Spears insider called this column to share tidbits from a nasty phone fight between the entertainer and K-Fed — mostly focusing on Spears’ obsession with Prince, especially when it comes to her children.

Calling the conversation a “total hysterical screaming match,” the source claimed Spears told Federline in no uncertain terms she did not want “that [c-word] anywhere near my kids.” The witness also reported that Federline apparently went into some detail — on the other end of the phone line — telling Spears, “You really don’t have much say about that.” That was a clear reminder the singer still has limited parental rights when it comes to her sons Sean Preston and Jaden James.

Britney is furious because she and Federline had gone to a couple of counseling sessions she thought might lead to a reconciliation, but he thought were more to help them have a civil relationship as they deal with their kids, etc.

Another Spears associate said Spears and Federline recently had been getting on so well, Britney had invited him to join her next tour in some capacity. She has now reportedly rescinded that offer, though Federline apparently told her he never even would have thought about it.

The Monday argument is only the latest in several similar disagreements the former couple has had the past few days — all centered on similar issues, particularly Prince’s increasingly high-profile role in the boys’ lives.

The good news: “Unlike in [other traumas in] the past, Britney didn’t go take a pill or a drink, but went downstairs and did some yoga to calm down. … I think that’s a good sign she’s growing up and dealing with Kevin’s b.s.,” added the source.

[From The Chicago Sun-Times]

Well, I suppose doing yoga instead of getting hopped up on booze and pills is progress for Britney - but after all this time, she should be able to understand the difference between K-Fed trying to get along for the sake of the kids and trying to get back together with her. It doesn’t seem as though there is any interest in a reconciliation on his end, so she needs to let that go - and that includes calling his girlfriend the c-bomb. This latest incident probably stemmed from some new paparazzi photographs over the weekend of K-Fed and Victoria taking the boys out to eat. Sean was pictured sitting in Victoria’s lap looking very happy. I’m sure Brit feels threatened by that, especially since Sean doesn’t seem to have bonded with his mom the way Jayden has.

But if the boys seem to like Victoria, and she treats them well, it really is the best case scenario in a divorce. Britney should be happy about that. And about her six-pack abs.

Elezabeth Hasselbeck Pregnant Again

2009-01-29T19:39:00.000-08:00

Resident conservative on “The View” Elezabeth Hasselbeck announced on Thursday that she is pregnant. This will be her third child with Seattle Seahawks quarterback Matt Hasselbeck.

We can rest assured that even if the child is diagnosed with serious genetic problems during the pregnancy, Elizabeth will follow her strong conservative values and keep the baby no matter how horribly painful or short the child’s life may be. Good for her! (but very bad for the helpless child.)

Country First, values second, health and wellbeing of child…distant third.

Keisha Whitaker Braved Frigid Weather For a ‘Life Changing Celebration’

2009-01-29T15:39:00.000-08:00

The inauguration of the 44th President had celebrities flying into Washington from all over the globe. While some opted to leave their little ones at home due to the frigid temperatures, actress Keisha Whitaker refused to let the cold air keep her family from witnessing the historic event. A guest blogger for Mom Logic, Keisha writes that the first stop for the family was the inauguration concert. Although her group rocked out to their favorite singers, for the actress, the “life changing celebration” was much more than a great performance. Watching her children enjoy themselves, Keisha’s fondest memory of that evening came when her husband, actor Forest Whitaker, took the stage.

“As a mother, I felt so happy to hold my girls’ hands and rock with them. I’m choked up just writing this…For them to see their father onstage participating in such a celebration honoring the first African American First Family. We were soo proud.”

After a group meeting with President Barack Obama and his family — where Keisha admits to snapping “photos like a mammarazzi” — the family geared up for the inauguration ceremony. Prepared to look their best for the big day, Keisha, in retrospect, can’t help but “half-regret” the decision to dress-up for the occasion — a lesson the Whitakers quickly learned when they were left to walk more than a mile to their seats. Prepared for the bitter temperatures, Keisha bundled up her brood with “trenchcoats, handwarmers, footwarmers, hats, gloves, scarves, and Thermacares (Yes, I wrapped their bodies in heated pads used for back pain). It was that cold!!” Once the family arrived, however, their focus was on nothing more but ”the energy…amazing and buzzing all around us.”

“When the swearing in ceremony began, I felt warm despite the weather. We have a ritual we do as a family when we are having an experience — whether it’s a delicious meal, a walk on the beach — we take a moment and breathe in and say, ‘We were all here together.’ At this moment we were there all together watching the inauguration of the 44th President of the United States Barack Obama. We all took a deep breath in and let the moment sink into our bodies, soul and spirit.”

Together the couple have daughters Sonnet Noel, 12, and True Isabella Summer, 10, while Keisha has daughter Autumn, 18, and Forest has son Ocean, 19, from previous relationships.

Kelly Rowland Splits from Beyonce’s Manager Dad

2009-01-28T19:16:00.000-08:00

Bringing an end to a long business relationship, Kelly Rowland will no longer be having Beyonce’s dad Matthew Knowles taking care of her management duties.

With the announcement being made on Wednesday (January 28), Knowles said that he is bowing out as her manager - after helping Miss Rowland since childhood, even raising her for awhile.

According to AP reports, Kelly says “she will always be a part of Beyonce’s family, but she no longer will be managed by the superstar’s father.”

Meanwhile, Knowles echoed the same sentiments, also saying that Kelly will always be family and that the split was amicable.

As for the next step in Miss Rowland’s career, the 26-year-old Destiny’s Child singer has kept mum on who she’ll be choosing as a replacement.

Brad Pitt talks about Oscar hopes in Tokyo

2009-01-28T17:55:00.000-08:00

We reported yesterday on Brangelina’s arrival in Japan. As the family walked through the airport, it seems like every photographer in the world got pictures of them. Today Brad had a press call in Tokyo for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Unfortunately for all involved, he neither shaved off his moustache nor took off that newsboy cap.

Brad did talk about how honored he was by the critical reaction to Button, and how much he hopes people will keep coming back to see it. He also talked a little about his own chaotic life, but managed to stay mostly on-topic about the film. Reuters has details.

Hollywood actor Brad Pitt said on Wednesday he was thrilled by the raft of Academy Award nominations for “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” which include his own first nomination for the best actor award.

Pitt was in Tokyo with his partner Angelina Jolie and their six children for the Japan premier of the film, which leads this year’s field with 13 Oscar nominations, one short of the record shared by “All About Eve” (195O) and “Titanic” (1997).

“So we’re thrilled to see it, to see it acknowledged that way,” Pitt told a news conference in Tokyo. For us you know, it means that more people get to see it and I think it’s a worthy film that deserves that kind of viewing — over and over again. Go see it three times and see it again,” he added.

Pitt, 45, faces a tough race for the best actor award, to be announced on February 22, with Sean Penn and Mickey Rourke seen as the favorites for their respective roles as a gay rights activist in “Milk” and an aging professional fighter in “The Wrestler.”

“Benjamin Button” tracks the love story between the title character, played by Pitt, and Daisy, played by Cate Blanchett, and the joy and pain they face as one gets younger and the other older.

Pitt, said his current life was as dramatic as the life of the fictional Button, who was born in his eighties and aged backwards.

“Well, I think it’s well documented. I have six children now so it doesn’t get more dramatic than that,” said Pitt.

In July 2008, Jolie gave birth in France to twins, a girl named Vivienne Marcheline and a boy named Knox Leon. In addition to the twins, Jolie and Pitt are parents to four other young children — adoptees Maddox, Pax and Zahara, and their first biological daughter, Shiloh. Japanese television showed the entire family arriving at the airport in Tokyo, greeted by screaming fans.

“Benjamin Button,” loosely based on a 1920s short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, has been floating around Hollywood for decades. The film’s producers, Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall, took over the project about 18 years ago, but struggled with the central issue — how to depict its star being born as an old man and eventually dying as a baby.
Technical wizardry allowed the producers and director David Fincher to use Pitt throughout rather than multiple actors. Despite the flow of Oscar nominations, “Benjamin Button” has had a rough ride so far this awards season, having been ignored by both the Critics Choice Awards and the Golden Globes, two Oscar bellwethers.

[From Reuters]

I think Benjamin Button will probably take home a few Oscars for the special effects and make-up, but I doubt it will pull a Forrest Gump and win Best Actor, Director and Picture, despite its Gump-like qualities.

And while this is perhaps off-topic, where is Cate Blanchett? She’s been MIA for a large part of promoting this film. I realize Blanchett has work to do in Australia (I think she’s directing a play) but would it kill her to show up for this film’s media blitz every now and then? I miss her, and her fabulous style.

Justin Timberlake discusses his `SNL’ jokes

2009-01-28T13:55:00.000-08:00

Justin Timberlake is the man! Who can argue with this?! He is sexy, funny, and can sing us ladies to…well we won’t go there. Whenever he is on SNL I make sure I watch it, record it, rewind and watch it again. SNL and Justin are the perfect combination! His mother seems to like his risky skits as well. As reported by the AP:

NEW YORK – One visit to Beyonce’s dressing room was all it took for Justin Timberlake to ease her concerns about a “Saturday Night Live” skit featuring the two of them.

When Beyonce told him she was having second thoughts about a sketch where Timberlake was to “audition” for a video, he showed up at her dressing room in a robe covering a leotard. He dropped the robe and stood there, staring into space.

Beyonce’s reply: “I can’t look anywhere but your face right now,” Timberlake told CBS’ Katie Couric in an interview for next week’s pre-Grammy special.

Timberlake also said another, more infamous “SNL” skit where he offered a piece of his anatomy as a gift got a thumbs up from his mom. She thought it was funny.

“You gotta meet my mom,” he said. “She’s a pretty edgy chick!”

Geri Halliwell Engaged

2009-01-27T20:14:00.000-08:00

Former Spice Girl, Geri Halliwell–aka Ginger Spice–is engaged.

The 36-year-old single mom is set to wed her boyfriend of only two months, yacht-company owner Fabrizio Politi, 34, according to U.K.’s The Sun.

Halliwell is said to have received a $310,000 diamond ring from her mega-rich Italian beau over the holidays.

The two met last December in Florence.

A wedding date has yet to be announced.

See Brangelina's Knox & Vivienne

2009-01-27T15:10:00.000-08:00

Okay, those are some beautiful babies.

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie arrived in Japan today, with their whole crew. Angelina carried six-month old Vivienne in a papoose, while Brad toted Viv's counterpart, Knox.

Look how Knox is wearing a matching hat to Brad's!

Seriously, I'm dying over how cute they are.

Does Angela Have Designs on Jim

2009-01-27T12:15:00.000-08:00

Remember when Angela of The Office was just a meek accountant? How times have changed! After we quoted her character's immortal line, "I will respect the results of the duel," Angela Kinsey herself told us, "Angela's sort of prim and proper in her sluttiness. She's now the office mattress." But wait, what does Angela do now that she's single again? Could she sleep with someone else, like, oh...Jim?!

The Office's Super Bowl Sunday spectacular is just six short days away, and to celebrate we've got exclusive scoop from the stars of the show. They tell us what to expect after the game and dish on Ryan's whereabouts, Michael's new boss and, of course, Angela's next office conquest!

Shut Up Matt Damon

2009-01-27T00:08:00.000-08:00

I'm waiting for today to be less boring and I really want to like Matt Damon, but apparently little miss Tuesday is being difficult. Us Magazine reports:

Damon -- whose latest Untitled Jason Bourne Project is now in production for a 2010 release -- also spoke out about how his famous assassin character is nothing like James Bond. "They could never make a James Bond movie like any of the Bourne films," Damon said. "Because Bond is an imperialist, misogynist sociopath who goes around bedding women and swilling martinis and killing people. He's repulsive.

Wow, seriously? For real? I might be mistaken, but I've seen all the Bourne movies and I don't recall any scenes where Jason Bourne was working for Meals on Wheels or teaching a black orphan boy how to fly a kite. I mostly remember him snapping foreigner's necks. Bond kills people and bangs hot spy ass because it's his job, but I guess Bourne does it because he's a victim and doesn't know why God made him like this. Who knows if this age old argument will ever be settled, but I know what we can all agree on my friends. A regular towel doesn't even work wet, but the ShamWow! works wet or dry! You'll be saying wow every time!

Angelina Jolie: We ‘Never Really’ Adjust to Time Zone Change

2009-01-26T21:41:00.000-08:00

Professional jet-setters by day, a glamorous duo by night! Strutting their stuff last night at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were thrilled with their movie’s nominations – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Changeling — but admitted that the two were a bit preoccupied when they originally received the news. “We both were busy with the kids and doing different things with the day and we weren’t actually together when we heard,” Angelina revealed to Access Hollywood.

While the couple walked the red carpet, stopping along the way for short interviews, the 32-year-old actress laughed that she often forgets what time zone she is in. Chatting with Entertainment Tonight, Angelina says that the family of eight — which includes Maddox Chivan, 7, Pax Thien, 5, Zahara Marley, 4, Shiloh Nouvel, 2 ½, and fraternal twins Knox Léon and Vivienne Marcheline, 6 ½ months — will be packing their bags and heading to Tokyo today. The brood, however, is always up for the adventure!

“Our kids are always packing, they like to pack! It’s like a game in our house. We travel so much, we never really have to adjust [to the time zones]. We just change school time to, you know, four in the afternoon … just wing it!”

With six kids along for the ride, Brad — who shares that the family has learned to “develop that system and it works” — reveals that it may be time to add another baby to the mix. Reluctant to answer at first, Brad goes on to laugh, ‘We average about two a year, so I guess we’re overdue, aren’t we?” As for Angelina, the busy mama is definitely open to expanding her family even further. “If they come our way, we’d be happy to have them all,” says the actress, who admits the duo “love children.”

However, the past year may be hard to top for the Jolie-Pitts, as the couple agree that the addition of “two healthy little babies made this the best year.” Although any more responsibilities may have the proud papa contemplating the science of cloning! After being asked if he was indeed cloned, Brad jokes that he is definitely “thinking about it!”

Nicollette Sheridan in a bikini is the antidote

2008-10-06T18:58:00.000-07:00

These are shots of Desperate Housewives star Nicollette Sheridan in Malibu yesterday. Will someone explain to me how the hell Michael Bolton breaks up with that?

Seriously, she's got to be the hottest 44-year-old woman on the planet. In fact, if you slapped bikinis on all the hot 44-year-olds out there and put them in a room, Nicollette would own them all. Then again, we should probably make them pillow fight first. Not for me, of course, but for science.

Beyonce in a bikini

2008-10-05T20:52:00.000-07:00

In an unexpected Friday surprise,I got a hold of some Beyonce Knowles bikini pics.

I gotta admit though, they're a tad anticlimactic considering she usually errs on the side of smokin' hot.
It's like unwrapping a Wii on Christmas morning, but inside the box is not Beyonce's butt. Curse you, Claus!

Celebrity Birthdays

2008-10-05T18:44:00.000-07:00

These celebrities were born on October 5:
Nicky Hilton is 25.
Steve Miller 65.
Heather Headley 34.

Bob Geldof is 57.
Steve Miller is 65.
Jesse Palmer is 30.

Eva Longoria and Tony Parker Bring A-Game for Emmys

2008-09-23T19:04:00.000-07:00

The Celebrity couple, Eva Longoria and Tony Parker showed up at the 60th Annual Primetime Emmys looking quite classy and glamorous. Eva looked stunning in a silver strapless pretty dress with matching massive silver heels, while her NBA husband went for a grey suit. The best stars from TV and the movie world enjoyed putting on their best dresses on the red carpet, among them is also Heidi Klum.

In other Celebrity news, Eva Longoria wasn’t too happy about the plans of Heather Mills to make a guest appearance this season in Desperate Housewives.

Heather was desperate to live in America. She wanted to be accepted by Hollywood in any way. I tried to get her on Desperate Housewives in a little cameo. The producer was keen. I reckon they saw the chance to get some headlines for the show. But when the stars discussed it, Eva Longoria was totally against it. She demanded Heather be dropped from consideration.
- Mills’ ex-publicist Michele Elyzabeth told press -

Heather Mills Bronx Vegan Food Donation $1 Million

2008-09-23T18:53:00.000-07:00

Here is a good news, Heather Mills has donated $1 million in veggie burgers and other vegan food to poor children sponsored by Hunts Point Alliance for Children in the Bronx, New York. A few there knew that she the former wife of Sir Paul McCartney who helped with the grill at a community party, promoting healthy diets for children where she was named Honorary Chair of the Hunts Point Alliance for Children, on Saturday.

Heather Mills has been an advocate for the vegan lifestyle since 1993, and the $1 Million veggie supplies should last for three years.

My plan is to get healthy food out to kids and to get it in the service industry, get it in retail, make a fast-food chain around the world with healthy options and just keep doing my work behind the scenes.
- Heather Mills told People Magazine -

Prince William’s RAF Decision Means Royal Marriage Soon Or Not At All

2008-09-21T19:10:00.000-07:00

The decision of Prince William to spend the next five years as a full-time RAF helicopter search and rescue pilot appears that he and Kate Middleton will either marry soon, or not marrying at all.

Those people, who are close to Prince William, revealed that they have ‘no idea which way it will go’. Surprisingly, a source revealed that [Prince] William’s future with Kate is ‘one topic he never discusses’ but it did not mean that that he didn’t ‘love’ her. Friends think he does.

Perhaps it was Prince William’s chronic fear of being married too soon was so great that he is prepared to risk the relationship to avoid it.

His RAF decision, which the aides revealed that it was his decision alone, may give him more time and even months to think since he and Kate will be hundreds of miles apart.

It was believed that the Queen already thinks that Kate Middleton is ’something of a show-off’, and Buckingham Palace courtiers were ‘appalled’ at what they saw as a ‘most unladylike display’ at the roller skate charity evening. It was preciously reported that Kate Middleton accidentally fell on the dance floor.

Kate Middleton’s friend complained: “What do they want her to do - sit at home every evening watching television just because her prince is away?”

The friend added: “Kate’s in an impossible position. She’s hates that awful phrase “Waity Katy” and it makes her mother quite upset. It’s why she’s asked all her friends to call her “Catherine”.”

Some skeptics are guessing that [Prince] William’s RAF decision is convenient in terms of his relationship with Kate Middleton. Perhaps it is clear that the 26-year-old prince is in love with RAF dress uniform.

A cynic explained: “His decision provides her with the perfect opportunity to walk away - if she wishes. He’s going to be tied up, probably in some Northern coastal station or even in Scotland, while she’s in London.”

As for Kate Middleton, her friends thought that the brunette beauty is better equipped than Sarah Ferguson for life in RAF married quarters and she is also prepared to live in them as Prince William’s wife.

One friend explained: “If she has to wait for him, she will. They have split up before, remember, and William has always come grovelling back on her terms.”

The fact is, however, that without any defined role or any proper guidance from Clarence House of what is expected of her while he is away, Kate Middleton is left to make her own decisions about how to fill her days, which are scarcely arduous. Her ‘job’ is helping compile and edit catalogs for her parents on-line party accessory company, Party Pieces.

Tags: Buckingham Palace, decision, Kate Middleton, Prince William, Prince William's romance, RAF, roller skate, royal marriage, Sarah Ferguson, unladylike display

Princess Eugenie Got A Crush On A Hunk Model

2008-09-21T19:07:00.000-07:00

Princess Eugenie, who previously attended a fashion show, wasn’t just admiring the designer clothes when she sat in the front row of the Fashion For Relief charity show.

The 18-year-old princess, who was photographed weeks ago on the arm of dashing lad Sam Sangster, took a shine to strapping model Tyson Beckford.

The strapping model also drew admiring glances from Sarah Brown, who is the wife of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, when he strode down the catwalk in his leathers before revealing a perfectly honed torso.

A source, who is sitting in a front row, revealed: “[Princess] Eugenie got all hot and flustered when Tyson [Beckford] came on stage.”

Another friend added: “It’s well known in her circle that she really likes black men. She thinks they have the best bodies.”

Angelina Jolie Did Not Master Any Culinary Skills

2008-09-21T19:04:00.000-07:00

Angelina Jolie admits that she has never been able to master any culinary skills despite the fact that she got six children with partner Brad Pitt.

The “Wanted” star declared: “I don’t cook - it’s the one thing I can’t do!”

When it comes to cooking, Angelina Jolie insisted that Brad Pitt is the parent responsible for the cooking. The actress admitted: “When I get away from filming and doing interviews, I join Brad and the children to have breakfast or lunch. Brad is always thinking about the kids and what to feed them for breakfast. For him it’s the most important meal of the day.”

Although the 33-year-old actress likes being as open as she can, she is determined to keep some things private, saying: “I’m honest and I like that I don’t have to worry about what I say because I don’t have the time or energy for it. Sometimes things are taken the wrong way and it’s crazy to be misinterpreted - it does bother me. But there’s also a lot of people don’t know about me.”

The actress added: “People know about a tenth of my life and because it’s a certain kind of life, they assume that’s everything. But I do have my secrets.”

Pamela Anderson Blasts Giorgio Armani

2008-09-21T19:01:00.000-07:00

Pamela Anderson has joined the animal rights activists at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) to encourage A-list stars to shun fashion designer Giorgio Armani.

The blonde animal rights activist is rallying for the organization’s disapproval of the Italian designer, after he reportedly fell through on his promises to PETA last year to drop fur from his clothes.

PETA President Dan Matthews tells the New York Post that Anderson will reveal plans on Saturday in Italy to put “stars who attend Armani shows in the hot seat”, urging them to wear the red carpet creations of other designers during the upcoming awards season.

The PETA president also revealed: “We feel betrayed. I have met with Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger and many other designers who once used fur but had a change of heart, and not one of them broke their promise.”

Jennifer Aniston Won’t Worry About ‘Ridiculous’ Story

2008-09-21T18:57:00.000-07:00

The 39-year-old actress revealed: “You hear so many ridiculous stories and things which are just plain lies, and you want to go on the record, but you can’t because it just inflames things more. I’m so used to it now that I just don’t pay attention. I just live my life, focus on my work and stick to the plan. I really don’t worry about what’s written about me. It’s part of the business.”

The Californian beauty, who can soon be seen in new independent film “Management,” explained that she was attracted to the film because it gave her more scope to add her own touches as an actress.

She added: “You can take more chances on an independent film because there isn’t as much money or studio pressure riding on it. You don’t have to follow all the conventions as an actress, you feel that maybe you can take more chances with your performance.”

Paris Hilton and Benji Madden In Reyerson Theatre

2008-09-12T01:00:00.000-07:00

According to recent reports, Paris Hilton and her jealous boyfriend Benji Madden arrived at the “Paris, Not France” premiere held at Reyerson Theatre during the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival on Tuesday evening, September 9. In Adria Petty’s documentary is starring the entire Hilton family and their friends, following the day-to-day life of Paris Hilton.

The AP released an article about the premiere of “Paris, Not France”. As reported, Paris travelled to Toronto to watch the film.

At the end, the director, Adria Petty, answered a few questions, but Paris didn’t. The documentary discusses about different aspects, such as her image, tabloid photographers and her business.

For more media buzz, Paris Hilton canceled two advance screenings that were scheduled prior to this evening’s premiere at the advice of her publicist.

We wanted to create more buzz, create some hype. We felt the impact would be more extreme if we had one screening. She is a partner with the documentary and will be attending Tuesday’s screening in support of it.
- Paris Hilton rep, Jason Moore, told press

Heidi Klum German Supermodel

2008-09-12T00:51:00.000-07:00

The famous supermodel and mother Heidi Klum was spotted at the 59th Street Bloomingdales store in New York City on September 9th, for her Heidi Klum by Jordache launch. The German supermodel looked fantastic in a loose-fitting grey button-up top with a pair of slim fit jeans and pointy-toed heels.

As for her Project Runway gig, rumor has it that Jennifer Lopez will be joining the judges’ panel to help decide on the winner of this season.

this profile Heidi Klum:
Heidi Klum is a German supermodel who is one of the most recognizable faces in the modeling industry. Her rise to fame is mostly attributed to her appearing in both the Victoria's Secret catalog and Sports Illustrated's swimsuit issue. She was born on June 1, 1973 in Bergisch Gladbach, Germany and was discovered after entering a German national modeling contest in 1991. Heidi Klum has appeared on the covers of most of the well known fashion magazines. She has also appeared in various TV shows and movies and became the host and judge of the reality show Project Runway in 2004. In 2007 she was named third on the Forbe's list of top earning supermodels. In this site you will find over 450 pictures of Heidi Klum in 7 different categories.

Why is this girl on the cover of Elle

2008-08-01T00:21:00.000-07:00

What is this crappy cover? That doesn’t even look like her…then again who’d want the real Jessica Simpson? Here’s an idiotic quote:

On her life changing incident:
“I was singing ‘9 to 5’ and I choked and forgot the words in front of the president and in front of Dolly Parton, who’s like the president to me. And the last time I sang in front of the president , I had messed up the lyrics to ‘God Bless America’ so its kind of a thing I have with George W. Anyway, I broke down and said I’m sorry in front of the whole audience. My dad was there. I looked him in the face and said, ‘I will never sing again.”

Dolly Parton? Are you shitting me? She’s probably the only country singer you know Jessica.

On her rocky love life:
“I was going through a lot of pain. I didn’t try anything to change my life other than dating different types of guys and conforming to their worlds. I thought I had to be artsier, more intellectual.”

You thought wrong…wait..you think? Your micro-sized cerebrum actually allows you to think? Jessica Simpson is just a washed up pair of torn jeans in the back of my closet…

Ne-Yo, Chris Brown, Julianne Hough Wrigley’s Gum Jingles Launch

2008-07-30T20:18:00.000-07:00

The celebrities Julianne Hough, Chris Brown, and Ne-Yo team up for the launched of their new Wrigley’s Gum jingles at the Nokia Theatre in New York City on Tuesday. The stars recorded hip remakes of the signature songs that accompanied classic Doublemint, Big Red, and Juicy Fruit commercials.

Chris Brown’s single “Forever” was actually produced as a jingle for Wrigley’s new Doublemint promo campaign, Ne-Yo got the Big Red’s “Kiss A Little Longer” and Julianne Hough is the new voice of the Juicy Fruit campaign. The Wrigley’s campaign will premiere in August.

Jessica Simpson will perform for the August concert

2008-07-30T20:15:00.000-07:00

Fallsview Casino Resort announced recently that Jessica Simpson will perform for the August concert. The pop singer Jessica Simpson, whose August 28th show sold out almost immediately when it was announced earlier this month, will perform in Fallsview’s Avalon Theatre on Wednesday, August 27th.

She will take the stage to perform hits like “Come On Over,” “These Boots Are Made For Walkin’,” “Irresistible,” “I Belong To Me” and “A Public Affair.” Tickets to the August 27th Jessica Simpson show will be available beginning at noon on Tuesday, July 29, at all Ticketmaster outlets.

Ms. Simpson’s show sold out as quickly as any we’ve ever had here at Fallsview Casino over the last four years. When the opportunity came along for us to book her for a second show, we jumped at it. Our customers have made it abundantly clear that they want to see Ms. Simpson’s show.
- said Greg Medulun, Director of Communications -

Alicia Keys Apologizes to Fans

2008-07-30T20:11:00.000-07:00

The BBC reports that multiplatinum-selling Grammy winner Alicia Keys has apologized to fans in Indonesia after finding out that an upcoming concert was sponsored by tobacco company Philip Morris. Anti-smoking organization Tobacco Free Kids criticized Alicia Keys when billboards promoting her concert were having a logo for the A Mild cigarette brand.

The R&B singer apologized to fans in Indonesia and said that the tobacco company had subsequently withdrawn their sponsorship.

I apologize for any misleading advertising initially associated with the show. I’m an unyielding advocate for the well-being and health of children around the world and do not condone or endorse smoking. I look forward to bringing my music and message to my wonderful fans in Jakarta.
- said Alicia Keys -

Lauren Conrad needs breasts

2008-07-13T18:31:00.000-07:00

You’re not hot Lauren Conrad.
The only reasons why anyone watches The Hills are to see:

1. Audrina take off her clothing. ( SUPER HOT)

2. Spencer being an ass. ( He adds the evil to the show)

You’re not hot Lauren Conrad.
The only reasons why anyone watches The Hills are to see:

1. Audrina take off her clothing. ( SUPER HOT)

2. Spencer being an ass. ( He adds the evil to the show)

3. Heidi being a dumb hoe. ( Everyone loves a tramp)

So Lauren, do yourself a effing favor and get some impants. Maybe then we will add YOU as a reason to watch the show.

Miley Cyrus, you little whore

2008-07-13T18:29:00.000-07:00

Hello myspace whore. Miley Cyrus is the not only the most annoying person in the world, she also wins the whoriest child award.

Dude is that picture even legal. She’s like a f****ing fetus or some shit. So THESE pictures are from some cool ass hacker. Miley sent them via her phone to Nick Jonas! So this confirms that Nick is NOT a virgin . How shocking!!! Wait, wait they only had oral sex…stupid bitch oral sex is still sex.

But hasn’t anyone realized that Miley has the body of a 12-year-old boy…this might even confirm that Nick Jonas is gay! They probably don’t have to use condoms since they haven’t reached puberty yet- so that’s always a plus.

Disney must be super pleased that they introduce these shitty little dumpster sluts as role models for millions of children out there!!!

Movie: The Truth About Diamonds

2008-07-11T20:59:00.000-07:00

According to recent news, Nicole Richie’s 2005 coming-of-age novel The Truth About Diamonds is being developed into television series. Although the novel is based on her own life, Nicole says she will serve as an executive producer once the project reaches the small screen. The Truth About Diamonds chronicles “the adventures of spoiled socialite Chloe Parker, the adopted daughter of a rock musician, through her ill-fated relationships with booze, drugs, and the Hollywood party scene”.

I would definitely produce and definitely be in the show.
- the socialite told E! News exclusively -

Rumors Paris Hilton was punched in the face outside

2008-07-11T02:52:00.000-07:00

Paris Hilton has declined all the rumors like she was punched in the face outside a Tinseltown hotspot on Tuesday night.

According to some onlookers Paris got a black eye when she was leaving the Coco de Ville with her sis Nicky few days ago. But the hotel heiress says that the story of a female clubber who punched her in the face was a total lie and someone just made it up to get publicity for the club, reports PopCrunch.

Paris says, “It’s so not true…I had a great time last night and didn’t even have an argument with anyone. I don’t know where they come up with this stuff…It’s a completely made-up story.”

Sasha Baron Cohen and Isla Fisher Wedding Postphoned

2008-07-11T02:50:00.000-07:00

Sasha Baron Cohen and Isla Fisher has to put their marriage on hold, because of religious issues, reported MailOnline.

The couple planned to have a wedding this summer, but it seems the Aussie actress hasn’t converted to the actor’s faith of Judaism. The studies have taken her longer than she expected, but she’s working on it.

A source says, “‘Isla was supposed to spend her time after giving birth hard at work on her Torah studies, and that’s gone far slower than expected. It’s very much frustrated her future in-laws, especially Sacha’s parents, who were really hoping for a wedding this summer.”

“Right now there’s no wedding date set because Isla hasn’t fully converted yet, and even though she’s working at it part-time, she’s far from being close to completing her studies.”

But the soon-to-be mother in law isn’t pleased. The insider says, “What made relations difficult between Isla and Sacha’s mother is that she really wanted Isla to spend more time with the baby and their family in England instead of being hasty and returning to work so quickly.”

“Now that Isla’s done shooting, she’s in the awkward position of making up for lost time.”

While his mother is a bit dissatisfied, Sacha on the other hand is very understanding. The source explained, “Sacha is not as worried about the relationship between his parents and Isla as everyone else is because he’s extremely devoted to her and their child. He also believes that putting too much pressure on Isla is only going to make the wedding happen later rather than sooner. He is happy taking his time to get married the same way he was happy having a long engagement.”

The insider added, “No matter what Sacha’s mother throws at her, Isla isn’t going to be scared away from the relationship or the family. You really get the sense that her devotion to Sacha is total, even if she’s stalled a little bit on her Jewish studies. She loves sharing her life with this guy.”

Polite and Moody Pregnant Angelina Jolie

2008-07-11T02:48:00.000-07:00

All the waiting for twins to be born don’t seem to fit for Angelina Jolie, because she’s growing increasingly grouchy.

The actress checked into the private Lenval hospital in Nice a week ago and already then she seemed polite and moody, but looks like the hospital-stay hasn’t had a good effect on her, because she’s getting more and more tetchy.

A source told In Touch Weekly, “She’s starting to feel that the staff are starstruck and not attentive enough. She’s throwing fits if she rings and they don’t come quick enough. She’s not walking around anymore. She doesn’t even take a shower early in the morning. She just stays in bed, talking on her phone, typing on her computer, reading magazines and watching TV. I think she’s in meltdown mode. She’s been getting upset if there’s not enough ice in her glass.”

But it seems enough ice in her glass isn’t the only thing Jolie isn’t pleased with, she don’t like the hospital food, too. The ‘Wanted’ star ordered salmon for lunch, although the dish isn’t on the hospital menu. The insider added, ” And I don’t mean asked - demanded. The food at Lenval isn’t very good - it’s hospital food - and I think she was fed up. A staffer went out and bought some and it was made for her.”

Christina Aguilera Pregnancy

2008-07-11T02:35:00.000-07:00

Christina Aguilera reveals details about the time when she was expecting her son Max.

The ‘Candyman’ singer claimed that not only her boobs grew during the pregnancy, but her feet got enormous, too. She told Glamour magazine, “My stomach was really where I carried my weight. Toward the end of my pregnancy, I felt really big - I gained about 40 pounds, which is a lot for my size.”

Christina added, “My hips also changed significantly and my feet grew from a size 5 1/2 to a size 7 in flats.”

It seems her feet are back to normal, but her boobs havn’t gotten smaller at all. Lucky girl!

Maria Francisca Perello is internationally bikini

2008-07-11T02:14:00.000-07:00

These are pics of Maria Francisca Perello (a.k.a. Xisca) who is the girlfriend of Spanish tennis star Rafael Nadal.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say Maria is hot. That is if having the body of a 15-year-old boy is the cat's pajamas in Spain right now. I dunno. I'm not what you might call "world traveled." Unless you count Cracker Barrel, in which case, I'm freaking Magellan.

Jessica Biel Does Harper’s Bazaar Magazine

2008-07-11T02:10:00.000-07:00

Guitarist Isaac Hanson, 27, and his wife, Nicole Dufresne Hanson, 24, have welcomed their second child, another boy. Son James Monroe Hanson arrived on Tuesday, July 1st in Tulsa, OK. He weighed in at 8 lbs, 11 oz.

Monroe joins big brother Clarke Everett, 15 months, who also goes by his middle name. In a statement to People.com, Isaac shared,

The addition of Monroe to our family is incredible and exciting. With Monroe and Everett being so close in age, it will be great to watch them grow up together.

The pregnancy was announced in February.

Madonna and Britney Kissing

2008-07-11T02:03:00.000-07:00

The Sun reports that “the Queen of Pop and its fallen princess will join forces for Madonna’s sticky and sweet tour”. Hmm there is absolutely nothing “sweet” or “sticky” about either of them. I would call the tour ” Crusty and Loose”.

So now they’re going to team up again but this time there will be more sexual tension. Every perverted fresk will be jacking off to their performance! The mash-up will be Madonna’s Beat Goes On and Britney’s Piece of Me. And the GREATEST part of it all is that they will “appear together almost naked apart from tiny leather bondage pants and knee-high boots”!

Well yee-haw everybody! Thats EXACTLY what I want to see: some frail old ass woman clinging onto a chunky lard face!!! Thank-you Jesus for answering my prayers.

Accordi's a dining circuit

2008-07-10T22:23:00.000-07:00

If you happen to be there at just the right time, you might catch Prague’s first ever Michelin star chef waiting in line at McDonald’s.Mind you, this is a man who spends most of his waking hours shaving truffles so fine that the celebrated musty flavor blends into the pasta, and teasing foie gras with just enough heat so the delicate skin begins to caramelize. Fiercely devoted to quality, he roams local farms, seeking out the best fresh herbs and vegetables. Give him a pan and a stove top and he coaxes stringy guancale into a state so ethereal the meat seems to evaporate on your tongue. Yet he readily admits to scanning McDonald’s list of artless burgers on more than one occasion. If you challenge him, he defends the apparent sacrilege blankly. “There’s nothing wrong with it,” says Andrea Accordi, the 31-year-old Italian who brought instant fame to Allegro — and to the city. “We have fine food and junk food; my son likes a lot of junk food.” So when Accordi’s young offspring clamors for a trip to the iconic Golden Arches, he not only obliges, but also orders something for himself. And the highly skilled chef doesn’t care if anyone catches him in the act.“When I’m off,” he explains, “I want to switch off, be with my family.”For people accustomed to Gordon Ramsay’s blasphemous outbursts, Emeril Legasse’s Flintstone-esque catchphrases or the consciously hip posing of Jamie Oliver, the only star on Prague’s culinary scene doesn’t seem like a real celebrity chef. Accordi’s disarmingly honest admission about McDonald’s is just a start. Turns out he’s about the only man from Italy who merely shrugs at the mention of AC Milan, Juventus, Fiorentina or the boys in national team blue. Some will tell you Italian media print football scandals, then Ferrari’s outcome in Formula 1, followed by the antics of Valentino Rossi. Politics and other mundane news items wallow in the rear. But Accordi’s passions lay elsewhere.His emotions show not in verbal histrionics, but as an impish grin when he attempts to sneak foie gras onto his public relations manager’s plate, knowing the stuff makes her cringe, or a bright, genuine, infectious smile when he mentions family and his “24-hour lively boy.” If the discussion shifts to the topic of food — as it always will — Accordi’s expression evens out, becoming solid and earnest. These are the simple feelings of an everyman. So you begin to suspect that, by donning an apron, this normal, broad-faced, bespectacled Clark Kent from Verona somehow becomes superhuman.When news of Allegro’s Michelin star, the first awarded to any restaurant in Central or Eastern Europe, reached local media outlets, it was like a levee burst. Television crews barged into the dining room, reporters called for statements, radio stations demanded time for interviews — it was a Level Orange frenzy begging for someone with nerves of steel to calm the situation.“He was the same, even in that time,” says Martina Vávrová, public relations director for the Four Seasons Hotel and its stellar restaurant. Allegro’s team of 30 line cooks would scurry when she burst into the kitchen, dragging yet another videographer behind her, but Accordi obliged every reporter. “I admire him for being so patient,” she continues. “All those photo shoots, all that smiling — he’s really human.”But how does such a man, with such a demeanor, manage 30 tense line cooks in such an environment, if he’s merely human? “I can see in the kitchen they admire him,” Vávrová adds. “He says something, and they do it.”“He doesn’t yell.”So much for the superhero idea; And, really, Accordi’s just a quiet, self-assured, regular guy — except for many years of training and a virtuoso’s feel for bringing ingredients together into a singular expression of taste and texture. After sitting in on hundreds of interviews, Vávrová can recount much of the chef’s life story verbatim. In fact, he’s happy to leave the table, warning her to “be careful what you say.” Accordi took over the helm at Allegro at the end of August 2007, replacing longtime Prague favorite Vito Mollica. The chef’s parents pushed him into culinary school despite some backtalk from the boy. “I wanted to help my father with his job,” Accordi recalls — Vávrová uses the exact same words in third person. The elder Accordi dealt in the timber industry, shipping and receiving wood for commercial projects. “From the point of view of my father, it was a tough job,” Accordi says this time, taking his life back from the PR realm. No life for a talented boy who first helped out in professional kitchens at the age of 14.“But I must say …” the thought trails off into a chuckle.In most cases, only the insane or the superhuman choose cooking as a profession. The hours vary between horrendous and all-consuming, Cuts and burns are common occurrences. Kitchens swelter with heat. Equipment breaks down, egos flare, purveyors deliver wrong orders, guests demand this and that. Accordi bounced around between gigs in London, Bangkok and France, but the real process of becoming a chef began in Florence, at Onice in the Villa la Vedetta.“We had a beautiful product, but it was very expensive, as well,” he recalls. “We had very few covers for the first six months.” Trial by fireRestaurants shut down all the time, even in the heart of Tuscany. Sluggish traffic is generally enough to cause impatient investors to pull the plug, although many slash food costs and salaries, stretching death throes out for several months as service and quality plummet.“We decided to cut costs, but keep the same quality,” Accordi explains. “This is very tough.”Only 26 at the time, the chef plunged into the minutiae of purveyor contracts and employee schedules. He rummaged through busboy trays to find out if portions and side dishes were right. By checking prices at competing restaurants, he worked out what locals expected to pay for certain dishes — all the glamorous duties they rarely portray on television cooking shows, but which account for the success or failure of an establishment.“After a year, we increased our covers to 30, then 40,” he says.Accordi picked up a little souvenir from Michelin in the process, but apart from allowing a glimpse of pride in the achievement to slip through in the form of a quick, bright gleam, he discounts accolades earned then and now. “Part of being a famous chef with a Michelin star, without a Michelin star, whatever — sometimes the non-Michelin kitchens cook better — it takes dedication and passion,” he says. “And it’s very important for chefs to get this message across to the cooks.” So he shows up in the morning, checks the orders, berates a supplier if necessary (a moment hard to imagine), helps prepare for lunch and then begins a continuous program of staff training. Before dinner, it’s the same thing, along with inventory, new orders and whatever issues pop up during the evening.Home, family and the queue at McDonald’s act as refuges from this stormy life, but these things demand the same passion Accordi shows for his cooking. “It’s quite difficult when you work in the kitchen all day and get home late at night,” he admits, “not only for me, but most of the chefs.”Days may slip by before there’s time for a lazy conversation. The kids are often in bed by the time chefs make it home and out the door before chefs are fully awake in the morning. Burdens — ironically including the cooking — fall on spouses or partners.“They have to choose a very good wife,” Accordi says of men who cook for a living.He met and married Korrokod in Thailand. She worked in one of the top hotels and the bond formed around the usual feelings, of course. But her feel for the demands a professional kitchen makes on a person mattered, as well.Roman Paulus, chef at Alcron in the Radisson (and before that, at Hilton’s CzecHouse) believes mutual respect for long hours and intensity is critical for a successful relationship. Like chef Accordi, “I am lucky to have my wife working in the hospitality industry,” he explains. “She has an understanding for my job.” Thus, Accordi, like any other chef, considers that rare free day so important. It keeps him human, allows him to breathe for a moment.And if he chooses to spend that moment grabbing a pre-processed burger at McDonald’s, so be it. For a regular guy living a hectic life of cooking, bossing, talking and everything else that goes into a Michelin star restaurant, even the most mundane, normal act is one of passion.If things ever settle down, he says, “maybe I’ll watch football.”

Celebrity neighbors Begley

2008-07-10T22:21:00.000-07:00

LOS ANGELES (AP) — On a tree-lined corner of Studio City filled with modest homes, flower gardens and neighbors who chat across back fences, two wiry celebrities are engaged in a green grudge match.

The good-natured competition between actor Ed Begley Jr. and Bill Nye, the host of the educational series "Bill Nye, the Science Guy" began when Nye moved into the neighborhood two years ago. Since then the two moderately famous and slightly geeky environmentalists have matched wits over whose home can leave a smaller carbon footprint.

Neighbor Frema Rood, 83, who lives between the two houses, said the competition started the day after Bill moved into the neighborhood.

"Bill announced it: 'I'm going to best Ed Begley at his own game. I'm going to get him,'" she recalled. "He ordered panels for the garage, then rain barrels, then he had his windows done and he put in a vegetable garden."

Nye, 52, pins the source of the rivalry on Begley, who became envious of Nye's new solar panels while filming a segment of his HGTV green living show called "Living with Ed."

"Ed instantly got a little twinge — you could see it," Nye said. "My system, being 15 years younger, has a couple of nice little features that he doesn't have."

To liven up the segment, the neighbors pretended to spar over who had the better system. But in this city where the rich and famous jockey to be the first behind the wheel of a new alternative-fuel car, the jokes have given way to an environmental turf war.

Nye trumped Begley's old solar panels with a system that shows when he's making more power than he's using. Begley pushed to offset his wife's 20-minute showers with rain barrels to water the plants.

Begley long ago installed an Astro Turf lawn to save on water. He composts his garbage, cooks in an outdoor solar oven and grows his own produce. His sprinkler system electronically checks the forecast and shuts down if it's supposed to rain.

Instead of using pesticides, Begley lures slugs and snails away from his plants with trays of beer that kill them. Nye, who also has plots overflowing with produce, keeps raccoons away with an electric fence powered by a matchbox-sized solar panel.

The white picket fence that surrounds Begley's two bedroom, 1,585 square foot bungalow is made of recycled plastic milk cartons pressed into boards. Nye used the recycled plastic lumber to build a patio cover, and convinced Rood to use the same type of boards to repair their shared white fence.

While Begley calls the rivalry a "a friendly, humorous one-upmanship," he admits there are parts of the competition that are quite serious.

"He has these great copper rain gutters that I covet," Begley said.

Given Begley's 20-year head start, Nye admits that he may never fully catch up to his neighbor, who was green long before it was considered cool. Nye has called Begley the inspiration behind many of the changes he's made, including illuminating his American flag at night with a light bulb powered by a tiny solar panel.

Begley's daughter, Amanda, still remembers the days when her friends thought her father was a nut. His early electric car would start puttering out of energy as it climbed hills, and he would ask his daughter's friends — self-conscious teenage girls — how much they weighed.

"Now it's different," said Amanda Begley, now 30. "He went from being the kookiest guy around to the cool guy that everyone's calling and asking questions about things instead of just thinking, you know, that he was out of his mind."

These days Begley has his own all-purpose biodegradable cleaner called "Begley's Best" and is regularly approached by inventors to test new products.

Nye remains confidently in the lead in terms of aesthetics and order. Begley has wires poking out of appliances, bricks piled high and red rain barrels are an eyesore against the actor's white home, Nye said.

"Ed claims — and this is an extraordinary claim — that he doesn't care how things look as long as they function well," Nye said. "I'm not in that camp. Things have to look good or don't bother."

Begley said his wife is not a fan of the barrels either. He admitted the barrels were unattractive but claims he didn't know they came in different colors and styles.

Begley has since settled on a new plan that should be acceptable to his wife — an underground cistern to store the water. More importantly, does he think his latest innovation will make Nye jealous?

"He already is," Begley said.

Kylie Minogue Favourite Celebrity

2008-07-08T20:48:00.000-07:00

London (ANI): Pop princess Kylie Minogue has been named 'Britain's Favourite Celebrity.' The Aussie singer won the hearts of the nation with her brave battle breast cancer and her remarkable recovery was capped last week when she collected an OBE from Prince Charles at Buckingham Palace, reports the Mirror.

The 40-year-old has beaten legendary television presenter Terry Wogan to land the top sot in a poll by the Internet market research firm www.onepoll.com. 'Strictly Come Dancing' host Bruce Forsyth, 80, came third while retired chat show host Michael Parkinson, 73, stood fourth.

Celebrity Event

2008-07-08T20:47:00.000-07:00

Las Vegas Nevada July 7, 2008 –Best Gas Prices In Las Vegas during Live Radio Remote & Meet & Greet Event. Local Celebrity Sassy Host of the “Sex With Sassy” Radio Show on All Talk Radio.Net will appear at the Speedee Mart at 804 East Flamingo Road (at Flamingo & Swenson) In Las Vegas Nevada On July 26th 2008 from 11-3pm To Meet & Greet Fans.

Sassy will host this fun filled event and there will be other fun activities such as a “Sexy Car Wash” Contests, Gas Giveaways & more! A percentage of the proceeds from merchandise purchase from Sassy and the car wash will benefit Opportunity Village a Local Las Vegas Non-Profit Organization.

During the event Speed Mart will lower their gas prices and have the best gas prices in Las Vegas. They will also have drink specials, 25 Cents Hot Dogs and other specials. Monster will be there to give out product samples and Sassy will say hello and sign autographs, for store guests, new and existing fans.

“I am anticipating a really nice crowd with gas prices being so crazy!” “What better reason to come down girls, low gas and charity!” “ This is a great opportunity for companies to be seen by their consumers and be a part of a fun rewarding event and at the same time be able to give back to the community and those in need!” Sassy Tease

Current participants & sponsors include: Speedee Mart, All Talk Radio.Net, Valley Press Of Las Vegas, Playgirl Posse, Aid For Aids Of Nevada, MVP’s Sports Lounge,. If you would like your company to be a part of this event or sponsor this event or the show please email sexwithsassy@gmail.com for more information.

The Sex With Sassy Radio Show has been broadcasting since 2004 show has interviewed local and national celebrities, authors, organizations, up and coming talent, models, musicians, business and website owners and more. The Sex With Sassy Radio Show has been featured in Las Vegas Weekly, Playgirl Magazine, The Gary Garver Radio Show & Many More!

celebrity tool

2008-07-08T20:41:00.000-07:00

Peter Andre is the nation's biggest 'celebrity tool', according to a poll of 10,000 builders, carpenters, plumbers and tradesmen.

The singer of 1996 hit 'Mysterious Girl' and husband of glamour model Jordan beat 20 other irritating celebrities to win the dubious award.

The poll was commissioned by tool manufacturer POWER8workshop.com.

POWER8workshop managing director Chris Elsworthy said: "Peter Andre seems to be a nice guy, but many men can't relate to him as he speaks so openly about his feelings and says daft things about his sex life."

Second was former Eastenders star Dean Gaffney, while Radio 1 DJ Scott Mills took third.

Nicole Kidman Delivers a Baby Girl

2008-07-08T01:42:00.000-07:00

By: Suzanne Condie Lambert

Wiser celebrities know that a long Fourth of July weekend is an excellent time to schedule major life events, as professional journalists generally spend the holiday (and a week or so afterward) groggy from the overconsumption of grilled meats. Sadly for Nicole Kidman, however, there was no available technician to fix a malfunctioning Celebrity Baby-Name Generator, and she was forced to consult a day-old page from the nurses' station's Bachelor calendar while filling out the birth-certificate forms:

The actress and husband Keith Urban welcomed their first child, Sunday Rose Kidman Urban, on Monday morning, Urban's rep tells the Associated Press. The rep placed the infant's birth as "in the United States," but the Associated Press dateline says Nashville.

Urban posted a message on his Web site that said: "Earlier this morning Nic gave birth to our beautiful baby girl, Sunday Rose Kidman Urban. We want to thank everybody that has kept us in their thoughts and prayers. We feel very blessed and grateful that we can share this joy with all of you today." advertisement

The baby is the first for Kidman and Urban. Kidman has two children, Isabella and Connor, from her marriage to Tom Cruise. Kidman recently told Vanity Fair that she had a miscarriage early on in her relationship with Cruise, leading them to adopt.

'A' is for aha!

C-Rod files for divorce from A-Rod; M-Don implicated by association:

Alex Rodriguez's wife filed for divorce Monday, calling her husband an adulterer who "emotionally abandoned his wife and children," the Associated Press reports.

"The marriage of the parties is irretrievably broken because of the husband's extramarital affairs and other marital misconduct," according to Cynthia Rodriguez's petition for dissolution of marriage, filed in the family division of Florida's Miami-Dade County Circuit Court.

The New York Yankees third baseman, who earned his 12th All-Star berth Sunday, has refused to comment on his relationship with the pop singer Madonna, who denied any romantic involvement with the slugger in a statement posted Sunday on people.com.

Elsewhere in the rapidly expanding Madonna telenovela:

• Christopher Ciconne, Madonna's estranged younger brother, has written a book about big sis in which he discusses her lesbian flings, drug use with showbiz execs and rocky marriages to Sean Penn and Guy Ritchie, Britain's Sun reports.

According to the tab, Life With My Sister Madonna includes the tale of how Madonna was dancing on a table at a party when she dragged Gwyneth Paltrow up and kissed the stunned, married actress full on the mouth.

The Sun also says a furious Madonna has forbidden Alex Rodriguez from talking about the rumored affair and has demanded that he shut up blabby family members.

• A pal of Alex and Cynthia Rodriguez tells the New York Daily News that the adultery tempest is a publicity stunt for the singer's upcoming Sticky & Sweet tour. The friend thinks this is merely another one of Madonna's famous media-friendly self-reinventions. Coming up: One lucky couple at each tour stop will be invited onstage, where Madonna will personally destroy their marriage in front of thousands of screaming fans.

• Alex Rodriguez is so obsessed with Madonna that he will listen only to her music in the car and goes into a trance whenever one of her videos comes on at the gym, Dodd Romero, the former Yankees trainer and a godfather of A-Rod's two daughters, tells the New York Post. "Alex, God bless him, is lost," Romero says. "I think he got pulled in by the dark side, if you can say that nicely. He's totally brainwashed.

"He's more infatuated with the fact he's with an icon instead of realizing what's important, which is family and truth," the trainer says.

'Bachelor' takes a wife

TV's Bachelor places final rose in bride's hands, promises to love, honor and cherish through "rewrites and wraps, blown lines and syndication deals":

Andrew Firestone, former star of the ABC reality show, married Serbian model-actress Ivana Bozilovic on Saturday, Firestone's publicist tells the Associated Press.

Firestone and Bozilovic wed at St. Mark's in the Valley Episcopal Church in Los Olivos, the central-coast California town where Firestone's family winery is based.

Firestone's 2003 proposal to Jen Schefft on the third season of The Bachelor was watched by millions and led to months of tabloid chatter until the couple's breakup.

Miss Universe Pageant

2008-07-08T01:39:00.000-07:00

The 2008 Miss Universe Pageant will feature celebrity judges Donald Trump Jr., executive VP of the Trump Organization, fashion designer Roberto Cavalli, “My Name Is Earl” star Nadine Velazquez, Miss Universe 2004 Jennifer Hawkins, celebrity hair colorist Louis Licari and John Nguyen, vice chairman of Hoan Cau Ltd. Investment & Construction.

Pop star Lady GaGa will perform “Just Dance” during the pageant, which will be broadcast live on NBC from the Crown Convention Center in Nha Trang, Khanh Hoa, Vietnam, on July 13.

Celebrity Birth Day in 8 July

2008-07-08T01:36:00.000-07:00

Taylor Maine Pearl Brooks, daughter of Garth Brooks, turns 16 today,

Actress Sophia Bush is 26,

Beverly Hills 90210 actress Kathleen Robertson is 35,

Musician Beck turns 38,

1965 Actor Corey Parker ,

Sooner country star Toby Keith turns 47,

Fred Young, singer of Kentucky Headhunters fame, is 50,

Comedian A. Whitney Brown is 56,

Actress Anjelica Huston turns 57,

Celebrity chef and restaurateur Wolfgang Puck, is 59

Actor Jeffrey Tambor, from the Larry Sanders Show, is 64

Chuck Negron, singer with Three Dog Night, is 66

Former Barker beauty on Price is Right, Janice Pennington, is 66

Singer Joan Osborne turns 46,

Bug-eyed actor Marty Feldman, famous for his role as Igor in Young Frankenstein, would have been 75 today.

Celebrity technophobes go without gadgets

2008-07-08T01:33:00.000-07:00

Emma Thompson wields a fierce wand when co-starring in Harry Potter movies, jets around the world and hobnobs with Bill Gates at Davos. But don't ask her to reboot a laptop.

The actress's favourite piece of technology is the fountain pen.

Thompson is in good company. There's no shortage of celebrities who disdain social networking websites, "don't do" email and eschew practical gadgets like computers and mobile phones.

Some, like US President George W. Bush, are restricted by their office from indulging. Others see technology as yet another intrusion into their paparazzi-filled lives. And still others don't understand how to use gadgets or shun them as health hazards.

In other words, celebrities are just like us – with two exceptions. Their wealth and status enables them to avoid technology with no ill consequences. (Can't reach Angelina by email? Her people will make sure she gets the message another way.)

The other difference: It's much more entertaining when celebrities complain about technology than when your mum does.

Take Vince Vaughn. In November 2007, the actor told MTV he didn't own a mobile phone and didn't like receiving calls. Instead, he relies on the buddy system, borrowing a friend's mobile when necessary.

"I am an annoying friend that way," he said.

Some tech-free celebs are recovering tech addicts. Tyra Banks told New York Times Magazine that her BlackBerry habit caused her physical pain. She has since gone low-tech and jots her thoughts in a notebook.

Technophobia, of course, extends far beyond mobiles.

Christopher Walken and David Sedaris don't use mobiles or email. Simon Cowell said he doesn't know how to work a computer. President Bush was lampooned in 2006 for saying he uses "the Google" to look at maps of his Texas ranch. He reportedly doesn't use email for fear that his messages might be subpoenaed. Recently however, his 84-year-old father George H. W. Bush Sr said he enjoyed emailing.

Paul McCartney has said he doesn't know how to use ATMs and prefers writing letters over email for "aesthetic" reasons.

Elton John is nostalgic for the low-tech vibe of the 1970s. The singer has frequently spoken about the internet's stifling effect on community and creativity and even suggested to The Sun that the internet be shut down for five years to spark better quality art and music.

Technophobia isn't simply generational. Some young celebrities strive to be tech-free, too.

31-year-old Orlando Bloom has revealed that he doesn't use email or own a computer, because he "just (doesn't) want to deal with it".

A few celebrities manage to be plugged in without being wired.

Jolie often jokes about her lack of technology skills, saying that partner Brad Pitt helps her navigate computers. Jolie's admission was surprising, said Heather Dale, editor of gadget blog GeekSugar.com.

"She's so up on the news and involved, and it doesn't seem like she would want to be dependent on anyone for tech help," Dale said.

"She must get her news from newspapers and other traditional media."

Larry King, despite knowledgeably chatting up guests every night on his talk show, admitted he has never done an internet search.

As if to prove his techno-ignorance, he once asked guest Roseanne Barr, "What do you punch (on the internet), little buttons and things?"

Technophobia does have its benefits, at times.

When Billy Bob Thornton's former sister-in-law accused him of harassing her via email, his representative said in his defence: "Billy doesn't use email and never has."

Fictional celebrities can be technophobes, too. In the Sex and the City movie, Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) fumbles with a borrowed iPhone before returning it, unused, out of frustration.

Some technophobes appear to be making their peace with gadgets. Jessica Alba famously said last year: "I don't have a MySpace thingy." But in January she created a MySpace profile and began blogging sporadically on it.

Since hooking up with husband Cash Warren, who heads an internet video start-up called IBeatYou.com, Alba has ventured further online to help promote the venture. In one video viewed more than 4 million times on YouTube, Alba gazes at a camera in a two-minute staring contest.

Still, there are lingering signs that Alba isn't completely tech fluent. Dale said Alba sometimes blogs in all capital letters.

"That's a clear sign that she doesn't use a computer that much," said Dale.

Other selective technophobes include Liam Gallagher of band Oasis, who uses his computer to sate his eBay addiction – but not for email – and Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters, who owns a BlackBerry but apparently doesn't use its more advanced features.

Celebrities may find technology a grind, but they still exploit it for their own purposes.

Tom Cruise, who proudly lives unencumbered by a mobile or email address, recently launched an official website to showcase his career highlights.

Susan Sarandon calls herself a Luddite, but eagerly signed on to star in the super-techie film Speed Racer.

Actor Casey Affleck, a health-conscious vegan, said his fear that mobiles cause cancer caused him to pitch his handset into the Hudson River.

But within a few days, Affleck said, he headed back to a store for a new one.

Debunking this myth of harmless celebrity

2008-07-06T21:03:00.000-07:00

Supported by the worldwide craze for celebrity, Madame Tussaud's waxworks attractions are a very profitable business. There are now eight of them across the world. The idea stems from a time when the physical appearance of celebrated individuals was not necessarily known to the general public. Nowadays, what the attractions offer is the opportunity to "interact", as they say, with celebrities who in real life are protected by security, distance, or time.

For what seems to me a steep entrance fee of £25 at the door in London, you can look at, or have your photograph taken next to, simulacra of Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher, Elle Macpherson or Kylie Minogue. Distance and distinction are abolished for a magical hour or two and for a while a star, a paying punter, a great political leader, a pope and a murderer are rendered on the same unreal plane of celebrity. It must be a perfectly meaningless experience; the quintessence of unfeeling postmodernity.

A few days ago, Tussaud's opened a branch in Berlin. As in most of their attractions, some attention is paid to local enthusiasms. Here, you can stand next to the Bochum singer Herbert Gronemayer and have your photograph taken. One particular local speciality, however, was controversial before the museum opened. They were proposing to put on display a waxwork of Hitler.

It was tactfully done, showing Hitler in defeat in his bunker. Visitors were to be asked not to pose with the waxwork and to comport themselves with decency. Tussaud's must have reflected, too, that they had a much more showy Hitler waxwork in London, standing face to face with a "Churchill" and punching the air.

In recent years, Germany has come to treat aspects of its history with some of the characteristic levity of the rest of the West. There is, for example, a quite amusingly flippant museum of DDR life right on the River Spree in Berlin. Not everybody is prepared to go along with the prevailing mood, however. Minutes after Tussaud's opened its doors for the first time, the man who had been second in the queue leapt the rope and decapitated the waxwork in protest. There is no word as yet when, or if, the Hitler waxwork will be put back together again and back on show.

Without a doubt, there are immense sensitivities involved here. Unlike in much of Europe, Mein Kampf is banned to differing degrees in Germany and Austria. If Prince Harry had worn his Nazi fancy dress outfit to a party in Germany, he would quickly have found himself under arrest.

In both West and, even more, in East Germany in the decades after the war, public dealings with the legacy were closely controlled. The authorities repressed, for instance, any public knowledge of where exactly Hitler's last bunker was situated. Only in 2006 was a plaque erected.

"The past is not dead," William Faulkner said. "In fact, it's not even past." In a country where many people believe passionately, and surely correctly, that the demonic cult of personality which underlay the Third Reich should never be allowed to return, the display of a Hitler figure would always touch a raw nerve. Outside Germany, increasingly, these figures can be assimilated into a general cult of famousness. Hitler, Crippen, Gandhi, Justin Timberlake – all are faces on the page, and photo-ops in Madam Tussaud's.

It's not true. The man who beheaded Hitler's waxwork knew it wasn't true, and no amount of sophisticated commentary can say that he was wrong. The figure of Hitler is never going to be a matter of light entertainment. Please God that there will always be people prepared to act to demonstrate the fact.

Nice things in small packages?

Systematic analysis has revealed that the most violence-crazed dogs are not, after all, Rottweilers, but animals a tenth of their size.

The most aggressive breeds of dog are Dachshunds, Chihuahuas and Jack Russell Terriers, left, in that order. I'm not a bit surprised. Maybe I have been unlucky, but I have never met a Jack Russell that was anything other than a complete psychopath – nothing more than a set of jaws on a spring.

I've often thought, coming across a tiny canine unrealistically set on assaulting a Great Dane, that dogs, in fact, cannot have any notion whatsoever of their size. Like so many people similarly limited, they do have the air of overcoming their miniature frustrations through rage and racket.

* London's Gay Pride festival, which took place at the weekend, is a surprisingly popular spectacle with the shopping classes as it wends its way down Oxford Street and Regent Street.

It is true that, nowadays, what philosophers call "category errors" can occur when, as for instance on Saturday, a lesbian friend of mine was misled into enthusiasm by a group of cheering girls in rainbow hats and vests – heterosexuals, as they made quickly clear.

Still, it is much better than the form family outings to Pride events take in much of Eastern Europe. In Latvia in 2007, 400 people were herded into a park where they had smoke bombs thrown at them. In Moscow, Pride demonstrations have been banned and physical assaults on protesters and international observers went unchecked by police. Protests by human rights organisations have had limited effect. Pride in London has had a long journey to reach this point. Most of eastern Europe is only just beginning to travel towards tolerance and decency

Opinionated rants on celebrity, pop culture and the state of the world

2008-07-06T20:59:00.000-07:00

I really shouldn’t have been surprised when teen girls started lining up on Queen St. for the Live @ Much with the Jonas Brothers two days before the event, or when I encountered a crazed fan on my lunch break who, once noticing I work in the Much building, screamed like she’d seen Cisco Adler’s genitalia (if you’ve yet to witness this, Google at your own risk), then begged me to get her inside to meet the boys. Interning at MuchMusic has its perks but giving fans access to celebrities isn’t one of them. I calmly explain to Crazy Joe Bro Fan that I couldn’t help make her single most important life goal (her words, not mine) come true. It got me thinking though and I can’t believe I’m about to type this but here it is: the Jonas Brothers could actually save the music industry (in record sales obviously, not street cred).

You probably haven't spent a ton of time contemplating the Jonas Brothers’ place in the current social fabric (or even in the pop music social fabric), but maybe you should. Maybe we all should take a look at how three brothers went from obscurity to obscene celebrity in mere months. And how the squeaky-clean trio might just single-handedly reintroduce the Billboard charts to boy band dominance.

So let’s get into it. Their names are Joe, Nick and Kevin Jonas of course but who cares? I’ve tagged them Hairy, Curly and Ugly. Wait. Ugly is too harsh. Let’s call him Unfortunate. It’s not his fault really; he’s the oldest. It’s a boy band prerequisite that the oldest member be as homely as possible. Think Kevin from the Backstreet Boys, Joey Fatone of N*SYNC, Donnie Wahlberg of NKOTB (I know, blasphemy!). Let’s face it: the faster you hit puberty, the less appealing you become to legions of little tweens. Which is why, ranging from ages 15- 20, Hairy, Curly and Unfortunate are this generation’s Hanson, complete with guitars, pop rock-ish love songs and girlish boyish good looks.

Aside from the obvious comparisons to Hanson (namely the girly hair) there are striking similarities to Backstreet: youngest one’s named Nick, oldest is Kevin. Creepy, I know. The Bros even opened for BSB’s AJ Maclean’s stint as a solo artist (don’t ask how I know this). And like the Boys before them, the Jonas Brothers are about to encounter an onslaught of copycat acts, manufactured to capture the same demographic that has put the pop-rocking trio on the top of the charts. I cringe at the thought of this, just as I’m sure 20-something music lovers cringed when N SYNC, 98 Degrees, and O-town burst onto the scene during the golden era of boy bands. If record labels have anything to say about it, the era that died when Justin left those other dudes behind is about to make a comeback.

Rolling Stone just wrote a piece on the shift and highlighted a few upcoming bands. The most interesting one to me was V-Factory, the boy band assembled around Ashley Tisdale’s (of High School Musical fame) boyfriend. Brilliant right? Let’s make a band starring someone associated with a musical that sold millions of soundtracks. The kids will eat it up. Sounds like a last ditch act of desperation to capture some of Disney’s recent successes provided by gullible CD guzzling children. And it might even work. There’s nothing like a teen celeb hook-up to excite the fans. Just ask Nick Jonas.

While Hairy (aka Joe Jonas) has been hailed as the resident heartthrob, clearly Curly is the cute one. Tweendom may love him but Miley Cyrus seems to have found 7 things she hates about Curly (aka Nick). It’s common knowledge in Disney-fan land that the two had a (albeit short-lived) monumentally intense and torrid love affair ending with a heartbroken Miley penning her latest boy-bashing single (allegedly) about the curly-haired Joe Bro. Nice touch Nick. Breaking the heart of the biggest teen sensation of the moment totally makes him even more scream-worthy to the young’uns. The force is strong in that one. The other two – not so much. Don’t get me wrong; I love a good boy band. I grew up in the 90s after all. But where’s the prop-filled choreography? I want some good old chair-dancing damn it!

Stop trying to be “real” artists and dance it out Hairy, Curly and Unfortunate. You may be hated by critics and beloved by adolescent girls now but the competition’s coming, hoping to feel the wrath of rock writers everywhere and pop and lock their way into the short attention spans of trillions of teens. Prepare yourselves people, there’s about to a boy band brawl for the top of the charts. Are you ready?

Brad Paisley says working with Andy Griffith a highlight

2008-07-06T20:53:00.000-07:00

Brad Paisley says he got to mark a biggie off his wish list when Andy Griffith agreed to be in the video for his new single, Waitin' On a Woman.

"He has influenced my life more than most people that I grew up with -- more than most people that I actually knew my whole life," Paisley said recently. "I wrote Andy a letter telling him what he has meant to me over the years and asked him to be in the video."

In the video, which began airing this week, the 82-year-old star of the long-running TV series Matlock and The Andy Griffith Show plays a kindly gentleman who advises Paisley's character to be patient when waiting for a woman.

"Andy heard the song and wanted to commit to working the long hours necessary to get the video right, and he really adopted this music video as if it was his own," said Paisley, whose past videos have featured Jason Alexander, William Shatner, Maureen McCormick, Jerry Springer and others.

Crocodile Hunter's daughter gets a doll

The Emmy-winning daughter of the late Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin is getting her own doll.

The 10-inch Bindi Irwin doll sports khakis, puffy pigtails and hiking boots, and comes with binoculars, a camera and other outback gear, as well as a cockatoo, wombat and python.

A talking version of the Bindi doll uses such phrases as, "Crikey! Let's go help wildlife," and "You can make the world a better place."

The rubber dolls will cost $15 to $20, with a portion going to help fund efforts to breed endangered species and rescue animals. They are expected to be in stores in September.

Wild Republic, a division of K&M International Inc., based in Twinsburg, Ohio, is developing the doll. The company marketed a Steve Irwin doll several months after the Australian TV show host died in September 2006 from a stingray barb that pierced his chest.

Bindi Irwin's career began with appearances on her father's shows and later expanded to live music performances and child-fitness DVDs.

Bindi the Jungle Girl, a child-friendly version of her father's show, began in June 2007 on the Discovery Channel. Bindi, 9, won a Daytime Emmy last month for the show and also a Logie, an Australian TV award, in May for most popular new female talent.

Celebrity takeoff

2008-06-27T20:13:00.000-07:00

Mark Lawson

One of the hysterical reflexes after the death of Princess Diana was the suggestion that Heathrow should be dedicated to her memory. This plan was rapidly dropped when it was pointed out that aviation destinations tend to be abbreviated - John F Kennedy international airport in New York rapidly becoming JFK - with the result that pilots would be forced to talk about "flying in to Di". Since then London's airports have been left with their geographical branding, although there may soon be strong pressure for Terminal 5 at Heathrow to be renamed: Where's My Louis Vuitton?

Wales, however, is considering choosing someone known to mark its biggest aerodrome. The planned rebranding of Cardiff international airport may feature the name of a Welsh celebrity in big letters on the roof. Mooted possibilities include Catherine Zeta-Jones, Dame Shirley Bassey, Gareth Edwards and Richard Burton.

The actor, perhaps, might spook airlines, with his name's undertow of "going for a Burton", while the actress could suffer from a version of the "Di" problem: it might be indelicate to have pilots talking of "going into Zeta-Jones". The rugby player may be disadvantaged by the fact that there is already an Edwards airfield, the US military base outside Washington which, given the abbreviated tags favoured by baggage handlers (EDW), would raise the risk of Welsh travellers discovering that their luggage was in the hands of the American air force.

Any public competition to choose a name is likely to attract enthusiastic voting because, whereas thousands of people have won Oscars, and millions have received state honours, only a very small group of human beings have ever got their names on baggage labels. Landing in Colombia, you know that Rafael Núñez must have really mattered in some way, even if you don't know who he was.

Admittedly, the club of those who have given their name to hubs seems to have rather erratic membership rules. Leonardo da Vinci, who imagined flight long before it became reality, clearly deserves to lord it over passengers going through Rome. But Washington DC's two main take-off sites honour one completely forgotten politician (a former secretary of state, John Foster Dulles), and one still legendary president, Ronald Reagan.

In America, political office is almost a guarantee of getting your memory drenched in kerosene fumes. The Republican presidents either side of Reagan - Gerald Ford and George HW Bush - have already gone to their airport reward, in Michigan and Houston respectively. But in Britain, despite intermittent campaigns for Gatwick Thatcher, the most elevated memorials to ex-leaders tend to be statues.

It is widely assumed in aviation circles that at some point in this century Heathrow will become Queen Elizabeth II international airport; but among the two dozen cities with major airports in the UK, only two have personalised their terminals: John Lennon international, in Liverpool and George Best City, in Belfast. This suggests a general British resistance to the habit of baptising plane-parks.

A reason for this reticence may be that, as in some nightmare version of parents deadlocked over what to call the offspring, it proves hard to name these places, as the Welsh may soon discover. The problem is that a majority of the world's jet destinations are local, although increasingly they aspire to be global. So should the runway-runners go for a wholly local figure (Boston Logan, New York La Guardia), or seek one who has associations both near and far (John Wayne Orange County)?

Such a debate is currently taking place around Indianapolis airspace, where the airport name has been changed to Indianapolis International, to reflect big city ambitions. However, there is now a campaign to restore the earlier memorial designation that honoured Weir Cook, a celebrated wartime flyer from Indiana.

Curiously, though, it often seems to be the case that the birth names of airfields tend to the poetic. London's biggest hub, although now a nightmare of urban industrialisation, still nods distantly to a rural heath, although the occasional rightwinger flying in may think that it immortalises the Tory premier before Thatcher. Kennedy international, before being translated through the shock of an assassination, was, hauntingly, Idlewild, a name now reclaimed by a rock band. And, greatly to the benefit of poets and novelists, the facility at which John F Kennedy landed on the trip that led to him becoming an airport in New York was called Love Field. Later, with his corpse in the hold, Jackie Kennedy flew out of Love.

Cardiff international was initially called Rhoose - which, again, could be either a surname or a placename. If it were restored, future international arrivals might think that it referred to a former Welsh premier or television celebrity. Cardiff Edwards will mean nothing to Americans, Cardiff CZT (as it would become) sounds like a corporation rather than a movie star. Because celebrity reputations crash and burn, airports are often better to stick with the ground-level name.

Ben Affleck is not guilty about being a celebrity

2008-06-27T20:08:00.000-07:00

The world, as we all know, is full of unbelievable poverty, famine and suffering. Busy with our own lives, numbed by millions of hours of footage of dead bodies, mutilated limbs and distended stomachs, we tend to ignore it all--until a celebrity (Bono, George Clooney, Madonna, Angelina Jolie, fill in the blank) comes along to briefly turn a spotlight on the carnage.

We stop, stare, remind ourselves to make a donation to Human Rights Watch and then go about our business. Of course, before we know it, we turn on Fox News or open up the Wall Street Journal editorial page, where some ardent commentator can be found playing the blame game--not blasting all of the governments who've refused to act and have ignored the suffering, but ridiculing the celebrity who took the time to speak out about it.

Ben Affleck is no stranger to this mean little game--he's been bashed all too many times for speaking out on a number of issues. Perhaps that's why I was more than a little surprised to see an e-mail from him today, asking me (and presumably about 800 other people in his Blackberry) to spread the news that "Nightline" is airing a segment tonight (at 11:35 p.m. on ABC) that he put together after making a series of trips to the strife-torn Democratic Republic of Congo. I guess he still hasn't learned to stop sticking his neck out.

As Affleck wrote: "I feel a little foolish emailing everyone I know and asking them to watch a show I worked on, but the point of this effort, in part, is to raise awareness about a part of the world that has endured a great deal, often in relative obscurity. Basically, I think this is important enough to look a little foolish over.... I think the 'Nightline' segment is worth checking out on the merits of the stories of the Congolese people I got to know, the incredible country they live in and how they are fighting to overcome terrible adversity."

If you want to take a little time out of your life to read more about what Affleck learned on his visits, go here--or here--to see a gallery of photos from the Congo. Four million people have died in that country during the past decade and I'm ashamed to say I don't know the name of a single one of them. I'm eager to watch tonight and see what Affleck has to say.

As it turns out, Ben just e-mailed me with a more in-depth explanation of what inspired him to do this. So keep reading:

In short, what led me to Congo was a limited understanding which led to a growing fascination. I was interested in Africa as a whole—but obviously that was too broad to get involved in in any kind of meaningful way. I did a lot of traveling, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, Sudan, South Sudan, Rep. Congo, DR Congo, and in the course of that I continued to be drawn to DR Congo—for its tragedy, complexity, beauty, greatness, history—the fact that if it functioned properly, it could carry all of sub-Saharan Africa on its back! One of the things that stunned me was how little was known—and how little I knew—about a place whose recent conflict had killed more people than any war since WWII! The incongruity of that, the idea that all of this suffering was happening without people hearing about it in the west—and that silence might, in some way, be contributing to the problem, was one of the things that motivated me to get involved.

The principle thing for me, over the course of this last year, has been learning. I needed to learn and I’m still learning. It’s not as if I’m some expert or I’m presenting myself as a person with answers—an I’m not an advocate of a particular organization. The idea behind this was to create a media piece along with the learning trip I was taking so that people back home could, ideally, learn with me. In so doing, perhaps a sense of empathy—maybe even solidarity can develop between the viewer and the people in the DRC. Of course, this isn’t likely to happen over the course of sixteen minutes of Nightline programming, no matter how good the ‘hooks’ are (“when we come back, Ben Affleck is eaten by wolves…”) but it is a start. A genuine one, I hope.

You asked about what I saw in terms of what was good and bad—hopeful and tragic. The Africa I saw was a continent of contradictions. There is tremendous growth and achievement in places, terrible inhuman suffering in others. And in some places the two are somehow bound up together. The Democratic Republic of Congo is such a place. On the one hand it is suffering unimaginable misery. There are the oft-repeated statistics (to which one can become numb if one isn’t careful), four million dead over the last ten years, twelve hundred people dying a day (by some counts), in parts of the Kivus in Eastern Congo two of every three women have been raped. All of this is so unspeakably barbaric, inhuman and unacceptable that the mind almost wants to turn off—not absorb the full meaning of those numbers by making each one into an actual person like you or I.

On the other hand, the Congolese I saw were amazing. As I have continued to travel there, I have continued to come across person after person who, though they’ve survived one or another form of terrible suffering, shows incredible strength and resilience—and I believe that is emblematic of the entire country.

There is a small shelter in Kinshasa called “Stand Proud”—it really isn’t much more than a house with a patch of dirt out back. They take in homeless street kids who are paralyzed, most have polio (others were crippled by inexpert nurses injecting quinine into their buttocks when they were infants). Most of these children crawled into the shelter on all fours—many never spent a day off their bellies before they came. Stand Proud teaches the kids to make their own braces and crutches—which the kids do. They learn to use them, to stand and to walk. When I got there it was late at night but every single one of those kids was in the back. I could hear music and I went around into the yard to see what they were doing. Fifty crippled children were outside, dancing. In the pouring rain.

They were just so happy they could stand up—let alone move—that they wanted to dance all night and all day. It was a celebration and an act of defiance by kids who lived on the streets, had no parents, did everything for themselves (including make their own leg brace equipment) and now announced their strength and independence—and joy.

Some of them were seven years old.

If there are people like that in a country, what can’t that country accomplish?

I spent time in the city of Goma, the center of much of the fighting and the area around which much of the gender based violence is taking place. On one side, there was the impunity and lawlessness that allowed rape to become almost a matter of course for many women. Even worse, poverty, war, and dehumanization in Eastern Congo are such that women aren’t just raped but gang raped—and often with sticks, rocks and bottles. This trauma often causes women to suffer a fistula, an internal injury which can lead to being ostracized, the loss of income/family, infection and even death. The ONLY people who can perform surgery on this tragically common injury in Goma are the doctors I visited at Heal Africa Hospital.

The doctors worked tirelessly, often taking bikes miles out into the countryside (fistula can also be caused by giving birth at age 11 or 12, which happens when girls are taken by militia groups as ‘wives’) to treat women who may not have the means practically or politically to come in to the hospital. While I couldn’t help but feel incredible anger and confusion and sadness (and a sense of guilt) I was more amazed by courage than overwhelmed by the darkness.

The hospital administrators told me there was a woman there who had been raped and burned alive by a militia group. Her name was Marta. Marta was insisting on telling her story because she felt it was important for other women to hear what happened and to come forward if they had been raped. We went and met Marta and she was terribly scarred. We asked if she was sure she wanted to be filmed and though I could see she was nervous and self-conscious, she was resolutely certain that she wanted to say what happened to her. So, I talked to her and she forced herself to relive this trauma. I said I could tell that she didn’t like talking about this and that it was very painful for her and asked her why she wanted to do this so badly and she told me she didn’t want other women to be afraid. She wanted women to hear her tell her story and feel the courage to come forward themselves.

This is in a country where less than ten percent of rapes are prosecuted.

With people like Marta, how can there not be hope for the Congo?

Ben Affleck photo by Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times

Elton John party attracts celebrity Kings and Queens

2008-06-27T20:04:00.000-07:00

By Laura Clout

The annual event, held at the popstar's £20 million country home in Old Windsor, Berkshire, is strictly invite only, at £3,000 a head.

Liz Hurley, wearing a white diamond tiara, Australian supermodel Elle MacPherson and actor Michael Caine were all spotted making their way in.

Posing outside the venue, the singer Rod Stewart was flanked by his daughters Ruby and Kimberley, and wife Penny Lancaster.

Founder of Northern and Shell plc, Richard Desmond, Kelly Osbourne and Big Brother presenter Davina McCall also pulled up.

There was a heavy security presence as the stars descended on the quiet lane, in a range of expensive cars including Bentleys, Rolls Royces, Audis and Range Rovers.

Other celebrity guests were thought to include Will Smith, Bill Clinton, Freddie Flintoff and Denzel Washington.

Bizarrely, despite attending one of the highest profile gatherings of the year, some guests pulled up in their cars with their faces covered by latex masks.

A blonde haired woman and an unidentifiable man both stared defiantly at the cameras through their flesh coloured masks.

Meanwhile a series of lookalikes gathered at the pop star's local pub.

Singer Gary Wise started the trend by dressing up as the millionaire singer and setting up his piano outside the Oxford Blue.

He planned to entertain the celebrity guests as they queued to get into the star-studded event.

Landlord Terry Branwhite said: "The cars all start queueing up to get in during the afternoon, so we thought we would do something to entertain them.

"Some of them might stop off for a drink."

Press Hordes For Hire

2008-06-27T20:00:00.000-07:00

By ALEXIA ELEJALDE-RUIZ and LOUIS R. CARLOZO | Chicago Tribune

The white SUV limo whisked 15 men from the Signature Room to La Pomme Rouge to Martini Park to Stone Lotus. Women hooted as the entourage darted between the limo and the swanky clubs. Bouncers ushered the men past long lines and around velvet ropes.

And a paparazzo pursued them, her camera flashing away.

What big shot caroused in Chicago that evening?

Why, it's Phillip Barker and his crew.
Phillip who?

A Buena Park, Ill., resident, Barker toils as an ad agency copy editor. But trailed by a snap-happy camera that November night, he did feel like a certain celeb:

" Britney Spears," he said with a laugh. "That's who we were joking about."

Inspired by a night of drinking with his buds, Barker recruited the shooter via Craigslist to act as his paparazzo for his friend Jason Layman's 27th birthday fete.

While real stars dodge paparazzi like roaches, regular folks who crave a taste of the glamorous life now turn to personal paparazzi to make them feel like stars.

"We had a lot of people screaming out to us," Barker, 30, recalled of the Nov. 10 festivities. "Lots of bars had lines down the street, but we'd go right in. … They thought we were famous."

Barker is not alone — new businesses are springing up to serve the starry-eyed.

Based in Austin, Texas, Celeb-4-A-Day offers packages from $300 (30 minutes, four paparazzi) to the $2,500 "MegaStar" treatment (two hours with six paparazzi, a bodyguard and publicist).

"We do enough to really give you the experience," said founder Tania Cowher, who adds that she welcomes anyone — including B-list celebs trying to stage a comeback.

After all, what's Hollywood without a little acting? "The everyday person has no idea if we're real or not." As for Cowher's present clientele, the goal remains simple: to spice up birthdays, bachelor parties and the like.

Cowher hatched her idea four years ago at a commercial photography school. But it wasn't until November that she acted on it.

Bored with shooting bank execs and such, she launched her website during a lunch break. Business started slowly. Then Time magazine called, and her phone has been ringing off the hook ever since.

"Everyone … thinks, at least once, 'I wonder what that's like,'" said Cowher, whose clients have booked her for events ranging from an 8-year-old's birthday party to a 65-year-old's wedding anniversary.

Cowher has bookings most every weekend — a New Year's Eve gig is already lined up — and she has expanded to Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco.

Kevin Hagedorn, a real estate consultant and radio host in Austin, hired Cowher to create a surprise "media blitz" to celebrate the news that he and his wife were having a boy. He picked the $300 package, took his wife to dinner in downtown Austin, and ushered her out at a prearranged signal.

Paparazzi camera flashes blinded the couple, the shooters yelling: "Look over here! Look over here!"

Barker, who paid a free-lance photographer $200 to snap photos for five hours, wanted a tag-along lens so his friends wouldn't have to worry about taking pictures. They ended up loving their spotlight night. "As 15 narcissistic gay men, we kind of ate it up."

Private Paparazzi in San Diego charges $75 per hour per photographer, with most clients hiring one to three cameras, said client relations director Lindsay Chapin. The firm partners with a limo company for clients wanting the full celeb effect.

One client who hired Private Paparazzi for his wife's 40th birthday even arranged for autograph-seeking "fans" as she left a Savannah, Ga., restaurant. "It's this whole fantasy they're playing out in their mind, and they want to experience it for one night," Chapin said.

Celebrity Feuds Win for NBC

2008-06-26T23:59:00.006-07:00

The first ever spin-off of Family Feud, a game show which itself was originally a spin-off, premiered last night on NBC. Very few changes to the standard show format, along with celebrities and much larger cash prizes helped NBC pull down promising ratings for this summer show.

Feud first began airing in 1976 with host Richard Dawson at the helm. His charm, slightly chiding nature and constant kissing quickly cemented him as one of TV’s best-loved hosts. In those early days, ABC owned the show, which was canceled by the network in 1985.

The show was born again on CBS in 1988, this time with petite Ray Combs holding center stage. This version was officially canceled in 1993, but continued as a syndicated version (amid some host troubles) until 1995. The show would not return again until 1999 on FOX as a daytime syndicated spot. Nine years of set changes and host changes have kept Feud on FOX ever since, with re-runs always available on GSN.

| NBC

ABC, CBS and FOX all had their shot at Feud - now, it’s NBC’s turn. Celebrity Family Feud premiered last night to grab ratings of 5.8 million viewers - hardly a network success in May, but great for late June. With Al Roker at the helm (incidentally the first African-American to ever host the show and the sixth in a long line of Feud hosts), this hour-long version pits real celebrity families against each other. So far, the results are good.

Those who watched this celebrity version found the format of Feud highly unchanged. The show still pits teams of five against each other, each trying to find the most popular answers to random questions (“name something you have to refrigerate,” for instance). The first round of the first show pit rapper/TV star Ice T’s family against the Joan Rivers clan (which included a niece, nephew and family friend). Joan’s family won by scoring over 300 points, and then quickly cleared the way for the families of round 2. This lot was made up of Raven-Symone’s real and TV families against the Wayne Newton brood. Raven’s family won, only to square off against the winners of the first round (the Rivers group).

After this third round of play, it was finally time for the Fast Money round where contestants get the chance to win $50,000 for charity. Joan and Melissa Rivers managed to score over 200 points in this final round, cementing victory for their chosen charity - guide dogs for the blind. Second-place Raven, et al., collected $10,000 for the American Red Cross.

Those are the facts…but what about all the rest? Honestly, no version of Family Feud will ever become as well-liked at the original show. Why’s that? You already know the answer - Richard Dawson. Al Roker is affable enough and humorous as well, but his somewhat rushed style made questions a little hard to understand (especially during the last round of the game) and truly poor editing gave the entire show a somewhat glitchy, out-of-sync look and feel. Also, the show hasn’t been dumbed down at all for this celebrity version - a mistake most other game show don’t make. I’m not saying celebs are stupid, I’m just saying that most game shows have the sense to ask very easy questions of their famous faces. The questions themselves were highly uninspired to the point of utterly boring, leaving me to wonder where they even managed to find audiences to answer them. With only a single fast money round and two to three truly recognizable faces on each celeb side, this version of Feud is probably doomed to failure. For one, it’s on NBC - this bodes ill for almost any show.

But if you’re interested, the celebrity stylings will continue for the next few weeks. Upcoming celebs schedule to appear include Vivica A. Fox, the Girls Next Door, Kathy Lee Gifford, Dog the Bounty Hunter, the cast of The Office, some of the cast of The America Gladiators, Larry the cable Guy, the Kardashians and Ed McMahon (one I’m looking forward to immensely).

The original Feud, currently hosted by former Seinfeld regular John O’Hurley, is still airing on FOX.

Flushed with excitement after my brief brush with celebrity

2008-06-26T23:53:00.000-07:00

By SARAH HOWDEN
AS India Miller put the finishing touches to my 1940s-inspired hair-do, all I could think of was the fact that, minutes later, she would be rushing off to style the hair of Joely Richardson. Yes, that's right, a bona fide A-list celebrity. Joely and I had shared stylists. Ooh, maybe even a hairbrush and straightening iron.
You see, when it comes to celebrities, I have no shame. I love them. My home resembles WH Smith, E Entertainment is my favourite television channel and I nearly wept with excitement when I got tickets to the forthcoming Girls Aloud concert. So when I got invited to the world premiere of Edge of Love – and bagged after-party tickets too – I couldn't believe it. I was officially in celeb heaven.

To me, film premieres have always been the ultimate in glitz, glamour, free-flowing champagne and a magazine's worth of celebrities all letting their hair down. For one night only, I was going to be there too.

So no-one other than India – who has apparently styled the likes of Charlize Theron and Minnie Driver – would do to shape my locks into their very best and adhere to the "1940s glamour" dress code. While Keira Knightley was going to be in Chanel, I went for Chloe (from TKMaxx) and although Sienna Miller was set to plump for Christian Louboutin heels, I went for Zara's similar version. I was ready for action. Then, I got there.

Nothing quite prepares you for the reality of a red-carpet walk. Even if it is at Fountain Park's Cineworld. There was the sea of flashing bulbs and hordes of photographers from around the world all shouting out names and asking the select few "give us a smile".

There were TV cameras filming every move, presenters begging others to "answer a couple of questions", there were hundreds of fans jostling for a view, and a small army of security.

That red carpet lark is pretty overwhelming. Which is probably why Sienna chose to hide behind a black bowler hat, layers of kohl eye liner and lashings of mascara. And, up close, looked more nervous than revelling in the adulation of the world's media and fans.

Keira looked similarly tense, hiding behind her sweeping long fringe. I, it has to be said, was absolutely petrified. My graceful walk turned into a gallop that would shame horses, and I suddenly realised why shades are the accessory of choice for almost all stars: it's intimidating out there.

After more than half an hour of posing for pictures, doing short television interviews and chatting to fellow stars, the cast crew and A-list audience, including Joely and Sean Connery, headed for the foyer. No cameras, no mass of journalists, no fans. And this is where the real celeb watching began.

Wearing a rather bizarre tassled dress by Jasmine de Milo, leggings and heels, Sienna clung on to her sister Savannah's hand and chose to look at the ground.

Keira, however, was all smiles once inside. Much more beautiful in the flesh, the big screen doesn't do her genes justice. But it wasn't her looks that got all the attention, as she cut a lean figure in a chic ivory coloured Chanel jumpsuit. No more than a size zero, the star looked almost skeletal. And a glamorous Joely looked similarly tiny, wearing a full-length metallic gown.

You'd be forgiven for assuming that there is just one screening in a premiere, with guests and stars sharing the same theatre. Wrong. There were three screenings with the cast and crew getting their very own private screening. But that didn't stop them doing the rounds, coming into each of the screens and thanking guests for coming.

After the film (which was great by the way) it was on to the party, where another red carpet and photographers awaited. Guests mingled, ate stewed sausages and mash, pokes of fish and chips or Welsh rarebit, drank copious amounts and chatted about the film. It was all very civilised – unlike me, for I was all about the star spotting.

Around 10pm they arrived. While Keira happily walked in as did Joely, Sienna preferred to have a bouncer usher her straight to the VIP area, eyes still down to the ground. And there was no way any mere mortal could get in there; two burly bouncers snarled at anyone who came close.

So thank god for the smoking laws, for every skinny celebrity needs their nicotine fix and they have to go into the great outdoors with us Joe Bloggs. Pacing the smoking area eventually paid off, for repeatedly standing out in the cold and rain for a cigarette was a sad-looking Sienna who either stood on her own looking into space or talked quietly to friends.

Maybe she was thinking about her ex, Rhys Ifans, or pining after co-star Matthew Rhys. Well there was no chance of me asking as this little diva had security usher smokers to the other side of the designated smoking area.

Joely was much more open and friendly, chatting to fellow smokers. Sienna and Keira never sat together, Sienna preferring to sip champagne and eat nuts with her sister, with her back turned to the downstairs crowds. Keira, on the other hand, perched herself on a tiny stool and chatted, laughed and posed for pictured with friends, family and colleagues.

By midnight the dancefloor had warmed up and it was rumoured Sienna and Keira were putting in appearances. No such luck. I got bored and gave up, popping to the loo before I went home. Which was when I saw them.

Yes, while they may have their very own VIP area they still had to share the ladies toilets with everyone else. Well, me. Sienna may have got security to take her down, stand outside while she entered with her sister but they couldn't chuck out those already inside.

When it comes to the everyday things, stars prove endearingly human after all.