people and celebrities

By RACHEL LEIBROCK
Sacramento Bee
Thursday, May 24, 2007

There's more to pirates than just "yo ho ho and a bottle of rum" and Johnny Depp in a headscarf. So in honor of this week's opening of "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End," here's a treasure trove of trivia to float your pirate boat.

-- Julius Caesar was captured by pirates.

By CARLA MEYER
Sacramento Bee
Thursday, May 24, 2007

There's nothing like a great romantic comedy. Flirty, witty and filled with great clothes and swank interiors, it's the classiest of popular cinematic forms.

Unfortunately, there hasn't been anything like a great romantic comedy out of Hollywood in some time.

By BARBARA VANCHERI
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Wednesday, May 23, 2007

In the original ending to "My Best Friend's Wedding," Julia Roberts danced with a blobby frat boy. Some consolation prize after watching Dermot Mulroney marry Cameron Diaz.

But the audience spoke and clamored: Bring back Rupert Everett, as the handsome gay best friend.

By TERRY MORROW
Scripps Howard News Service
Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Not so long ago, Anna Paquin fretted she might have a career confined by a corset.

"For the first couple of years of my career, I thought I would be doing corset movies the rest of my life," says Paquin, 24, whose credits include period pieces like "The Piano," "Jane Eyre" and now HBO's "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee," which premieres Sunday

But time and puberty took away some of her fears.

"The best thing about growing up on film is that you can't do the same (roles) over and over because you are always (growing physically)," she says.

In "Wounded Knee," Paquin plays progressive frontier teacher Elaine Goodale.

By NEVA CHONIN
San Francisco Chronicle
Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Last year or thereabouts, Rufus Wainwright -- gay messiah, rebel prince, pop star -- was riding through the Austrian Alps with his boyfriend when inspiration struck.

"All of a sudden," he recalls, "I sat up in the car and started singing the song that became 'Release the Stars.' It was a possession, like a light shining off of a glacier had blinded me."

That song, about his friend Lorca Cohen (daughter of Leonard Cohen), also became the title track for an album that might be the most significant in Wainwright's brief and still-brilliant career.

At least this is how Wainwright tells it. With his soft, brown eyes, dark, flopping hair and deep burgundy dress shirt, the 33-year-old singer-songwriter resembles an elegantly sartorial fawn: two parts Nijinsky, one part Bambi, with a dish of Debussy on the side.

"Release the Stars," in stores this week, is his fifth studio album, and the first Wainwright has produced himself, with some oversight by the Pet Shop Boys' Neil Tennant.

The past year has seen other firsts for Wainwright. In June, his audacious decision to perform Judy Garland's 1961 Carnegie Hall concert album in its entirety over two nights in that same venue made him the hottest ticket of the season. Then the New York Metropolitan Opera commissioned Wainwright to write his first opera.

A gay icon, Wainwright has had his share of encounters with young acolytes who seek him out hoping he'll provide meaning to their lives, or, barring that, a quick roll in the starry hay.

"Thank God I have a boyfriend now, or I'd just be a molester," Wainwright says of his partner of two years, Jorn Weisbrodt, concert manager for the Berlin State Opera. "I'm really happy with my status in terms of encouraging young gay people, but I feel that my main enemy in that spectrum is actually gay culture -- I'm probably more critical of gay culture than I am of fundamentalist Christian culture. I worry about these kids who grow up in the Midwest, move to New York or L.A. and go from the frying pan into the fire. Yes, they're getting away from their parents, but then they're being surrounded by consumerized beauty and fascistic body insanity."

"It used to be different," Wainwright says. "There was a period when you ran away from the Midwest and went to New York to live as a gay man, and it really was an incredibly meaningful, even spiritual experience. Now it's all homogenous homosexuality, and that's almost worse than ending up in the closet. I don't think that being gay always has to be bizarre and interesting, but I do think that in life in general you should try to edify yourself."

By fate or plan, Wainwright's own life has never failed to be bizarre, interesting and occasionally perilous. Six years ago, the singer's fierce addiction to crystal meth had friends and family convinced he wouldn't live to see his 30th birthday. At one point, he literally didn't see anything -- the drug had caused him to go temporarily blind.

Finally, something convinced Wainwright he needed help. He called his friend Elton John, who helped him check into rehab at Minnesota's Hazelden Foundation for detox and therapy. Wainwright got clean and went on to write his two critically acclaimed "Want" albums.

If, at times, Wainwright's life seems to achieve drama of operatic proportions, it's probably because he has soaked up opera like a sponge. This should come in handy as he works on his commission for the Met, a work he calls "Prima Donna" that traces a day in the life of an opera singer.

Opera aside, Wainwright's primary focus is "Release the Stars," an album he says signals a shift in his songwriting and aesthetic. Where earlier albums reveled in the singer's talent for droll introspection, on his new CD, he turns his gaze outward to contemplate other stars: Joan Crawford, Gloria Swanson, Bette Davis, Judy Garland.

"How great it would have been if they'd been released from their contracts and been allowed to live their own lives instead of being slaves to Hollywood?" he says. "I guess, in the end, the bigger meaning of the title is that it's time to break the contracts and let the crazy people roam and love and do what they need to do."

On past albums, Wainwright says, he was "really into the crepuscular, vapory sensibility of being the waifish prince. I love that whole period of my life, but this is more like, 'Let's sit down. I need to talk to you.' "

Metaphorically and technically, then, Wainwright is now his own producer. What's the best part about this new role? He smirks.

"I don't have to pay myself."

(E-mail Neva Chonin at nchonin(at)sfchronicle.com)

By TERRY MORROW
Scripps Howard News Service
Tuesday, May 15, 2007

For a guy who made his big entrance wearing only a towel, Eric Dane -- dubbed "McSteamy" on "Grey's Anatomy" -- normally wears modesty on his sleeve.

"I've been in this business for 15 years, and I have had my ups and my downs," he says. "Being humble is the most natural way to be with all this."

In 2006, after doing little-noticed work in prime time, Dane suddenly took off.

Well, he didn't take it all off, but he came close.

Dane walked out of a bathroom in a scene on "Grey's Anatomy" wearing only a towel, and viewers couldn't stop staring. (They can see more of him, sort of, by tuning in 9 p.m. EDT Thursdays on ABC. The season finale is May 17.)

The scene not only took him from guest star to series regular, it also propelled him to magazine covers and dozens of "sexiest" lists in print and on the Internet.

"The towel scene has definitely done something for me," says Dane, 34, and very much married to actress Rebecca Gayheart. "I guess nobody has to guess what is under my T-shirt anymore."

And since Dane's character, Dr. Mark Sloan, became "McSteamy," few viewers actually know the character's real name.

So where did this guy come from all of a sudden?

Well, it wasn't so sudden.

After a series of one-episode parts on a variety of shows, six years ago Dane landed a recurring role on another medical show -- "Gideon's Crossing" -- but no one paid nearly this much attention to him.

Still, Dane says he's stumped as to why his "Grey's" role has been his breakthrough part. He's been acting on TV for well more than a decade with the same chiseled looks but without such fanfare.

"I don't know why the audience responds to certain things," he says. "As for 'Gideon's Crossing,' I guess it was just the wrong time for that show.

"When it comes to 'Grey's Anatomy,' I guess people can identify with the characters because they are so horribly flawed."

From his view, "Grey's" is filled with pretty people with ugly problems. Viewers like that.

An occasional towel scene now and then is OK, too.

On Web sites such as hunkdujour.com, where sexy celebrities get fawned over, Dane is much beloved.

"Eric Dane is mega-gorgeous and mega-sexy. At last, a really good reason to watch 'Grey's Anatomy,' " posted a fan with the screen name Hot Chocolate.

Dane's heard it before, and he isn't afraid that the towel scene and future such scenes might take away from his acting.

"It's not such a bad thing," he says. "The response from it has been so overwhelming that I don't see (such scenes) as a bad thing. It's flattering."

Not surprisingly, the well-toned Dane, who is from San Francisco, was a bit of a jock in school. "I never watched television growing up," he says.

But when he was injured playing baseball, he ended up needing to fulfill a school credit. "I got roped into doing a play," he says.

And he realized he loved it.

He had too much energy playing a 63-year-old in the play "All My Sons," so his teacher put weights on his legs, forcing him to shuffle.

After college, he moved to Los Angeles and landed small roles on such shows as "Saved by the Bell" and "Married ... With Children." Then came "Gideon's."

His film credits include "X-Men: Last Stand," in which he plays mutant Jamie Madrox, also known as the Multiple Man.

Regardless of his other credits, Dane now is resigned to the fact that the towel scene has burned into viewers' minds. Worse things have happened to actors, he says.

"That image has been everywhere," he says with a laugh. "I can live with that."

By TERRY MORROW
Scripps Howard News Service
Tuesday, May 08, 2007

It's hard out here for Three 6 Mafia, too.

"We went from the underground to having cameras in our faces and people looking at everything we do," says Juicy J, who makes up the Mafia with DJ Paul. "I still pinch myself sometimes."

And now, they are the latest reality-show stars for MTV.

The rappers, who won a 2006 Academy Award for writing "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" (from the soundtrack of "Hustle & Flow"), are the focus of the lighthearted reality show "Adventures in HollyHood" (10 p.m. Thursdays, MTV).

The show chronicles their acclimation to Hollywood after living all their lives in Memphis.

The show breaks down a few ideas about the lives of successful rappers. Unlike the hardened image many of their peers evoke, the members of Three 6 Mafia would rather laugh about how a couple of Memphis guys don't fit into the Hollywood machine.

"When you get wrapped up in these parties and start saying 'who's this and who's that?,' then you start losing focus," Juicy J says.

"If you are going for your dreams, you have to keep focus. You got to keep rolling."

Three 6 Mafia has been around in one form or another since the mid-1990s. Members have come and gone over the years _ taking them from two to three to six and back to two members.

Juicy J and DJ Paul _ 31-year-old childhood buddies Jordan Houston and Paul Beauregard, respectively _ see themselves as just working stiffs from Tennessee.

"For us, a life of a rapper is the life of a businessman," Juicy J says. "Some rappers are workaholics, like we are.

"Some sit around and drink all day. To each his own. But we are here to work."

What the duo has learned since winning an Oscar is that the trophy opens doors, but doesn't make them players.

In Memphis, they were big fish in a small pond. But in Hollywood, they are fish out of water.

At their home in the Hollywood hills, Jennifer Love Hewitt is literally the girl next door.

They hang out with the likes of Johnny Knoxville and have producers wanting to work with them.

The two are also humbled in Hollywood, where not everyone knows their name. In one episode of their show, the two throw a neighborhood house party, but only one neighbor shows up: a gray-haired senior citizen who hasn't heard of them.

"You've got to laugh at yourself, not take everything so seriously," DJ Paul says. "You can't take this seriously all the time."

By LISA HEYAMOTO
Sacramento Bee
Thursday, May 03, 2007

Math, as Barbie so memorably once said, is tough. All those numbers and symbols and equations and stuff? We don't have enough time or fingers to figure it all out.

But math, it seems, is particularly challenging if you're a celebrity. And nowhere is subtraction so difficult a task as when celebs are calculating their own ages.

Of course, stars way back when regularly lied about their birth years _ but then, they didn't have a ravenous celebrity culture to gleefully out them.

So, in the spirit of this day and age, here are a few famous folks who might have to brush up on the 'rithmetic.

Shawn Colvin

The folk-pop singer reportedly cut two years off her age throughout most of her career, but gave herself away in 1994, saying, "I couldn't keep track. Different magazines said I was 30, 35. Then I was asked to play Gloria Steinem's 60th-birthday party and I realized it was time to cut the (nonsense) and tell the truth."

Beyonce

Late last year, rumors started to fly that the very ladylike B. didn't just look that way by accident. Though the singer's official biography puts her at a perky 25, a document claiming to be her birth certificate surfaced on the blogs saying she was actually 32. The document, however, was never verified, so it looks like she'll be turning 26 on her next "B'Day."

Ashton Kutcher

It was such a scandal when the then-25-year-old Kutcher began dating Demi Moore, who is 15 years his senior. Then word spread in 2004 that Kutcher was actually four years older when they met, shrinking their age gap to a negligibly less-scandalous 11 years. Turns out, the rumor was debunked by Kutcher's verified 1996 high-school graduation, and the very convenient fact that he happens to have a twin brother.

Lucille Ball

Back when lying about your age was the new black, it was also common for older women to lie about being in relationships with younger men. So in the early years of their marriage, Ball and Desi Arnaz tried to hide the fact that she was older by splitting the difference between their six years apart and claiming both were born in 1914.

Afrika Bambaataa

He may be credited with the birth of rap, but this iconic artist has always been tight-lipped about the birth of himself. Various sources cite his birth year as either 1957 or 1960, and Bambaataa himself has refused to spin the record straight.

Charo

The very exuberant Charo has always maintained that she was born in 1951, despite records in the United States and her native Spain stating she is actually 10 years older. In 1977, she even had the cuchi-cuchis to take it to court, where she convinced a judge that a clerical error was responsible for the earlier date.

(Contact Lisa Heyamoto at lheyamoto(at)sacbee.com.)