people and celebrities

Dennis Quaid has a secret about making good sports movies. He makes sure they're not sports movies."I've done probably six of them that I think directly could be called sports films and fit the criteria. For me, they have got to be about more than the sport," said Quaid, 54, in a recent phone interview from Phoenix.

To make his next film, "Green Zone," Greg Kinnear reunited with "Stuck on You" sibling Matt Damon. It's a thriller instead of a comedy, and it takes place in Iraq, but the biggest difference was the angle.

In his latest film, "Flash of Genius," as well as in other movies he's made this decade, Greg Kinnear seems to have spent more than his fair share of screen time in pajamas or bathrobes.What gives?

Alfre Woodard was talking on the phone while driving herself to the NBC lot for a day of shooting "My Own Worst Enemy." She plays the head of a covert government operation in the series, which premieres Oct. 13. Looking at her resume, Woodard hasn't had a down year since she started acting more than 30 years ago.

Every year, when the Academy Awards ceremony pauses for a solemn remembrance of lives lost in the previous year, some names and photos spontaneously produce applause while others pass in silence.No single life is worth more than another, but if ever anyone deserved an audible affirmation during the Oscar telecast in February, it would be Paul Newman.

She was the sometimes-frazzled, sometimes-unfazed mother on the TV series "Malcolm in the Middle." Actress Jane Kaczmarek, who grew up in Milwaukee, is married to actor Bradley Whitford of "The West Wing" fame. They have three children.

Paul Newman is dead, but somehow that doesn't seem possible.

Long before Valerie Bertinelli, before Kirstie Alley, even before Jared the Subway-sandwich guy, there was Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York.

On the bed in Ralph Fiennes' hotel room is a script for Sophocles' "Oedipus." Fiennes, who is about to star as the king of Thebes on the London stage, is learning his lines between promoting his new movie, "The Duchess," at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Florentino Lopez was a Cuban-American who often rode into New York on the same train as author James McBride. He was also, as McBride found out later, a former Buffalo Soldier.