people and celebrities

For 20 years there was little synchronicity among the members of The Police, so when the band decided to launch a reunion tour in May 2007, no one expected it would carry on for two summers and nearly 150 shows.One might even conclude from the duration that they must be enjoying themselves.Stewart Copeland will tell you otherwise.

Lyle Lovett, speaking from his tour bus, talks about the benefits of recording live, traveling without horns this summer and keeping his songs personal rather than political.Q: I'd heard you considered going out with a smaller band because of gas prices. Was that true?

It's a hot and humid day along Florida's gulf coast, but Alonzo Bodden, with his shaved head and dark shades, is the picture of cool.He climbs out of an idling Hummer H1, looks into the camera and proclaims with a drill-sergeant's delivery: "This is man's truck."

For years, Simon Pegg would take the offensive when a relationship headed south.

"I'm always going to do my Sondheim," Bernadette Peters says, her inimitable voice lilting musically over the phone from her home in Manhattan. "I love his music. I miss it when I don't sing his songs."

Though she calls herself "a proud mono-tasker," Kay Ryan was making toast for her nephew while fielding calls about her appointment as 16th poet laureate of the United States.From now on, the 62-year-old poet and English teacher from Fairfax, Calif., will have to get used to the pace.

Comedian Wanda Sykes was unnecessarily apologetic. She was running late because a previous interview had lasted longer than expected.The Emmy-winning entertainer has become one of the country's premier comedians, and that has placed a lot of demands on her time.

SAN FRANCISCO -- There are number of remarkable things about the documentary "Chris & Don: A Love Story," not the least of which is the film's 16mm footage of two gay men proudly showing their affection for each other in public -- in the early 1950s.

Captured leaving a powder room, in Nick Broomfield's 1998 biopic "Kurt and Courtney," Courtney Love is sleek and stunning as she runs long, manicured fingernails beneath her nose and sniffs prettily.Ten years later, Love is back in the news again, after a painful decline, and a seemingly endless round of rehab and courtroom appearances.

Dominic Cooper has a short resume in theater and film but it is nonetheless impressive, and with his brooding good looks, he just may be the next British heartthrob to make it big in United States.