Issue Date: November 25, 2001
Where is Julia Roberts from, and is that her real name?
John Jennings, Commerce, Calif.
Her birth name is Julie Fiona Roberts, but she changed it to Julia when she applied for her Screen Actors Guild card and discovered there was another Julie Roberts. Her ex-husband, Lyle Lovett, called her Fiona, and friends call her Jules. Roberts, 34, was born and reared in Smyrna, Ga., but has called New York City home for 17 years. Watch for her next month in "Ocean's Eleven".
Ewan McGregor was excellent in "Moulin Rouge". What are his next films? Does one of them involve Sarah Michelle Gellar?
L. Kroger, Rolling Meadows, Ill.
McGregor has a lot going on but nothing with Gellar, star of TV's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". He and Pearl Harbor's Josh Hartnett star in Ridley Scott's military thriller "Black Hawk Down", due in theaters Dec. 28. Then in May he reprises his role as Obi-Wan Kenobi in a little film called "Star Wars: Episode II". The Scottish-born McGregor, 30, lives in London and often brings his family to film sets. His second child with wife Eve Mavrakis, a production designer, was due at press time; daughter Clara is 5.
A friend tells me Troy Garity, who starred in Bandits with Bruce Willis and Billy Bob Thornton, is Jane Fonda's son. Is he right?
Melissa Hunter, Denver
Yes. Garity, 27, is Fonda's son with activist Tom Hayden, her second husband. They gave him Hayden's mother's maiden name so he wouldn't be encumbered with their political baggage. Garity has been able to work anonymously in L.A. for the past five years. Although he appeared briefly in last year's "Steal This Movie", playing his real-life father, Garity's big break was "Bandits", playing Willis' dim cousin. Coming is another independent film, "Milwaukee, Minnesota", in which he plays "an idiot-savant ice fisherman." Talking about his acting family, he says: "My hard work will pay off or it won't. I don't think that has much to do with my lineage." Will he aim for a political career like his father's? "No way."
Does Linda Vester, daytime anchor on the Fox News Channel, have Mideast expertise? She seems very knowledgeable.
Marybeth Randall, Hanover, Mass.
No wonder you're impressed with Vester's coverage of the war on terrorism. She's fluent in Arabic and French, and was a
Fulbright Scholar of Middle East Affairs in Egypt. Vester, 36, who has reported from the Gulf War, Rwanda, Somalia and Northern
Ireland, tells us she still shudders over the suffering she has witnessed. Anthrax threats involving the media haven't scared her.
"That may be because I've been in war zones where I've had close scrapes." Navigating minefields in Kuwait and coming under fire in
Africa "brings you a little closer to mortality." Today, Vester says, "I may serve best from the studio, helping people understand
the context of things in the Muslim world. But whatever [Fox] needs me to do, I'll do."
Carol Burnett, queen of the variety show, thinks the country could use a big dose of laughter right about now. So with her former comic cohorts Tim Conway, Harvey Korman and Vicki Lawrence, Burnett will dish it out Monday at 10 p.m. ET, when CBS airs "The Carol Burnett Show: Show Stoppers". No variety show has been as successful since her prime-time series ran from 1967 to Ô78, but Burnett, 68, isn't pining for her salad days. She assures us, "I don't sit and watch myself like Norma Desmond." Nor would she want to return to weekly TV now. "I had it so great; it was the synergy
of us all together. They gave us time to develop. Today, if you're not a hit in the first 10 minutes, you're canceled the last 20." Besides, needing 50 Bob Mackie-designed costumes, 28 musicians and multiple song rights each week would make such a show too costly today. Burnett's next stage role
is playwright: She and daughter Carrie Hamilton wrote a show based on Burnett's published memoir about growing up in Hollywood in the 1940s. Hal Prince will direct at Chicago's Goodman Theatre next year.
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THIS WEEK'S BIRTHDAYS
November 25: Barbara Bush, 20; Jenna Bush, 20; Christina Applegate, 30; Jill Hennessy, 32
November 26: Tina Turner, 62
November 27: Jaleel White, 25; Caroline Kennedy, 44;
November 28: Jon Stewart, 39; Paul Shaffer, 52
November 29: Don Cheadle, 37; Kim Delaney, 39
November 30: Ben Stiller, 36; Dick Clark, 72
December 12: Bette Midler, 56; Richard Pryor, 61; Woody Allen, 66
BIRTHDAYS
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