Issue Date: March 3, 2002
Lately, I've been reading about Talisa Soto, Benjamin Bratt's new love interest. She looks so familiar. Has she been in any movies?
Jalen Nogera, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Yes, but that's probably not the only reason you recognize the leggy Latin beauty. At 15, Soto began a successful modeling career that had her gracing the covers of "Vogue," "Glamour," Mademoiselle" and "Self," as well as the pages of the 1995 "Sports Illustrated" swimsuit issue. She changed her name early on from Miriam to Talisa (her mom's idea) and increasingly devoted herself to making movies. You may know her best as Princess Kitana from the "Mortal Kombat" films, but the 5-foot-8 Puerto Rican knockout, 34, also was a Bond girl in "Licence to Kill" and acted opposite Johnny Depp in "Don Juan DeMarco," among other projects. You can catch Soto this fall in vEcks vs. Sever," an action film with Antonio Banderas and Lucy Liu, but she also plays Bratt's prostitute girlfriend in "Pinero," out earlier this year. The two began dating last fall, and Soto has gone on record saying Bratt is "absolutely the ideal man for me."
Has Lisa Beamer, widow of Sept. 11 hero Todd "Let's Roll" Beamer, given birth to their third child? She is such an inspiration.
Tricia Marrapodi, Tucson, Ariz.
Lisa had Morgan Kay on Jan. 9, just four months after her husband died fighting back aboard United Flight 93 (which crashed in Pennsylvania). The birth was an "emotional event," Lisa tells us. "My daughter looks so much like him." The family is coping one day at a time. "Small kids can keep you going with the task of feeding, dressing and playing. I find a lot of strength in the fun and ordinary tasks we do each day." "We" includes her sons, David, 4, and Drew, 2, who "love their little sister and are very sweet with her." Lisa, 32, created the Beamer Foundation for children of Sept. 11 victims, and she has a book about her husband, tentatively titled "Let's Roll!," due in September.
Nanette Hansen of NBC's "Early Today" is such a great newswoman. Tell me more about her, personally and professionally.
Donald Craig, Spotsylvania, Va.
Hansen, 38, graduated with a communications degree from Boston College (on a tennis scholarship), but it was a gig as reporter-anchor at a tiny radio station in Portsmouth, N.H., that hooked her on journalism. She found fame in 1993 as a TV news anchor in Manchester, N.H., when word got out that she resented being asked by a White House aide to touch up President Clinton's makeup before an interview. The press had a field day; the White House apologized. The West Orange, N.J., native, an Emmy winner for her work at CBS News, rises at 2 a.m. to anchor "Early Today." Her goal? "Like every journalist, the real pinnacle is to be on '60 Minutes.' " Hansen lives in New York with her dogs and retreats to her Long Island home for golf, tennis and sleep.
Where are Michael Jackson's kids?
I've never seen them.
Margaret Myers, Prattville, Ala.
Neither have we. Jackson is so fiercely protective of son Prince, 5, and daughter Paris, 3, that he won't allow them to be photographed. When paparazzi are around, he's gone so far as to cover the children from head to toe. But it sounds like little Prince is already taking after his daddy, by altering his looks: In November, he reportedly had his hair bleached blond. Spokesman Bob Jones of Jackson's MJJ Productions says he isn't allowed to talk about or provide photos of the children. But back in 1997, the National Enquirer paid a reported $2 million to publish baby photos of Prince. The money went to Jackson's children's foundation, Heal the World. Jackson has said he would prefer the children not leave Neverland, his ranch in southern California where they live and where he hopes to build a school. We wonder if that includes visits to their mother, Debbie Rowe, to whom he was married from 1996 to 1999.
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Pop author Carl Hiaasen ("Strip Tease," "Sick Puppy") has a gift for the bizarre. But as the 25-year "Miami Herald" reporter-columnist can attest, some of the strangest ideas come from real life. His recent ninth novel, "Basket Case," is about a has-been journalist stuck on the obituary beat when a real murder story turns up among the daily deaths. Hiaasen, who never wanted to do anything but write, says he could leave newspapers behind and make his living as a novelist. But he still enjoys doing both; his editors let him alone, and he can work from his home in the Florida Keys. Switching gears from non-fiction to fiction is no problem: "Journalism is what comes out of your notebook. With novels, the notebook's in your head." To promote "Basket Case," Hiaasen, a homebody by nature, has been touring the country. Does he sense any particular national mood? "I don't know if there's any mood," he says. "The people I've seen seem grateful to be laughing again. They seem eager to be entertained." And one thing Hiaasen does well is entertain.
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BIRTHDAYS
March 3: Jessica Biel, 20;
Michael Imperioli, 36.
March 4: Patricia Heaton, 44;
Catherine OšHara, 48.
March 5: Niki Taylor, 27;
March 6: Shaquille OšNeal, 30;
D.L. Hughley, 39;
Tom Arnold, 43;
Rob Reiner, 57;
Ed McMahon, 79.
March 7: Laura Prepon, 22;
Bryan Cranston, 46;
Willard Scott, 68.
March 8: James Van Der Beek, 25;
Freddie Prinze Jr., 26;
Camryn Manheim, 41;
Lynn Redgrave, 59.
March 9: Emmanuel Lewis, 31;
Juliette Binoche, 38.
Contributing: Evelyn Poitevent, Jeanne Wright, Frappa Stout
 Ask Lorrie Lynch a question about a celeb!
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