Issue Date: June 18, 2006
Please give us personal and professional info on the actor who played Denny Duquette in the past season's "Grey's Anatomy."
Mary Grogan, Caldwell, Idaho
He's Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and this is the year he went from "unknown-blue-collar-guy" to being recognized on the street. He was a regular on "Grey's" (he gave a heart-wrenching deathbed performance), as well as WB's "Supernatural" and Showtime's "Weeds." He left his job as a graphic artist when he helped a friend move to L.A. in the early '90s. "I am no spring chicken," Morgan, 40, tells us. But now, "I'm making decisions based on material and not just [that] I have to pay the rent."
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Miley Cyrus, 13, daughter of country music's Billy Ray Cyrus, is learning the price of fame. The star of Disney Channel's "Hannah Montana" (on which Dad plays her dad) gets hit up for money "for stupid stuff" by youngest brother Braison. "He thinks I get all the money I want," when she really just wants pocket change for movies and music. "I'm obsessed with my iPod," she says. "I never leave my house without it." Does Dad give her any showbiz advice? "His motto is, 'If you ain't having fun, it ain't working.' "
When Meredith Vieira moves to NBC's Today show in September, will she continue to host "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?"
Shirley Waite, Walla Walla, Wash.
Yes.
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We all know Isaac Mizrahi as a creator of Target fashion. But he's also a Broadway costume designer who began dressing actors when he was in high school. Mizrahi was inexplicably overlooked by Tony this season, but he clearly had fun with designs for the recently closed "Barefoot in the Park" and "The Threepenny Opera," which wraps next Sunday. "Opera" was his destiny, and outfitting star Cyndi Lauper was just icing on the cake. "I saw the show when I was 13," he tells me. "I had the cast album and wore it down to the nub."
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Tom Everett Scott's new TNT series, "Saved," has him playing a compulsive gambler/paramedic. To prepare, he went on ride-alongs with real paramedics. One call involved lots of blood: "I thought, 'I'm going to have nightmares.' " Gambling was something he knew; he came in third in a World Poker Tour. "I got really lucky," he says modestly. Actually, Scott, 35, claims he no longer has energy for poker, thanks to his children, ages 1 and 6. He and his wife "put the kids to bed and watch TiVo."
What ever happened to Arsenio Hall? I thought he was great as Eddie Murphy's straight man in one of my all-time favorite movies, "Coming to America."
Judy Beckman, Ashville, Ohio
The good news is, he still has PR people. So maybe Hall, 51, intends to revive his career. The bad news is, they can't tell us anything. So maybe career revival is easier said than done.
Scott Stapp, formerly of Creed, has made such a comeback with his new album, "The Great Divide." When will he tour?
Angel Marie Moll, Bellingham, Mass.
He's on the road now, traveling by bus and sleeping in a bunk, "the humbling experience I needed in my life." Since Creed broke up, Stapp, 32, who has a son, 7, says he's been trying to "figure out, 'What am I supposed to do with my life?' Then I met the guys [in the new band], began writing music, and it reaffirmed this is what I'm supposed to be doing. For a while I doubted that.
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"Doesn't work well with others." That, says late-night talker Craig Ferguson, 44, is what would be written on his report card if, indeed, he still got a report card. The fact that he works well alone helped him become the well-reviewed author of "Between the Bridge and the River," a novel published in April. Writing, he says, "became the purest way to tell a story without interference." The story, he says, is like "[James Frey's] 'A Million Little Pieces' in reverse, because a lot of it is unexpectedly true."
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BIRTHDAYS
June 18: Paul McCartney, 64
June 19: Paula Abdul, 44
June 20: Nicole Kidman, 39; Lionel Richie, 57
June 21: Prince William, 24
June 22: Donald Faison, 32; Carson Daly, 33; Amy Brenneman, 42; Meryl Streep, 57
June 23: Clarence Thomas, 58
June 24: Sherry Stringfield, 39
Contributing: Gayle Jo Carter
 Ask Lorrie Lynch a question about a celeb!
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