Issue Date: May 27, 2007
Helen Hunt is one of my favorite actors. A couple of years ago, she was in everything. Lately that's not so. Is she taking a break? I hope to see her again soon.
Tom Yax, Boise
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After a small role in last year's political ensemble "Bobby," Hunt, 43, is taking a page from George Clooney's notebook by writing, directing and starring in her own pet project: "Then She Found Me." For eight years, she has worked to adapt the script from Elinor Lipman's first novel, about a mild-mannered teacher (Hunt) found by her TV talk-show host birth mom (Bette Midler). No release date yet, but Colin Firth and Matthew Broderick are among its other stars.
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Roused from midmorning slumber after a late night at a poetry reading, Amber Tamblyn discusses her new film, "Stephanie Daley." She plays the "unaware, detached" title character, a pregnant teen who doesn't acknowledge her condition and whose baby doesn't survive its birth in a ski resort bathroom. Tamblyn, 24, who grew up in the L.A. beach-side area of Venice, says her own upbringing was quite different. "My mother is a life-skills teacher who helps teenagers communicate better. My father [actor Russ Tamblyn] is also an artist, and he always told me, 'Express everything!' " So now Tamblyn writes poetry and reads it publicly. The one-time "Joan of Arcadia" star also has made a pilot for a CBS series, "Babylon Fields," a comedy-drama about the dead coming back to life.
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Marco Andretti, son of Michael and grandson of racing legend Mario, is quickly rounding out the family legacy, at about 200 mph. After finishing second at last year's Indy 500, Andretti, 20, is ready to give it another shot this weekend. "You bring back a little more confidence, whereas last year was kind of an open feeling," he says of his nerves. "The driving part comes natural to me. I can be woken out of my sleep, be put in a race car and go do it." Dad and Grandpa offer sage advice, but it's Mom who may have helped prevent a crash or two: "She does all the praying. She's probably saved my butt a ton of times."
Online Bonus: Full Interview with Andretti
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Yancey Arias knows how to be a bad guy. You may remember his breakthrough role in "Kingpin," the 2003 NBC miniseries in which he played a drug lord. This summer he's playing with one of the good guys, Bruce Willis, in "Live Free or Die Hard," the fourth "Die Hard" movie. "I'm Agent Johnson," says Arias, who will celebrate the premiere and his 36th birthday the same night, June 27. "Did you ever notice there's an Agent Johnson in all the 'Die Hard' movies?" Arias, born in New York City, found acting in high school and threw himself into it with a passion previously saved only for baseball, which he still loves. That passion was nurtured, he tells me, by high school teachers and camp counselors during summers at Stagedoor Manor Performing Arts Training Center, a theater camp in the Catskills.
I loved Matthew MacFadyen in "Pride & Prejudice." When can we expect to see him again on the big screen?
Mercy Levitz, Queens, N.Y.
At the end of June. Macfadyen, 32, and his wife, Keeley Hawes, play husband and wife in a British black comedy, "Death at a Funeral." "The producers rang our respective agents," Macfadyen says. "I read the script in the bath while she put the kids to bed, and then she read it in the bath." His character, Daniel, shares at least one quality with "Pride & Prejudice's" Mr. Darcy: He doesn't smile much.
Alfred Hitchcock made cameo appearances in his movies. Do any of today's directors have bit parts in their own films?
Julie Ratliff, Fort Wayne, Ind.
Quentin Tarantino has written little parts for himself in all the movies he has directed except for both "Kill Bill" films. Martin Scorsese has put himself in his own movies, most memorably in "Taxi Driver," plotting murder in the back of Robert De Niro's cab. Peter Jackson had bit parts in all three of the "Lord of the Rings" movies, just as Sam Raimi did in his "Evil Dead" trilogy. Francis Coppola played a TV newsman in his "Apocalypse Now." And in the "Jurassic Park" sequel "The Lost World," Steven Spielberg can be spotted munching on some popcorn.
Please tell me the TNT series "The Closer" will return.
Gerald and Patty Stilwell, Barboursville, W.Va.
It'll be back on June 18, and Gina Ravera, who plays Lt. Daniels, tells me that "this season is really about family. Now that the chief has won the squad over, personality differences are coming up. In Episode 3, things get ugly." This spring, Ravera has been filming "The Closer" and episodes of "ER" (as a guest star) and keeping up with life, thanks to a PDA, laptop and mobile phone: "Just this morning I was thinking about how to integrate more sanity into my life."
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You may know Alan Cumming from "Spy Kids" and other mainstream movies, but he's been a theater actor since he was at the Royal Academy of Music and Drama in Scotland 22 years ago, and he won a Tony for "Cabaret." No wonder, then, that he was drawn to producing "ShowBusiness: The Road to Broadway," a documentary now in theaters about a year in the life of the Great White Way. Cumming, 42, likes that the movie "has underdogs" and takes the audience from casting to the Tony Awards. He describes working in theater as a "huge adrenaline rush every night" and says that "being in the first night of a play is like having a minor car crash."
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BIRTHDAYS
May 27: Joseph Fiennes 37; Todd Bridges 42
May 28: Kylie Minogue 39; Rudy Giuliani 63; Gladys Knight 63
May 29: Melanie Brown 32; Melissa Etheridge 46; Rupert Everett 48; Annette Bening 49
May 30: Manny Ramirez 35
May 31: Colin Farrell 31; Brooke Shields 42; Chris Elliott 47; Clint Eastwood 77
June 1: Alanis Morissette 33; Heidi Klum 34; Ron Wood 60; Morgan Freeman 70; Pat Boone 73; Andy Griffith 81
June 2: Wentworth Miller 35; Dana Carvey 52
Contributing: Bart Mills, Nancy Mills, Jon Tollestrup
 Ask Lorrie Lynch a question about a celeb!
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