Issue Date: June 3, 2007
Freddie Prinze Jr., 31, sheds his Scooby-Doo image in the movie "Brooklyn Rules" as a Columbia student who is eager to exit the dangers of his mafia-infected N.Y. neighborhood. Prinze, at left with wife Sarah Michelle Gellar, says the shoot in New York made him fall for the city so hard "that I live here now. I bought an apartment. I spend as much time here as possible because L.A. is not the place for me. Here, I feel like I'm home. I walk the streets and people just go, 'Hey, how's it going?' "
Online bonus: More Freddie Prinze Jr.
What qualifications do judges need to meet on "Dancing with the Stars?" In my opinion, they couldn't judge a three-legged race.
Fran Borowski, Orland Park, Ill.
Carrie Ann Inaba says she is stopped often by people who disagree with her calls: "But once I explain to them what I saw, they usually agree with me." Inaba, 39, whose career spans more than 20 years, has a B.A. from UCLA in world arts and culture. "It's based in studying movement and how movement works within cultures," she says. "So I actually studied to become a movement expert."
Online bonus: More Carrie Ann Inaba
Go to top
Country singer Jo Dee Messina, 36, is up early. "I'm training for a marathon in Chicago this fall," she tells me. She also trains on the road, where she'll be this summer. But this weekend, she's at home in Nashville for the Country Music Festival. Messina says she loves to meet her fans and is amused by the things that she is sometimes asked to autograph, including a "woman's back, which she then had tattooed."
Do you know of any plans to make the life of the great James Brown into a movie?
Meta Wise, Pickens, Miss.
Spike Lee is writing and directing a planned film for Ron Howard's Imagine Entertainment. It's too early to cast the Oscar-magnet title role, although Terrence Howard ("Hustle & Flow") has been mentioned. Brown, who died last Christmas at 73, is portrayed in Don Cheadle's July film "Talk to Me" by Herbert L. Rawlings Jr. Speaking of Cheadle, he's practicing his trumpet to produce and direct himself in a biopic of jazz icon Miles Davis.
Go to top
Gena Rowlands, 76, renews her film partnership with Ben Gazzara in "Paris, Je T'Aime." Rowlands wrote the script for her segment, one of 18 episodes, each set in a different Paris neighborhood. On June 22, she is in daughter Zoe's film "Broken English." Two of her children with the late actor-director John Cassavetes are directors. "They got into the business because John and I shot so many movies in our house."
In 2005, Reese Witherspoon and Joaquin Phoenix starred in the Johnny Cash biopic "Walk the Line." What ever happened to Phoenix?
Naida Mercurio, Monterey, Calif.
With two movies awaiting release, Phoenix, 32, hasn't rested on his laurels since his Oscar nomination. First out will be "We Own the Night," due in the fall. Phoenix, who plays a New York nightclub manager, fights the Russian mafia to protect his policeman brother, Mark Wahlberg. In "Reservation Road," due in November, he portrays a man who is trying to find the hit-and-run killer of his young son.
It's been quite some time since 2003's "The Da Vinci Code." When will we hear from author Dan Brown again?
Ray Kopish, Green Bay, Wis.
Brown's fascination with secret societies is taking shape again in the tentatively titled "The Solomon Key," his third book in the Robert Langdon series. It's reported to be a rococo tale involving Freemasons, the Founding Fathers and Washington, D.C. No release date yet.
Go to top
Joe Mantegna chuckles when he says marriage to his own "starter wife" has been going on 31 years now. It comes up because Mantegna, 59, stars opposite Debra Messing in the current USA Network miniseries "The Starter Wife," from the book by Gigi Levangie Grazer. I describe it as chick lit, but Mantegna cautions against labels because he sees "people of all walks of life" in movies called chick flicks. His happy marriage notwithstanding, Mantegna knows many couples don't make it in Hollywood: "There are starter husbands, too."
Go to top
BIRTHDAYS
June 3: Tony Curtis 82
June 4: Angelina Jolie 32; Noah Wyle 36; Scott Wolf 39
June 5: Mark Wahlberg 36; Brian McKnight 38; Kenny G 51
June 6: Paul Giamatti 40
June 7: Anna Kournikova 26; Allen Iverson 32; Prince 49; Liam Neeson 55
June 8: Julianna Margulies 41; Keenen Ivory Wayans 49; Kathy Baker 57; Nancy Sinatra 67; Joan Rivers 74; Jerry Stiller 80; Barbara Bush 82
June 9: Natalie Portman 26; Johnny Depp 44; Michael J. Fox 46
Contributing: Bart Mills, Nancy Mills, Jon Tollestrup
 Ask Lorrie Lynch a question about a celeb!
|
