Issue Date: June 8, 2008
Anderson Cooper is CNN's prime time golden boy. So why is he moonlighting on CBS' "60 Minutes?"
Benson Beaver, Vallejo, Calif.
It gives him a wider audience and a chance to tell stories in greater depth. "I really like being able to work on both broadcasts," Cooper says via e-mail. "Writing and reporting a 12-minute story is a lot different than a four- or five-minute day-of-air story. The topics may not be different, but it's a different style of writing and editing." CNN lets him work for CBS on holidays and weekends. We asked about speculation that Cooper, who recently turned 41, could replace Katie Couric on CBS' evening news. His cagey response: "I don't believe much of what I read in the paper when it's quotes from anonymous 'television insiders.' "
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Disco queen. Songwriter. Oscar and Grammy winner. Desperate housewife? We never would have thought to use those last two words to describe Donna Summer, but she does. She says that's what she was before recording her new album, "Crayons," her first studio work in 17 years. "I thought, 'What am I going to do with the rest of my life?' " Summer, 59, tells us. "I raised my kids and did all that. I was sitting around the house eating potato chips, fast becominga desperate housewife." When she was raising her kids, she toured, released "best of" CDs and even wrote an autobiography. But what she really wanted was to record new songs. And if that hadn't happened? "Interior decorating," Summer says. "I would love to have my own line -- fabric, pillows ... be creative."
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"I'm the luckiest old broad on two feet," Betty White tells me. At 86, she still makes movies, and she's a longtime animal welfare activist. She's also now promoting a new book, which, although it has her name on it, she tells me, "it's Tom's brainchild." Tom Sullivan, actor and singer, "might as well be my son," White says. "We're that close." Sullivan, blind since infancy, wrote "Together," about a teen who loses sight after an accident but finds new life with a headstrong dog.
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Why do studios pay big salaries to celebs who voice characters in animated films? I doubt kids know any of them.
E.J. Frederick, Summerfield, Fla.
"Your question assumes we're making the movie for kids," says Oscar-winning writer and director Andrew Stanton, whose new Disney/Pixar flick "Wall-E" opens June 27. Stanton says kids go to movies with parents and tells us "we cast the best actor." It may look easy, but "it takes a very special talent to convey emotion and timing with just your voice."
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Who is the actress who plays the girlfriend on USA Network's "Burn Notice?" I like the character and don't recall seeing her before.
Roger Gorlicki, Buffalo Grove, Ill.
She's Gabrielle Anwar, memorable as Al Pacino's tango partner in 1992's "Scent of a Woman." Anwar, 38, says that between then and now, she found few good roles and took time to raise her three children (now 4, 7 and 14). "It's a really tricky part of a woman's life when she chooses to have a family," says Anwar, who recently had a meaty role as Henry VIII's sister in Showtime's "The Tudors." A former ballerina "lacking in discipline," Anwar says her "Burn" heroine, who has great chemistry with star Jeffrey Donovan, is written to be fiery. "If it's not on the page, it's not in the performance."
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Bill Engvall is all about family. He's got one at home, one on TV, and he loves both. This week, "The Bill Engvall Show" returns to TBS for a second season. He calls it "a clean family show," and it's what he always wanted. "I had a dream for 25 years that I'd have a family sitcom," he tells me. This one grew out of his work on the popular Blue Collar Comedy Tour with comedian Jeff Foxworthy. TBS came to Engvall, 50, and "the next thing I knew I was driving on the lot, and here is a big stage door with my name on it."
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Shelley Berman won't quit. After 60-some years in show business, "They're gonna have to shoot me," he tells me. He's now in the movie "You Don't Mess with the Zohan" as Adam Sandler's dad. He also plays Larry David's dad in "Curb Your Enthusiasm," a show that makes use of Berman's improv roots. "I am in my element when I'm on that show," he says. Berman, 82, tells me he and his wife of 61 years, Sarah, are "living life as fully as possible. We go to parties, and we see people we know are younger than we are and we help them to a chair."
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BIRTHDAYS
June 8: Julianna Margulies, 42
June 9: Natalie Portman, 27, Johnny Depp, 45, Michael J. Fox, 47
June 10: Leelee Sobieski, 26
June 11: Joshua Jackson, 30, Hugh Laurie, 49
June 12: Frances O'Connor, 41
June 13: Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, 22
June 14: Donald Trump, 62
Contributing: Gayle Jo Carter
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