On CBS's Wolf Lake — debuting Wednesday at 10 pm/ET — Lou Diamond Phillips plays a lovelorn lawman out to get his woman (Mia Kirschner). The catch? Things get hairy when he tracks her to a secretive, werewolf-inhabited town.
"The puns are going to fly fast and furious on this show," Phillips laughs, adding of his role: "It gives me more to sink my teeth into. I get a girlfriend, which is always welcome news to me — except that I keep losing them, you know? You get to work with Meg Ryan, and shoot her." (He co-starred with Ryan in 1996's Courage Under Fire.)
Setside, Phillips has a more pressing concern than charming the ladies. He's got to keep diplomatic relations with his lupine co-stars, who he says are trained "
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Simian aficionados are dying to know: When Planet of the Apes auteur Tim Burton said he wouldn't direct a sequel, was that really his final word? Not according to actor Tim Roth, who played shady General Thade.
"I think that depends on how he's feeling from day to day," Roth tells TV Guide Online with a grin. "You have to remember [Burton had wrapped] production and he was still cutting the film when he got on the plane to Tokyo to start doing press. He has not had a moment to himself!
"So when people talk to him about a sequel," the Apes star guesses, "the idea of that probably makes him scream. But maybe down the line. If he wanted me to come back and do one with him, I'd do it in a second. I loved playing [Thade] — I think he's fascinating."
M
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'N Sync and Fatboy Slim may have emerged the big winners at the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards Thursday night, but the real star of the night — at least according to the reporters holed up in the press room — was a silly little hand puppet named "Triumph the Insult Comic Dog." Fresh from his scene-stealing, J.Lo-sniffing performance on the floor of Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera House, the Robert Smigel creation — a regular visitor on NBC's Late Night with Conan O'Brien — revealed to the weary media assembled backstage what the bootylicious diva said to him when the cameras cut away.
"It was a Spanish curse," he cracked. "It's a language I don't understand, but I could tell that it was vulgar." The caustic Muppet-wannabe, who already had the jaded press corps rolling in the aisles, then added: "No, she's very nice. Honestly, J.Lo rules... her butt rules. Let's face it, it's all about the butt. Have you heard her
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Though moviegoers saw a nude Mena Suvari strewn with rose petals in American Beauty, the starlet isn't eager to flash the flower of her nubile youth just anywhere! Clichéd though it sounds, she bared all for art's sake alone.
"It wasn't this gratuitous sex shot," Suvari tells TV Guide Online. "But I'm not keen on doing it again. I always said before American Beauty that I was never going to do anything like that. I don't know, maybe I'm kind of shy.
"With [that film], it was just an exception at the time," she continues. "[Director] Sam Mendes had me fly down to L.A. just to meet with him in person, so he could tell me how he was going to do the scene. That was really comforting and really important. I thought, 'Hey, maybe it won't be that bad.' I knew it was going to be done in good taste."
Clearly, tastefulness is a key issue for Suv
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Since many of the recording artists who populate MTV are known as much for their off-stage misadventures as their on-screen triumphs, it's fitting that the Video Music Awards are eagerly anticipated not because they give props to creative innovation (although that's nice, too), but because they shine a spotlight on a crowd of hipsters that never fails to shock. Someone always
either acts up, falls down or, against all odds, truly moves the audience. Or, in the case of this year's 18th annual ceremony, broadcast live from Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera House last night, all three possibilities came to pass. Here are the highlights and, okay, the low points, too:
The opening monologue: After performing a medley of hits in incongruous classical-music style — somewhere, Adam Sandler, the original Opera Man, surely was phoning his lawyers — emcee Jamie Foxx (a surprisingly passable vocalist) launched into an energetic ramble that was raunchier th
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Tattooed rocker-cum-poet Henry Rollins is flattered that his gig hosting Fox's anthology thriller Night Visions has led some to compare him to Twilight Zone's Rod Serling — who from 1954-1962 introduced creeped-out viewers to the "fifth dimension." But the Rollins Band frontman points out that there are some glaring differences between him and the late, great TV maverick.
"I'm a thicker-necked, not-as-charismatic version of Rod Serling," the 40-year-old muscle man winks to TV Guide Online. "A more contemporary version."
Ironically, although Rollins admits he was a fan of The Twilight Zone — "It was this strange black and white show with this intense man at the beginning" — it was one of Serling's later works that really made his spine tingle: The short-lived '70s supernatural frightfest Nig
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Best known as the suave-looking spokesmodel for Calvin Klein's Contradiction cologne, Justin Chambers sure smells like a star. Now, if only the hungry hottie could find his breakout role!
Sure, he's come far since his oh-so-brief stint on the defunct NBC sudser Another World back in 1995. But Chambers has a long way to go. This year, he played a caricaturish "goofy Italian" who woos Jennifer Lopez in The Wedding Planner. Next up, he's heroic lead D'Artagnan in The Musketeer (opening Friday), a half-baked rehash of the Alexander Dumas tale of French derring-do. Of course, Chambers can't be f
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When Ed McMahon's Next Big Star premieres Sunday (6 pm/ET on PAX), its titular host promises a competitive showcase for up-and-coming talent — much akin to Star Search, his popular 1980s series — as well as appearances by established entertainment superstars. (Steven Tyler, 'N Sync and Jessica Simpson, to name just a few, have already taped segments.) Yet one friend of McMahon's that you won't see is Johnny Carson, the Tonight Show host for whom McMahon served as announcer and sidekick for three decades.
"It's very unlikely," McMahon tells TV Guide Online of the possibility for a cameo by Carson, who largely has been MIA since turning over the late-night talker to Jay Leno in 1992. "He just won't do anything on television.
"Johnny has turned down hosting the Oscars five times," he adds, illustrating his point. "And that would be the show to host, with three billion people watc
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Having enjoyed both movie and pop stardom, Mark Wahlberg — formerly of Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch — knows the pros and cons of both. Surprisingly candid, he explains why he thinks musicians run amok with nary a raised eyebrow, while movie stars live under intense public scrutiny:
"I think people just expect [craziness] from guys in the music world," says Wahlberg, "and they don't expect much else. [But] a lot of guys who are movie stars are hiding who they really are. You know, they have this image and obviously it's helped them get to the position that they're in.
"But that's why the media is on them so much more — they're constantly getting busted and really scrutinized for little things, and guys in the rock world get away with murder, just about."
Gracious and clean cut, the handsome actor has come far since his origins as bad-ass Calvin Klein mode
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Hopeless romantics pale at the thought that, with Buffy the Vampire Slayer moving to UPN this fall and leaving behind spinoff Angel at the WB, the series' hot-blooded superheroes might never meet again. But the lovers' latest "break-up" has set at least one fan's heart aflutter: new Angel regular Amy Acker, who made her debut as bespectacled bookworm Winnifred Burkle in last season's breathtaking four-part finale.
"I have a big crush on Angel," she tells TV Guide Online in character, "but I'm not sure that it's reciprocated."
Not yet, anyway. Prescient viewers, however, can read the writing on the wall — or, in this case, in the scripts: While struggling to escape back to Los Angeles from another, even scarier dimension, Angel and Fred developed a warm friendship that could easily heat up. Even Acker admits that a more intimate relationship between
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