Madonna and film director beau Guy Ritchie are eyeing a Buddhist wedding ceremony, reports London's The Sun... Richard Gere's set to play a man with a potentially terminal disease in Steinbeck's Point of View, according to Variety. In other casting news, rocker Courtney Love will play former silent movie star Texas Guinan in Hello Suckers... Werner Klemperer, the former Jewish refugee who went on to play German prison camp commandant Col. Klink on the popular '60s sitcom Hogan's Heroes, died of cancer at his home in New York on Wednesday. He was 80... Who Wants to Be a Millionaire moves from Tuesday to Friday nights beginning on Jan. 5 to make way for the Jan. 9 debut of the new ABC reality series, Who Is The Mole?. Meanwhile, the Gabriel Byrne sitcom Madigan Men is going on indefinite hiatus... Fox has pulled the plug on its struggli
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The Screen Actors Guild on Thursday ruled that pro golfer Tiger Woods was guilty of performing work during the recent strike against advertisers by shooting a Buick spot in Canada. SAG's trial board fined Woods $100,000, half of which was suspended on the condition that he does not perform any work barred by the union over the next five years. The millionaire golfer issued a statement following the ruling, apologizing "for any pain I may have caused."
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A California man was arrested on Thursday for threatening to kill Moon Unit Zappa because he believed that she and her late father, hippie rocker Frank, stole the lyrics to their 1982 hit song "Valley Girl" from him. Timothy Mark Brownfield, 40, tipped himself off to the FBI by allegedly sending them creepy letters outlining his diabolical plan, according to Reuters. If convicted, he faces five years in federal prison.
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Eddie Murphy and Robert De Niro are in talks to star in Showtime, a comedy that Variety says is designed to do for buddy cop pics what Scream did for horror movies... Sunday's debut of Showtime's much-hyped new gay soap, Queer as Folk, gave the cable network its best rating for a season premiere in three years... Talk show host Ricki Lake revealed on ABC's The View Wednesday that she is three months pregnant with her second child... Dan Aykroyd will play John Goodman's love interest on an upcoming episode of Fox's Normal, Ohio, USA Today reports. — Michael Ausiello
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Robert Downey Jr. reportedly had been using drugs for six weeks prior to his Thanksgiving arrest in Palm Springs on cocaine and methamphetamine possession. According to next week's People magazine, the troubled Ally McBeal thesp even left his seven-year-old son, Indio, alone one night so he could go score with a dealer, leading his estranged wife, Deborah Falconer, to ban him from seeing the child. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times reports that Downey has been dropped from the upcoming romantic comedy, America's Sweethearts, co-starring Julia Roberts and Catherine Zeta-Jones. A replacement is being sought. Downey — who was hospitalized over the weekend for depression — faces a Dec. 27 probation hearing that could land him back in the slammer.
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American Beauty star Thora Birch says she was ready for something different when she took on the role of Empress Savina in the fantasy film Dungeons & Dragons (opening Friday). What she wasn't prepared for, she tells TV Guide Online, was dealing with the movie's rabid sci-fi following.
"Sometimes, the fans will ask, 'Do you have a boyfriend?,'" says the 18-year-old actress, who's been working the sci-fi conventions to help promote the movie. "One time I got a gift, an Oogie Boogie man from the movie The Nightmare Before Christmas, and on the tag the guy had put his phone number down!"
When Birch first agreed to do D&D, she had just finished playing Kevin Spacey's moody daughter in American Beauty and was having a hard time shaking the role. "It was very easy for me to sort of stay in that depressed funk I had worked myself into," she says. "I wanted something that would kind of snap me out of it and tha
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Unlike many of her fellow castaways, Survivor sweetheart Colleen Haskell did her best to shun the spotlight after the show ended in August. So, it's ironic that the Bethesda, Md. native now seems primed to become the Palau Tigan most likely to succeed in the world of showbiz. Without any prior acting experience, Haskell landed the role of Rob Schneider's love interest in the upcoming comedy feature Animal.
"After Survivor, I didn't really want to do anything," the 24-year-old tells USA Today from the film's Hollywood set. "I didn't want to go into acting. I met some people involved with the film, I auditioned for the role, and to my surprise, I got the part. And now I'm sitting in a trailer on a movie set. It kinda happened really, really fast."
But as Haskell explains, she couldn't have found a better acting coach than Schneider, who plays a guy who takes on animalistic behaviors after receiving organ transplants from several creat
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For Adam West, superhero star of the hit '60s TV show Batman, it wasn't exactly a breeze getting into the role of asthmatic villain Breathtaker in the Sci-Fi Channel's new Black Scorpion series (debuting Jan. 5). After all, he's not an actor who's used to exploring his dark side.
"It was good to play a supervillain for a change instead of a good guy," West tells TV Guide Online. "But it was a challenge for me to play someone that bizarre, with almost Shakespearean dimension."
West appears as Dr. Noah Goddard, a onetime top cardiopulmonary surgeon who suffers brain damage from a gunshot wound and who now spends his days plotting ways to asphyxiate the city with a hallucinatory gas. He's one of several guest star villains in the campy new series, which also features former Batman Riddler Frank Gorshin in the role of the evil Clockwatcher.
"Black Scorpion definitely is derivative," says West of the series, which stars former Miss K
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The WB has announced that it will air a Felicity cliffhanger on Dec. 13 that will keep viewers hanging until the drama returns with all-new episodes in April. On Dec. 20, Felicity's 9 pm/Wednesday timeslot will be filled by the first of a two-part, holiday-themed Gilmore Girls (the conclusion will air in the show's regular Thursday slot), followed by two weeks of Grosse Pointe. Beginning Jan. 10, Jack & Jill will take over with three months of all-new episodes. Meanwhile, The WB's new reality series, Popstars, chronicling the real-life formation of an all-girl pop group, will debut on Jan. 12 at 9 pm.
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Let the Oscar handicapping commence! The National Board of Review kicked off the movie awards season on Wednesday by picking Quills — the racy drama about the Marquis de Sade starring Geoffrey Rush and Kate Winslet — as the best film of the year. Julia Roberts was named best actress for Erin Brockovich and best actor went to Javier Bardem for Before Night Falls. Joaquin Phoenix was chosen best supporting actor for his performances in three films: Gladiator, Quills and The Yards, while best supporting actress went to Lupe Ontiveros for the indie Chuck and Buck. Other winners: Steven Soderbergh (best director for Erin Brockovich and Traffic), Ted Tally (best screenplay for All the Pretty Horses), State and Main (best ensemble), The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg (best documentary), Chicken Run (best animated feature) and
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