BALLET SHOO-IN?

Mr. Big has met his match — and he wears... ballet slippers?! After months of speculation, dance icon Mikhail Baryshnikov, 55, has been tapped to play Carrie's (Sarah Jessica Parker) final fling on Sex and the City. "We had to make Big (Chris Noth) look like a high school sweetheart," Parker tells The New York Times. Baryshnikov's character, Alexander Petrovsky, is described as an artist "of extreme importance" whom Carrie meets and falls in love with. He'll show up as "a teaser" at the end of the HBO comedy's current 12-episode cycle, before returning for the final batch of eight episodes in January. Baryshnikov points out that he's "not playing a dancer. I'm a Russian artist who's big in Europe and also here. We have a culture clash, an experience clash and an age clash." All of which is followed by some hot, sweaty sex.