Rescue Me actress and Oscar-winner Tatum O'Neal (Paper Moon) was busted Sunday night for allegedly buying coke near her Manhattan home. The 44-year old actress, who was publically open about her battle with addiction in the memoir A Paper Life, initially told the police doing drug sweeps in the area that she was researching a role as a junkie. But after finding two dime bags and an unused crack pipe on her, O'Neal admitted that this was her first relapse prompted by the death of her 16-year-old Scottish Terrier.
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Question: I know the Oscar statuettes are about a foot tall and weigh 8 pounds, but what are they made of, and is it true that they got their name because someone said it looked like their Uncle Oscar? That sounds like a made-up story.
Answer: Last part first: The official story is indeed that Margaret Herrick, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' first librarian in 1931 and its executive director from 1943 to 1971 (and for whom the Academy's Los Angeles library, where I've done my share of research, is named), saw one of the statuettes (designed by MGM art director Cedric Gibbons for the first ceremony in 1929) on a desk and exclaimed that it looked just like her Uncle Oscar. Which is sort of alarming in that it implies that her uncle was a bald nudist with a thing for (perhaps compensatory) swords. Many people prefer the slightly ruder version in which Bette Davis sugge
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