skip to main |
skip to sidebar
LOS ANGELES - Britney Spears is no stranger to being photographed, but it's not often she has her fingerprints taken at the same time.
On Monday night, Spears reported to a Los Angeles police station to face charges of hit and run and driving without a valid license, police said.
Officer Mike Lopez said Spears turned herself in around 9 p.m. and left about 45 minutes later. Spears was fingerprinted and photographed, he said.
"She was fine, cooperative," Lopez said. "She did her business and came out."
Spears, 25, was wearing large designer sunglasses and a black turtleneck dress and jacket. As she left the station, she told KCAL-TV that all went smoothly.
"They were nice," she said of police. She told the station she was wearing the sunglasses because she had pinkeye.
The charges stem from an Aug. 6 wreck during which paparazzi filmed Spears steering her car into another vehicle as she tried to turn into a spot in a Studio City parking lot. The video showed her walking away after assessing the damage to her own car.
The owner of the other car, Kim Robard-Rifkin, filed a police report three days later.
Spears had been ordered to report for booking ahead of an Oct. 25 court appearance.
She has been spending considerable time dealing with legal issues lately. On Oct. 1, a court commissioner ordered her to temporarily relinquish custody of her two young sons to ex-husband Kevin Federline, citing concerns over Spears' drug and alcohol use.
She was in court last week to appeal the order and was granted one overnight stay a week with her boys, but the visits must be monitored.
Washington, Oct 16 : Rehabbed actress Lindsay Lohan has filed a counter suit against the man who charged her with negligence in the 2005 car crash case, blaming him for the mishap.
The complainant Raymundo Ortega, who was involved in the crash, had accused Lohan of being drunk when she rammed her Mercedes into his van on October 5th that year.
Ortega has also sued Lohan for 200,000 dollars in damages.
Exactly a month ago, a judge rejected Lohan’s plea to dismiss Raymond Ortega’s suit completely, reports E! Online.
Lohan has filed her own suit against Ortega in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleging Ortega and his unidentified team of defendants for causing the accident.
The 21-year-old is seeking 75,000 dollars for the cost of the repairs to her black Mercedes-Benz and cash renting other vehicles and to cover her hospital expenses
The starlet’s court papers say that Ortega is using the drunken-driving accusation ‘to force a settlement’.
A report filed by the California Highway Patrol on the day of the accident backs Lohan's claims and said that along with alcohol, Ortega was also to blame for the incident.
In her new court papers, Lohan said that when she was heading north at the permitted speed limit of 30 mph, Ortega made an illegal U-turn in front of her.
A trial for both lawsuits has been set for Apr. 7, 2008. (ANI)
Memo to Gene Wilder: If you are reading this, contact Ryan Gosling. The 26-year-old Canadian actor nominated this year for his haunting turn as a strung-out schoolteacher in "Half Nelson" really wants to work with you. His dream, he says, is "just to work with (Wilder) in any way."
Wilder's name comes up, along with James Stewart's, at the Toronto International Film Festival, where Gosling is supporting his latest movie, "Lars and the Real Girl," which opens Friday. In it, he plays the title character, a withdrawn and socially awkward young man, fearful of human interaction and yet craving it, who orders an anatomically correct sex doll over the Internet and introduces her to everyone as his new girlfriend, Bianca. That may sound like the premise of a dirty joke, but as the tiny, snowbound town heeds a doctor's advice to humor Lars' delusion and welcomes Bianca into their community, the drama that develops is the farthest thing from that.
"It's like 'The Velveteen Rabbit' or something," Gosling observes. "It kind of reminded me of 'Harvey,' too, which was one of my favorite films as a kid. When I read it, I thought, 'Oh, that's 'Harvey.' "
But while the story brought to mind James Stewart and one of his signature roles, that of Elwood P. Dowd, the small-town drunk who pals around with an 8-foot-tall invisible rabbit, there was only one living person that Gosling thought could do Lars justice - and his name was not Ryan Gosling.
"Gene Wilder is like my Marlon Brando. I just think that he completely redefined acting for me," Gosling says, noting that one of his favorite Wilder movies is Woody Allen's "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex," in which Wilder's character, like Lars, finds love with an inappropriate partner.
"When I read (the script), the whole time I was reading it, I thought, 'I wish Gene Wilder could do this.' I just thought that this was something only he could do and obviously he wasn't going to do it, so it was mine, my attempt at something in the vicinity of what he would do. In trying to, I might have failed horribly, but if you're going to idolize somebody, I think he's the guy."
It was not hard for Gosling to burrow inside the character, feeling a kinship with him that leaped off the pages of "Six Feet Under" scribe Nancy Oliver's screenplay. "I identify with Lars more than with any other character I've ever played," he confesses. "I feel that awkward, too. I feel a separation between who I think I am, who I actually am and how I'm perceived to be. It's hard to truly connect with people. He wants to connect, but he doesn't feel that he has the tools to do it. I don't think it's just me. I think there's a little bit of Lars in all of us."
Paul Schneider, who plays Lars' brother Gus, would reduce him to helpless laughter with his improvisations, ruining takes. ("He knows that he could be less funny to help you, but once he's got you, he'll push it," Gosling says. "He'll put you on the ropes.") The actor had no such difficulties with Bianca, whom he found to be a generous collaborator.
"I found it quite relaxing in the end to work on scenes with her, because she has a very calming presence," he says. "We formed a bond, in a weird way, because it was just her and I. When they said, 'Action!' - it was just the two of us. I bonded to her and I would kind of cling to her for moral support in scenes."
Next up for Gosling is the role of the grieving, vengeful father in Peter Jackson's adaptation of Alice Sebold's best-seller "The Lovely Bones." After that, he hopes to direct his first feature, on location in Africa. Moved by a visit to Chad, where he shot documentary footage of Darfur refugee camps, he is developing a drama about child soldiers in northern Uganda, called "The Lord's Resistance."
"Making movies is all I know how to do," he says. "I've been doing this since I was a kid. The only way that I can really collaborate with anybody is with film."
Perhaps surprisingly for someone who has forged such a serious career with an emphasis on high-quality projects, Gosling did not always look at it this way. He began training as a dancer as a child, mainly as a way to get out of school, and caught his first break at 13 in 1993 when, along with Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Keri Russell, he became a Mouseketeer on "The Mickey Mouse Club." He turned to acting when he realized that it offered a more promising career path than dancing, and he took whatever job came his way. He was miserable.
"When I was a kid, nobody in my family did what they loved to do for a living. It didn't even occur to me that you could, so I never thought of it that way," he says.
He credits his mother and writer-director Henry Bean for changing the course of his career. It was his mom who suggested that he quit taking jobs for money, since he was so unhappy, and concentrate on finding something that would give him satisfaction.
He started looking more closely at scripts, and when a friend was auditioning for Bean's "The Believer," a stunning character portrait of a neo-Nazi skinhead who is actually Jewish, he realized that the role was something he could do. He got the part, garnered an Independent Spirit Award nomination (he won the award this year for "Half Nelson") and changed the course of his career.
"Acting was a job, and then I did 'The Believer' and it was not a job at that point," he says. "I would have done it for free. I never had that feeling before. (Henry Bean) gift wrapped me a career. I don't know where I would be if it wasn't for that film."
He knows where he is now. He is grateful for the career that he has been able to build and for opportunities like "Lars and the Real Girl," even if he felt a lot of pressure making the movie, much of it self-imposed. "It's the kind of script that you dream about as an actor," he says. "You read so much stuff that's so recycled and you break your neck trying to find something in it. Then there's this; it's marinating in originality. All you can do is try to live up to its expectations."
NEW YORK — Back in the 1960s, when London graffiti proclaimed "Clapton is God," the brilliant British guitarist was descending into a personal hell. Eric Clapton traded a heroin addiction for alcoholism, suffered disastrous love affairs, contemplated suicide while armed with a bottle of vodka, a gram of blow and a shotgun.
The guitar deity has long since surrendered to a higher power; at 62, Clapton has 20 years of sobriety, a happy marriage and three young daughters. It's a good time to consider an extraordinary life, as the rock Hall of Famer does with "Clapton: The Autobiography."
Unlike many rock star efforts, this one includes no Zeppelin-esque tales of debauched groupies or ghostwritten revisions of musical and personal history. Clapton delivers a brutally honest and unsparing look at his life, near-death and recovery, interspersed with tales from an unparalleled music career.
Clapton, sipping a bottle of water in an office at National Public Radio before doing a radio show, said he deliberately shied away from the usual type of celebrity memoir.
"I wouldn't even know where to begin, to do that," Clapton explains. "I don't even know what that means, to be honest with you. Celebrity has lost whatever meaning it did have. I really tried to find out for myself where I'd been."
Initially, Clapton planned to sit down for a series of interviews about his life, leaving a collaborator to handle the tweaking and organization. But a perusal of the first manuscript led the guitarist to get more hands-on.
"I realized this was not what I wanted to do at all," Clapton says. "So I rewrote that, and then I thought, `I'll have to write this myself.'"
Clapton's six-string inspiration, Robert Johnson, sang of a single hellhound on his trail; Clapton had a whole pack nipping at his heels until a second trip through rehab changed his life in 1987. Johnson was dead by age 27, and there was a time when Clapton was convinced his life wouldn't last much beyond that.
"I entertained that notion when I was young and I was trying to identify with those guys," Clapton says of Johnson and other legendary bluesmen. "That is kind of a built-in fantasy that goes along with addiction, a way of justifying my need to get stoned: `Well, that's what my heroes did.'"
Through it all, Clapton created an indelible musical legacy that spanned genres while inspiring generations. The autobiography's chapter titles provide a roadmap through his life's work:
"The Yardbirds."
"Cream."
"Blind Faith."
"Derek and the Dominos."
Clapton, from his early days with the John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, quickly assumed a position in the center of the music universe. He hung out with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, jammed with Muddy Waters and Duane Allman, influenced Stevie Ray Vaughan, Derek Trucks and untold thousands of other guitarists.
He confesses, without embarrassment, that he can't remember all of what happened.
"My memory of the late '60s right through the early '80s is severely hampered," Clapton says. "I wrote from what I could remember, and I needed nudging, too."
Clapton's book is not totally devoid of tabloid-worthy material. He recounts how Mick Jagger once stole his girlfriend — an Italian model — setting off homicidal fantasies in the late 1980s.
"I went on a rampage, mentally," Clapton recalls. "I wanted to kill him. I spent quite a long time plotting ways to undermine or just do away with (him) — the kind of mad fantasies a drunk in recovery can have."
He also delves into his romance with Pattie Boyd, who wound up with Clapton after her split with Beatle George Harrison. Their star-crossed affair made her the muse for some of Clapton's most memorable songs, including "Layla" and "Wonderful Tonight," before the romance gave way to recriminations.
Clapton recalled a recent Sunday morning trip to his local grocery store, where Boyd's new memoir, "Wonderful Tonight," was excerpted in the British press. The page one headline jumped out as he grabbed the paper: "ERIC CLAPTON'S DRINKING KILLED MY MARRIAGE."
"The headline editor chose to castigate me quite strongly," Clapton says with more than a touch of British understatement. "I'm in the local shop, and I'm thinking, 'Are the neighbors watching me read?'"
Clapton greets his guest alone, without an entourage or stylists or publicists. He wears glasses, and his hearing is failing. His hair is cut short, with a bristle of beard rising from his face. In a T-shirt and jeans, Clapton is unpretentious and open — reflective in one instant, laughing in the next.
In his writing, he referred to diaries that he'd kept during the '80s. The musings, squirreled away in an attic for years, brought back painful memories. Clapton recalled that most of his writing came with a pen in one hand and a drink in the other.
"I was having delusions of grandeur," he says with a self-deprecating laugh. "I thought I had something worth saying. That's what drink can do — give a deluded view of my self-importance.
"So once I got fueled up on my amount of alcohol for the day, it would have been easy for me to devote of couple of hours writing down mad thoughts. These days, I don't think I would give myself the time."
These days, his time is otherwise occupied. Besides family life, Clapton remains involved with the Crossroads treatment center that he founded nearly a decade ago in Antigua — a huge benefit concert was held this past summer. And while he plans to cut back on live shows, Clapton has no plans for retirement.
"I can't stop touring, and I won't," he says emphatically. "I believe I have a responsibility to play for people."
Over the decades, Clapton has seen an assortment of friends and colleagues die, from Jimi Hendrix to George Harrison, from Duane Allman to Bob Marley, from Stevie Ray Vaughan to Muddy Waters. Asked how he managed to survive, Clapton has a ready answer.
"I've always assumed it was really because I hadn't gotten my act together," he replies, laughing loudly. "Maybe I'd better not get it too good, because then it will be time for me to check out.
"I'm glad it worked out that way. I still don't feel like I've got it right. I'm still working on my sound."
What? Eric Clapton is still working on hitting the right notes?
"Yeah," he replies, his laugh filling the room. "Still trying to get the right amp."
The Oscar winner said that she is the most ‘proud wife and mother of three amazing kids’, and that she owes it all to her hubby, without whom she will be very lonely.
Actress Julia Roberts has claimed that she has all that she ‘could ever ask for.’
The Oscar winner, who welcomed her third child three months ago, said that she is the most ‘proud wife and mother of three amazing kids’, and that she owes it all to her hubby Danny Moder, without whom she will be very lonely.
“More than anything I am just the most proud wife and mother to three of the most amazing children,. And the widening of my life, and my hips, is really just the true gift of my husband Danny (Moder), who I would be so lonely without,’ People Magazine quoted her, as saying at the American Cinematheque event that honoured the actress.
Presenting her with an award, Denzel Washington showered praise on the actress saying that she does everything ‘extraordinary well’.
“You do an extraordinary job, extraordinarily well. (You) said the line in the Bruce Springsteen song 'Thunder Road' where the Boss says, 'You ain't a beauty, but you're all right.' Well Julia, beauty may fade, may fade, but all right lasts forever,’ he said.
Twice-Oscar winner Tom Hanks also hailed Roberts’ role as a wife and a mother.
"Knowledge that no matter how good of shape you are in, no matter how good of a haircut you are sporting, Julia Roberts is, at the end of the day, going home to a husband way better looking than you will ever be,’ Hanks said.
"Everybody loves Julia, everybody, everybody," he added.
Washington, Oct 12: Britney Spears has notched a small victory in her child custody battle with ex-husband Kevin Federline, by winning the modified visitation rules, that allow her two sons to spend the night with her once a week, as long as they are accompanied by a court-sanctioned monitor.
Spears made her first court appearance on Oct 11, pleading with a Los Angeles judge to be granted more time with her two sons.
Spears` attorney had filed an emergency motion on Oct 10 seeking to expand the singer`s visitation rights. Mark Vincent Kaplan, the lawyer for Kevin Federline, said he "voluntarily agreed" to allow the elongated visit but refused to offer any other specifics.
The ‘Toxic’ singer made an in-person appeal two hours after Los Angeles Court Commissioner Scott Gordon initially refused to change the custody arrangements. Spears spent an hour answering the judge`s questions, following which Gordon apparently had a change of heart, as reported.
Under Gordon`s current order, Spears is required to have a monitor with her at all times when she is in the presence of her sons. If the supervisor determines that any behaviour Spears exhibits endanger her children or be simply inappropriate, her visits may be cut short.
Both Spears and Federline must appear in court together at a further hearing on October 26, Los Angeles Superior Court spokesman Allan Parachini said. Gordon, who had earlier deemed Spears a "habitual, frequent and continuous user" of alcohol and controlled substances, temporarily stripped her of custody last week after she failed to abide by his terms, including submitting to random drug testing and showing proof of a California driver`s license.
Since then, Spears has passed both drug tests and her driver`s license exam and was counting on that to expand her visitation rights.
Jennifer Lopez has kept her glossy pink lips sealed during recent public appearances, dancing around questions from interviewers wanting to know if she's singing for two.
But her bump speaks loud and clear.
After Lopez made an appearance on MTV's "Total Request Live" on October 8 to promote her new CD, "Brave," cohost Damien Fahey told Us that her condition was obvious.
"I've been around a lot of pregnant women. She walked around like a pregnant woman, sat like a pregnant woman, and stood like a pregnant woman," he says. "If I were a betting man, I'd definitely bet she was pregnant."
Indeed, Us has confirmed from multiple sources that Lopez is about four months pregnant with her first child. Or children -- a source tells Us Lopez's mother, Guadalupe, 61, "is proudly telling people she's having twins."
The 38-year-old singer-actress, who has long expressed her desire to have both career and kids, is ecstatic about the news.
"It's a dream come true," a Lopez source tells Us. "She and Marc are over the moon."
Pregnancy news is especially sweet for Lopez, whom insiders believed was unable to carry a child at all. "[Conceiving] was a struggle for her," says a source.
Seconds another, "This pregnancy is a miracle."
Anthony, 39, who has three children from prior relationships, has been equally eager to expand his brood.
When Anthony was recently asked to imagine his response to his wife being pregnant, he said, "It's going to be me in handcuffs, because I will run down the street, screaming like a madman."
For more details on J.Lo's pregnancy, check out the new issue of Us Weekly, on newsstands this week.
LOS ANGELES - Britney Spears is no stranger to being photographed, but it's not often she has her fingerprints taken at the same time.
