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week 30-01
ShowBiz Weekly: news from the UK & US...

JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE wants to record a duet with his pop singer girlfriend BRITNEY SPEARS, he tells Rolling Stone magazine. Timberlake, 20, of the band N Sync, says he is helping 19-year-old Spears move away from her ``bubblegum'' style of pop towards a harder sound, and when the timing is right he anticipates they will record together. ``I want it to be something new that they haven't heard us do, that they didn't think we could do,'' he tells the magazine. ``I feel like we still have artistic growth to show....it definitely would be a spectacle. It would be huge.'' Timberlake and Spears have known each other since their pre-teen days inthe Mickey Mouse Club, a Disney television show.

PATRICK STEWART and BRENT SPINER are to return in their roles as Capt Jean-Luc Picard and Lt Commander Data in the 10th Star Trek film due tobegin shooting shortly. Written by Gladiator writer John Logan, the film does not yet have a title. The last Star Trek film, Insurrection, which was directed by and co-starred JONATHAN FRAKES, was released in December 1998.

MICHAEL CRAWFORD, who made his name in America starring in The Phantom of the Opera may be returning to Broadway in another musical. He is being mentioned as the possible star of Dances of the Vampires, amusical version of director ROMAN POLANSKI'S film The Fearless Vampire Killers. In it he would portray an aristocratic vampire who falls for a teenage girl. Composer JIM STEINMAN calls the show ``an erotic, big, Wagnerian musical with lots of humour''. Since leaving Phantom of the Opera, Crawford has been entertaining in Las Vegas. Actress Liv Tyler's mother Bebe Buell has written a ``tell-all'' memoir about her days as a rock band follower. Buell is the former model and Playboy Playmate upon whom Cameron Crowe based the character of Penny Lane in Almost Famous.

In the book, Rebel Heart: An American Rock and Roll Journey, she tells stories about a variety of celebrities, including WARREN BEATTY, JACK NICHOLSON, MICK JAGGER DAVID BOWIE, ROD STEWART and Aerosmith's STEVE TYLER, the father of her daughter. She also discusses what she calls rock music's ``double standards'' in which ``men want their women to be good little girls who never do anything while they get to be pirates and do everything''.

ROBERT DE NIRO has issued a statement denying he is a drug user in response to allegations made by his estranged wife, Grace Hightower. ``Mr De Niro does not have a substance or drinking problem,'' said his spokesman Stan Rosenfield. ``Nor does he have a problem with an overzealous imagination. Drug tests are not necessary.'' Hightower had alleged in the latest round of their custody battle over their three-year-old son Elliott that De Niro's drug use made him an unfit father. Her accusation came in answer to a motion by De Niro in which he claimed she had punched him in the ribs during a jealous rage on board the yacht of singer MARC ANTHONY in May.

Plans for a television series involving Titanic filmmaker JAMES CAMERON and the undersea explorer JEAN-MICHAEL COUSTEAU have been temporarily shelved because of technical and financial difficulties. Cameron is currently testing high-definition underseas filming equipment at the deep sea wrecks of the Titanic and Bismarck. ``As soon as he returns we'll know the success of his cameras and technology allowing us to be submerged six to 10 hours at 10,000 metres,'' Cousteau tells Daily Variety. ``All my life I've been limited to average depths. I'm not a shipwreck guy.'' He said the project had also run into financial difficulties, proving more costly than had originally been expected.

HELEN MIRREN is pondering a return to her Jane Tennison role in the popular Prime Sus pect television series. ``I stopped Prime Suspect because I didn't want to be a police woman all my life,'' she tells the New York Daily News. ``But I've done so many other things that now I feel I can afford to go back and do it again. I just want to be sure that I won't ever be trapped.'' The British actress, who recently finished the films Gosford Park, No Such Thing and Last Orders, is soon to begin filming The Dance of Death with IAN MCKELLEN.

Producers of the Danish director LARS VON TRIER'S Dogville, in which NICOLE KIDMAN was due to star, say they have lost patience with the Australian actress. ``We finished negotiations with Kidman four weeks ago but still she has been reluctant to sign the contract,'' producer Peter Jensen tells Daily Variety. Now we have lost patience.'' The filmmakers are now looking for another US star to head the film, which is set in a small American mountain town but will be filmed in Sweden.

The 27-year-old son of the late ANTHONY PERKINS has resumed his acting career that began and ended when he was eight-years-old and played a young Norman Bates in Psycho II. ``The top of the stairs where the mother's bedroom was seemed so real and so dark and horrifying,'' said Oz Perkins. ``I never wanted to go back.'' Perkins, who until now has worked behind the scenes in the film business, has landed a co-starring role with REESE WITHERSPOON in Legally Blonde, playing a character named Dorky David who cannot get a date. ``It's a big stretch, playing a dorky guy,'' he tells USA Today. ``It's called old-fashioned acting.''

JULIE ANDREWS had an armed guard following her around on the set of her latest film, The Princess Diaries, because of the clothes and jewellery she was required to wear for the role. ``I wore Armani and Valentino and a million dollars' worth of tiara,'' says the Oscar-winning British actress, who plays the queen of a mythical European kingdom who instructs her granddaughter in the ways of royalty. ``Pretending to be royal was fun and I really mean that,'' she says.

Soprano's star JAMES GANDOLFINI is the first choice of producers to play the disgraced Hollywood tycoon David Begelman in the long-in-the-works film of David McLintock's book Indecent Exposure. Gandolfini took part in a reading of the script in New York this week along with JAMES WOODS, MELANIE GRIFFITH, SIGOURNEY WEAVER, STANLEY TUCCI and RON SILVER, all of whom would play real-life Hollywood characters. ``It was almost type-casting,'' one source who was at the reading said of Gandolfini. ``All Jim has to do to play a Hollywood crook is to swap the leather jacket for an Armani suit.'' Gandolfini is not so sure. ``Sure I took part in the reading,'' he said, ``But I'm not sure it's for me. I don't feel right in the part.'' Begelman, the head of Columbia Studios, was convicted of fraud and later committed suicide.

GRAHAM NORTON is anxiously awaiting American critical reaction to his television show So Graham Norton which makes its debut on a cable television channel this week. ``It's like a toe in the water. Let's see what people make of this,'' he says. ``If it takes off, sure, I'd love to work there. It's the home of television.'' Norton has a list of dream guests he would like on his show, led by CHER, MADONNA and SHIRLEY BASSEY.

SCOTT BAKULA is to follow the footsteps of WILLIAM SHATNER and PATRICK STEWART onto the bridge of the Starship Enterprise for the next franchise of the long-running television series, to be called Enterprise. As Capt Jonathan Archer, Bakula will command a more primitive and cramped 22nd century starship, a century before the adventures of Capt James Kirk. ``I don't believe I would have done the show if it had been the next version of Voyager 20 years later, but to be the first captain, that was a nice carrot to dangle out there,'' Bakula, 46, told USA Today. The actor, who previously starred in the time-travel television series Quantum Leap, added: ``If I can just let go of worrying about what Shatner and Stewart did, then I can just do my own thing.''

DIANE KEATON is temporarily abandoning film work in order to devote her time to a television soap opera. The Oscar-winning actress is an executive producer of the hour-long drama series Pasadena, about a powerful Los Angeles family involved in a murder. She also directed the pilot episode. ``As a single mother I find that going away to work gets harder and harder,'' says Keaton, 55, the mother of a five-year-old daughter, Dexter. ``So I'm delighted to stay home in Los Angeles and focus on this series for the rest of the year.''

MARK WAHLBERG spent five months working with a vocal coach to prepare himself for the starring role in Rock Star, which is due to be released later this year. The former rapper, soon to be seen in Planet of the Apes, threw himself wholeheartedly into the role of the lead singer of a heavy-metal tribute band who suddenly gets the opportunity to front the actual band he idolises. ``I met all of them, I hung out with everybody and went to every concert,'' Wahlberg tells the Los Angeles Times. ``I had the hair and everything. I basically lived the life for the six months I was making the movie. I rented a big house and the band would come up and jam and the neighbours called the cops because of all the noise.'' He also took it upon himself - as his rock star character - to heckle WHITNEY HOUSTON when she was singing at a record industry party. ``I was screaming at her, `Put on Santana! We want rock and roll','' he recalled. ``She didn't think it was funny.''

MADONNA has reportedly agreed to make a cameo appearance in a film to be directed by her brother, Chris Ciccone. She will play herself arriving at a fashion show where the publicists become so excited that one accidentally hits her with a cell phone. The film, a satirical look at the fashion industry, is the first by Ciccone, a fashion designer.

The adventures of former SAS officer ANDY MCNAB'S fictional intelligence agent hero Nick Stone are coming to the big screen. Miramax has bought the film rights to Crisis Four, one of McNab's four novels about Stone, and has also picked up the rights to develop the other Stone novels some time in the future. McNab, who became Britain's most highly decorated soldier after the Gulf War, will be a co-producer of Crisis Four.

REESE WITHERSPOON is to star as the voluptuous private eye Honey West in a film version of the pulp fiction novels written by Skip Flickling. Flickling's widow Grace, who was the inspiration for the fun-loving Honey West, sold the film rights to a production team which includes Witherspoon's husband, RYAN PHILIPPE. The film is described as a lighthearted contemporary action-drama and is being written by the same team which wrote Witherspoon's current hit, Legally Blonde.

QUENTIN TARANTINO is facing a dilemma posed by the pregnancy of his friend and Pulp Fiction star UMA THURMAN. Thurman, who is married to fellow actor ETHAN HAWKE, is expecting her second child which means she will be unable to meet the autumn start Tarantino wants for his latest film, Kill Bill, which he wrote especially for Thurman. He will now have to either recast the leading role and rewrite the script or push the film back until after Thurman has delivered the baby and is ready to return to work. Thurman was to have been the centrepiece in the drama about a wronged woman who seeks revenge.

KATE HUDSON's father, former rock singer BILL HUDSON is planning a book about his Hollywood exploits which will include details of his better break-up with his ex-wife GOLDIE HAWN. Sources say Hudson, who is currently in the process of a divorced from his currently wife Cindy Williams, is shopping the project around publishing houses. The forme r Hudson Brothers singer recently wrote and performed the music for The Secret History Of The Other Hollywood, a three-hour television documentary about pornography.

MICHAEL FLATLEY is putting the emphasis on spectacle for the American version of his show, Feet Of Flames, which is embarking on an 18-city US tour. He has 50 dancers in the show, is using one of largest stages ever built at 205 feet wide and 70 feet high, and has over 1,000 people working backstage. ``It's a different show. It's bigger, brighter and stronger,'' he says. ``To me, it's the best show we have done so far. ``While on tour Flatley hopes to find time to work on his long-planned book which he says will be half autobiography and half inspirational to motivate people to follow their dreams.''