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week 22-01
ShowBiz Weekly: news from the UK & US...

SYLVESTER STALLONE is proudly telling interviewers of the fine performance he gave when talking his way out of a speeding ticket. ``I was driving to the set of Rambo III in Arizona,'' he reminisced recently. ``I was doing 145 in a Porsche. I'm flooring it. ``A cop pulls me over at gunpoint. So I yelled, `Officer, did you see them? Did you cut them off? There are about eight guys with guns chasing me. I was running for my life'.'' Stallone said he then begged the officer to take him in, saying: ``They're out to kill me. I think it's a radical group that's against Rambo.'' He said the officer told him: ``Don't worry, Rocky, we'll protect you.'' Then they escorted him to the state border.

The original stars of 1995's Desperado are returning for writer-director ROBERT RODRIGUEZ's sequel, Once Upon a Time in Mexico. ANTONIO BANDERAS, QUENTIN TARANTINO and SALMA HAYEK will be joined by a strong cast of co-stars including JOHNNY DEPP, WILLEM DAFOE and MICKEY ROURKE. The story, which is loosely based on SERGIO LEONE's classic spaghetti western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, begins filming in Mexico this week. Rodriguez reportedly hopes to keep the budget to less than 20 million by shooting on a tight schedule and using digital camera equipment.

RUSSELL CROWE is so deeply into the schizophrenic character he plays in his latest film that he is carrying the traits into his private life, says his co-star, the British actor PAUL BETTANY. Bettany plays Crowe's best pal in A Beautiful Mind, the true story of Nobel Prize winner JOHN NASH. He tells the New York Daily News: ``He's possessed by this man who was very uncomfortable in his skin. So he constantly rips at his own skin.'' Crowe ``loves doing the tics of a schizophrenic, like repeating the last word of a sentence'', adds Bettany. ``For instance, if you say, ` Would you like a cup of coffee?' he will say, `Coffee'.'' A Beautiful Mind, which also stars ED HARRIS, is being filmed in Princeton, New Jersey.

MEG RYAN is considering taking the real-life role of female boxing manager JACKIE KALLEN in the film biography Against the Ropes. SANDRA BULLOCK was originally in the line for the role of the woman who steered super-middleweight JAMES TONEY to a world boxing title, but the project has been in limbo for several years. Now it is back in development at Paramount with a new script by Save the Last Dance screenwriter CHERYL EDWARDS.

British director CHRISTOPHER NOLAN has given his star AL PACINO the weekends off from filming the thriller Insomnia to allow him to return home to see his newborn babies. Every Friday Pacino flies back from the Vancouver set to be in Los Angeles with his wife BEVERLY D'ANGELO and their four-month old twins for their 11pm feeding, reports a source. Then he rises before dawn on Mondays to rush back to the film, which co-stars Oscar winner HILARY SWANK and has another month of shooting.

BO DEREK is going back in front of the cameras for a role in The Calling, the film biography of the controversial faith healer and evangelist Rev Leroy Jenkins. She joins FAYE DUNAWAY in Ohio where director DAMIAN CAPA, who also stars as Jenkins, begins filming shortly.

One of the highlights of Jurassic Park III will be a ferocious fight between a T Rex and a spinosaurous. Weighing 12 tons and stretching 44ft in length, it will be the largest life-size animatronic character in motion picture history. ``The actors don't have to act being afraid - they are afraid,'' says special effects wizard STAN WINSTON, who created the robotic dinosaurs in all three Jurassic Park films. ``For a machine that powerful to get out of hand for a moment, which it can do and has done, is v ery dangerous.'' Director JOE JOHNSTON, who has taken over from STEVEN SPIELBERG, tells USA Today: ``The reason I wanted to see these two dinosaurs fight is it's what I remember as a kid. ``Every dinosaur movie made before 1960 had a big dinosaur fight and we haven't seen that lately. I thought it would be great, with computers, to see what these guys can do.''

After more than a decade of false starts, a film adaptation of JACK KEROUAC's beat novel On the Road is finally on its way to the screen. JOEL SCHUMACHER has agreed to direct from a script by novelist RUSSELL BANKS and he has just begun casting the project. The opera director PETER SELLARS had originally planned to direct it, with JOHN MALKOVICH starring after first presenting it on stage, but sources say his script was unsuitable for filming.

Eight years ago FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA agreed to direct, with ETHAN HAWKE and BRAD PITT playing the hard-partying beatniks Kerouac and NEAL CASSADY, but he had to drop out and the project languished until now. CBS TV network executives have some serious decisions to make before the cast of the Tony nominated Broadway musical The Full Monty performs on the prime-time broadcast of the awards ceremony on June 3. The cast will be performing the show's big production number, Let It Go, which ends with them fully naked on stage. ``Were not actually sure how to shoot it,'' said a CBS representative. ``But we're figuring it out right now.''

Kiss singer GENE SIMMONS wants MIKE MYERS or KEVIN SPACEY to star in the film he is developing about record executive NEIL BOGART, who died of cancer in 1983 aged 39. ``He was a modern day PT BARNUM,'' said Simmons, whose band Kiss was the first act Bogart signed to the Casablanca label he founded and who has delivered a first draft of his script to Paramount. ``He was the first grown-up who said to me that I was capable of a lot more in my life than just drooling blood and sticking my tongue out on stage.'' Bogart bucked the psychedelic musical tide of the late 1960s and struck gold by releasing a string of so-called ``bubblegum'' singles by such groups as Ohio Express. He was also responsible for the 1975 disco explosion after persuading record stations to play the 16-minute version of Love to Love You by the then unknown DONNA SUMMER.

JEREMY NORTHAM had to don a wig for the first time for his role as a Victorian poet in writer-director NEIL LaBUTE's Possession - with surprising results. ``I suddenly realised that I looked like NEIL DIAMOND and I got faintly hysterical,'' he tells Premiere magazine. ``It was quite a good moment when I sang Sweet Caroline to Neil on the set and he joined in.'' Based on AS Byatt's 1990 Booker Prize-winning novel, Possession stars Northam and JENNIFER EHLE as lovers. Their romance is tracked 150 years later by a British academic, played by GWYNETH PALTROW, and an American scholar, played by AARON ECKHART.

ALAN CUMMING and JENNIFER JASON LEIGH moulded the characters in their film The Anniversary Party on actors and actresses they knew - and then cast them in the film. ``We moulded each character specially for the actor we had in mind,'' said Cumming, who, with Leigh, co-wrote and co-directed the fil m. ``We wanted the movie to have a kind of biting humour, so we wrote for the people we know in the voices we know so well,'' said Cumming, who is in Los Angeles for the film's premiere The cast, all of whom are friends with whom they have worked before, includes KEVIN KLINE, PHOEBE CATES, GWYNETH PALTROW and JOHN C REILLY.

Pop star BRITNEY SPEARS has refused to say if she has broken her pledge to remain a virgin with her boyfriend. The 19-year-old singer had said she wanted to refrain from sex until her wedding night, but she has found it ``hard'' to do so, according to American magazine US Weekly. Spears is dating JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE, a member of US boy band N Sync. And the star, whose career started as a presenter on America's Disney Channel, has admitted to underage drinking. Most US states ban people under 21 from buying or obtaining alcohol, but Spears admitted she liked cosmopolitan and Midori sours cocktails. ``I like the sweet drinks,'' she said. ``But I don't always like the way I feel the next day.''

When he was asked to reprise his starring role as Dr Adam Grant in Jurassic Park III, actor SAM NEILL hesitated at first. He admits: ``I had to give it a bit of thought. You don't necessarily want to repeat yourself. ``But then, you have to bear in mind, you never really get a character right the first time. I thought maybe I could do a little more with him.'' New Zealand-born Neill was planning to take some time off to spend with his family after filming finished, but instead was offered a script he couldn't resist Submerged. This made-for-TV movie is based on a real-life deep-sea rescue of a trapped submarine crew in 1939, and has its TV debut this month. Now Neill is off again, heading for Canada, where he's co-starring with ROB LOWE in a crime movie called Framed. It is set in what Neill refers to as ``the money-laundering, bank-robbing world of contemporary New York and the Bahamas''.

SHARON STONE's failure to show at the Cannes Film Festival this year has fuelled rumours that her career is in decline. She swapped the French Riviera for a week in Los Angeles after producers pulled the plug on her big comeback film Basic Instinct 2. The sequel was beset with clashes over casting - most notably which male lead was to star opposite Stone - and the original director was replaced with JOHN McTIERNAN.

Actor and comedian STEVE MARTIN is flying high in his new career as Oscar-host. He has just has a got a new dining room to seat 10 and a new master bedroom with a marble bathroom. But all this has been installed not in his Hollywood mansion, but on his private jet.

Charlie's Angels star CAMERON DIAZ may soon be sending boyfriend JARED LETO to the devil. While the actress was in North Carolina shooting her new picture The Sweetest Thing, rumours of an affair surrounded actor Leto, her boyfriend of over a year. If true, Diaz is likely to take the news hard, friends reveal. The blonde beauty really wants to get married and settle down. After breaking up with actor MATT DILLON, Diaz had confided that she really thought Leto was the one.