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week 20-01
ShowBiz Weekly: news from the UK & US...

Actor SAM NEILL admits he had to think hard before accepting the offer to return to his role as Dr Alan Grant in the upcoming Jurassic Park III. ``You don't necessarily want to repeat yourself but you have to bear in mind that you never really get a character right the first time,'' said the New Zealand actor. ``I thought maybe I could do a little more with him.'' This time Neill co-stars with WILLIAM H MACEY and TEA LEONI in the latest episode of the saga which, the film-makers say, features some 170 special effects shots involving dinosaurs.

KATE HUDSON, who played a rock groupie in Almost Famous, is going on tour with her husband singer CHRIS ROBINSON's band the Black Crowes. The Crowes, who have a new album out, Lions, are the opening act for Oasis on its current Tour of Brotherly Love. ``The best thing about Kate's and my jobs is when we aren't working we get to spend all our time together,'' Robinson tells syndicated columnist MARILYN BECK, adding that having Kate in his life is affecting his music. ``She's definitely given me more reasons to sing,'' he said. ``There's so much joy and love there, there's a different energy.''

RYAN O'NEAL, who has been diagnosed with leukaemia, received a phone call from actress ALI MACGRAW, with whom he co-starred in Love Story in 1970. ``She played a girl suffering from the same disease in the movie and she said to me, `I hope you didn't catch it from me','' O'Neal tells Daily Variety. The 60-year-old actor had just finished work on his latest film, People I Know, with AL PACINO, when he was diagnosed. ``What a shock. It buckled me,'' he said. ``I just had a pain in my stomach. They examined me, tested my spleen and discovered my white cell count was enormous.''

JOHN GRISHAM is ending his five-year exile from the film business and discussing a deal to bring his new best-seller A Painted House to the big screen. Unlike Grisham's legal thrillers, A Painted House is the story of a seven-year-old boy in 1952. His family's cotton crop is threatened by tensions between a mountain family and a group of Mexicans hired to harvest the cotton. Grisham received 5 million for the film rights to The Runaway Jury in 1996. The film was never made and the author turned down offers for his subsequent books. His editor-agent David Genert said he was back at the urging of his readership. ``When John would meet with fans, many said they missed his movies,'' said Genert. ``Since he decided he was ready to get back in the movie game, we've had some exploratory talks with people and we're excited by the possibilities.''

Film-maker JAMES CAMERON is returning to the Titanic for the first of a series of deep-sea exploration television specials he is making with explorer-environmentalist JEAN-MICHEL COUSTEAU. The subject is a favourite of Cameron's, who won an Osc ar in 1997 for his film about the doomed ocean liner. For the series they plan to use the latest photographic technology and oceanography studies to send an exploration vessel into areas of the deep sea that have never been photographed. The project will also follow the lives of the ship's crew members as they settle into their three-year round-the-world research journey.

TONY CURTIS is returning to the stage of the first time in 21 years for a US tour of Some Like It Hot, a musical based on the 1959 film in which he co-starred with JACK LEMMON and MARILYN MONROE. In the film he and Lemmon played musicians who dressed in drag and joined an all-female band to escape the Mob. On stage, however, he will have the lesser role of Osgood Fielding III, the eccentric multimillionaire who fell in love with one of them, and who was played in the film by JOE E BROWN. ``I don't want the role to be beefed up,'' said 75-year-old Curtis. ``I'm just excited about being in a musical, singing and dancing.'' The last time he was on stage was in a 1980 production of Neil Simon's I Ought to be in Pictures.

MARK HAMILL, who played Luke Skywalker in the first three Star Wars films, is angry at Microsoft which is manufacturing a computer game he helped develop. He claims the computer giant wanted him to make his Black Pearl game more violent. ``They wanted me to add biker-type characters who shoot up everybody,'' he told the Ford Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel newspaper. ``The game was based on a moral code that rewards non-confrontation. ``It is something kids really want and need. Instead I was getting memos that the game was `too cerebral' and `too soft'.'' Work on the game, which stopped because of the differences, has now resumed, according to a Hamill spokesman, who said the actor was only voicing his ``creative frustration''.

BRAD PITT is working on launching his own line of clothing which he hopes will be in the stores this autumn. He has teamed up with TODD SHERMARYA, stylist to his wife JENNIFER ANISTON, to create the line inspired by Pitt's style, according to DNR, a men's retail and fashion magazine. ``It's something we've put a lot of thought into, especially Brad,'' Shemarya tells t he magazine. ``It's his baby.'' DNR editor John Birmingham thinks it is a good idea. ``Brad has many admirers who like not only his looks but his style as well,'' he said.

MATT DAMON and his pal BEN AFFLECK's younger brother Casey are to star together in Jerry, a British-backed film to be directed GUS VAN SANT, who directed them in Good Will Hunting. Described by one studio executive as ``two guys in the desert'', the project is being produced by FilmFour, the studio arm of Channel Four, which will have the UK rights and will handle international sales. Limp Bizkit singer FRED DURST is to launch his directing career with Runt, the story of a teenager who takes revenge on a trio of bullies who kill his dog.

PAUL ABDUL and Seven director DAVID FINCHER will be co-executive producers of the project. Durst, who has directed music videos for his and other bands, intends to begin pre-production on the project as soon as the returns to the US at the end of June after a Limp Bizkit tour of Europe.

ALEX BALDWIN, who co-stars in the blockbuster Pearl Harbour, says he cannot imagine ever finding a new love to replace KIM BASINGER. The actor says he is ``devastated'' over Basinger's decision to divorce him. ``It's the worst thing that's ever happened to me,'' he tells Biography magazine. ``It felt like someone punching me in the stomach as hard as they could right before I had to go run the marathon.'' He said he still loves his wife, whom he calls a ``one-in-a-billion person'' and feels that finding a new love is ``the most unimaginable thing in the world for me''.

Author BRETT EASTON ELLIS is unhappy with the plans for the film sequel to his controversial 1991 novel, American Psycho. It is billed as ``a dark comedy'' and instead of Wall Street trader Patrick Bateman, played in the original by Christian Bale, the se rial killer will be a female college student. ``Serial killers are driven by testosterone, or maybe it is our culture that turns men into Killers,'' Ellis says in the New York Post. ``I don't see how American Psycho II can star a woman and still be plausible.'' Ellis sold his rights to the title for the first film and has nothing to do with the sequel, which begins shooting in Toronto this week. None of the actors from the first American Psycho is returning for the sequel, which stars Russian-born television actress MILA KUNIS as the student who turns into a killer after surviving an attack by Patrick Bateman.

JENNIFER LOPEZ is returning to television for the first time since she began her career as a dancer on the comedy series In Living Color. The actress-singer, who is filming Enough for British director MICHAEL APTED, has signed a multi-million dollar deal to star in and produce a music special for the NBC network. She will also produce - but not appear in - three other specials and a half-hour sitcom based on her teenage years in the Bronx. The first special will focus on her best-selling album, J.Lo, according to sources.

British director SIMON WELLS has been unable to continue work on The Time Machine because of ``extreme exhaustion'', according to DreamWorks, which hired him for the project. ``He's just wiped out,'' a studio spokesman told Daily Variety. With less than three weeks of shooting left, he has been replaced by The Mexican director GORE VERBINSKI. Wells is the great grandson of HG WELLS, on whose work The Time Machine is based. The p roject was his first live-action feature film, although he has directed several animated features including The Prince of Egypt. The Time Machine, which stars GUY PEARCE, MARK ADDY and JEREMY IRONS, has been shooting in New York and Los Angeles since February.

The Starship Enterprise has a new captain. After weeks of negotiations, SCOTT BAKULA is officially on board to succeed PATRICK STEWART for the next Star Trek television series, the fifth in the long-running franchise. Bakula, who previously starred for five years in the television drama Quantum Leap, will play Captain Jonathan Archer in the new series, which begins shooting this week.

BOY GEORGE describes rapper EMINEM as ``the Great White Dope'' in an interview with Detour magazine. But he adds: ``I hate the fact that I find him sexually attractive.'' The British cross-dressing pop star-turned-DJ also attacks the TV show Popstars for ``manipulating us into believing that talent can be manufactured'' and Queer as Folk for ``portraying gay men as one-dimensional sex hounds''.

NICOLE KIDMAN and husband TOM CRUISE are currently locked in an ugly and increasingly mysterious divorce. As rumours swirl about the reasons for the split, it seems clear that Kidman fears some horrible revelations about their marriage. She admits: ``Ultimately, nothing is worth giving up your privacy for. Everybody is going to have very bad things happen to them at some time. ``But when everybody scrutinises it, and you meet people, and they know the deepest, darkest things that have happened to you - that's really difficult.''

JOHN CLEESE is heading back to the big screen in crime caper Scorched. The former Monty Python star will play a millionaire in the comedy about three bank employees who each set out to rob their bank - all on the same weekend. Scorched also stars ALICIA SILVERSTONE, RACHEL LEIGH COOKE and WOODY HARRELSON.

CATHERINE ZETA-JONES has become a Hollywood superstar, but the actress is proving she's loyal to her roots by choosing to shoot her new movie Coming Out in Wales. The film will also be a family affair - it's based on an idea by her brother LYNDON JONES, with whom she has a production company, Milkwood Films. Even the director, SARA SUGARMAN, is Welsh. So far, all involved are keeping the plot under wraps. All Sugarman will say is: ``I loved Lyndon's idea and the characters involved.'' Coming Out is expected to start shooting early in 2002.

Screen siren SHARON STONE is in danger of having the plug pulled on the strife-ridden sequel to Basic Instinct. She has been turned down by some of the most famous actors in Hollywood, and still can't seem to find a good man. Her original co-star, MICHAEL DOUGLAS, said no soon after his marriage to CATHERINE ZETA-JONES. KURT RUSSELL, PIERCE BROSNAN, HARRISON FORD, BENJAMIN BRATT and even ROBERT DOWNEY JR have all been approached as possible co-stars and they've all turned down the offer. Producers have been scrambling for two years to find someone, but rumours abound that they're ready to quit. It'll be one of the most expensive decisions they ever make - Stone has a 15 million-dollar deal in which she gets the money whether the picture gets made or not. This latest crisis marks a continuing lean spell at the box-office for Stone. Her last three films, The Muse, Simpatico and Gloria, were not great successes.

ANGELINA JOLIE and red-blooded husband BILLY BOB THORNTON have an unusual way of keeping in touch while he is on the set of his new movie Behind the Sun. Thornton has taken to sending his wife love letters - written in his own blood. Insiders reveal he has a nurse on the set draw the blood from his arm between takes.

CINDY CRAWFORD is such a doting mum that she even keeps son Presley's afterbirth stored in her freezer. The supermodel, who is pregnant again, says when she and her clubowner husband RANDE GERBER move into their new house, they are going to bury the afterbirth under a tree in line with an old superstition. Until then, Crawford admits: ``My husband is absolutely grossed out by it!''