Wanna Be Paparazzi & Make Easy Money? Email us your Celebrity Digital Photos and Videos... There could be a fortune sitting in your mobile handset. If you snapped it then send it to us at: Very. Important. Pictures.

week 42-01
ShowBiz Weekly: news from the UK & US...

An obscure British musician and songwriter stands to earn millions from the song Ray of Light, which has been bought by BILL GATES as the soundtrack for Microsoft's new Windows XP advertising campaign. DAVE CURTISS, who lives in west London, wrote Ray of Light several years ago and it was later adapted by MADONNA as the title song for her eponymous album. Neither Microsoft nor Madonna is disclosing how much Microsoft has paid for the song. But it is expected to be in the same range as the reported 10 million the Rolling Stones banked in 1995 when they let Gates use Start Me Up for the Windows 95 campaign.

DARYL HANNAH spent four months in LA strip clubs researching her role as a stripper in director MICHAEL RADFORD's Dancing at the Blue Iguana. The upcoming film, which also stars JENNIFER TILLY, provides a gritty look at the working life of strippers and sees the actors supply their own dialogue. ``I found that, given choices, the majority of women wouldn't do that job if they could make the same money somewhere else,'' says Hannah. ``But the money is so good that a lot of them get stuck in a rut.''

JOHNNY DEPP, whose Jack the Ripper film From Hell is about to be released, may next be appearing in the Second World War drama The Great Raid. Miramax has made him an offer to star as an ambitious young colonel who leads a group of soldiers to liberate American prisoners of war from a Japanese camp in the Philippines.

An obscure Hong Kong martial arts movie made in 1993 has become a hit in America after QUENTIN TARANTINO persuaded Miramax to restore and release it. Iron Monkey, which stars DONNY YEN and was directed by YUEN WO PING, has received rave reviews and is set to follow the example set by last year's martial arts hit Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The film is being billed as ``presented by Quentin Tarantino'', while Miramax head HARVEY WEINSTEIN says he has spent 10 million dollars on the film, recouping nearly all the cost in its first week of release. ``We put two million dollars into the movie just in restoration costs alone,'' he says. ``We got a composer to do a new score, it has a new stereo soundtrack with a great new sound mix and sound effects.''

Veteran actresses ANGELA LANSBURY and CAROL CHANNING are to perform for the first time together in Tap Away Your Troubles, a tribute to the words and music of Broadway legend JERRY HERMAN. Lansbury, who starred in Mame, and Channing (Hello, Dolly!), will be joined by BERNADETTE PETERS, TYNE DALY and LESLIE UGGAMS. They will all perform songs from Herman's shows at the Los Angeles concert next month in aid of charity. Herman, who is preparing a TV version of Mame, rehearsing a new company for Hello, Dolly! and writing a new treatment of La Cage aux Folles, says: ``We need entertainment more than ever.''

A pregnant UMA THURMAN has begun her research for her role as the deadliest woman in the world in QUENTIN TARANTINO's upcoming film Kill Bill. To begin her indoctrination into the world of martial arts, the actress attended a New York screening of the kung-fu spectacular Iron Monkey. ``I'm a chick, I'm here doing my homework,'' she told reporters. In Kill Bill she plays a gangster seeking revenge on her former boss after his team of assassins puts her in a coma that causes her to miscarry. The project was delayed when the Pulp Fiction star became pregnant, but Tarantino thinks she ``understands better than ever now how to play a mother who has her baby taken away''. Thurman has delayed the start of her physical martial arts training until after she gives birth.

The little-known Australian actor ERIC BANA has landed the coveted title role in director ANG LEE's big-budget The Incredible Hulk. The former comedian and TV host beat several well-known Hollywood actors to the role of the scientist Bruce Banner who morphs into the Incredible Hulk. ``He was immensely appealing and we are lucky to have him to be Bruce Banner,'' says Marvel Studios president AVI ARAD who joined Lee at his casting meeting with Bana. ``He's a fresh face but he's a veteran performer who has a unique combination of great strength and the most soulful eyes.'' Bana, who made his name in the Australian film Chopper and has just finished filming RIDLEY SCOTT's Black Hawk Down, has option deals on two Hulk sequels.

AUDREY TAUTOU, the impish star of the hit French romantic comedy Amelie, will play a Turkish chambermaid in her first English language film, Dirty Pretty Things, which will be directed by STEPHEN FREARS. The story is set among London's immigrant workers and focuses on a Nigerian night porter at a smart hotel who joins up wit h the chambermaid, a Chinese busker and a prostitute to solve a bizarre murder.

Fever Pitch, NICK HORNBY's story of how he became an obsessive Arsenal fan, is to be Americanised and filmed with a baseball theme. The 1997 film starred COLIN FIRTH but the new version will have an American star and be based on the character's obsession with the Boston Red Sox baseball team. AMANDA POSEY, who produced the original Fever Pitch for Film Four, will also co-produce the new version, which has the full approval of Hornby, according to Daily Variety. The lead character in Fever Pitch will be a statistics-obsessed maths teacher who chose the profession so his summers would be free to follow the Red Sox. ``The Red Sox will be the crutch and justification for the man being unable to make commitments in his personal and professional life,'' says Posey.

SYLVESTER STALLONE is reportedly urging TOM CRUISE to cast him as the villain in Dolan's Cadillac. The film, to which Cruise owns the film rights, has a production start date of mid-May and is adapted from a STEPHEN KING short story. Stallone, who needs a box office hit, has long coveted the role of the mobster who kills another man's wife and is then hunted by the revenge-seeking husband. Cruise has not yet cast the film, and while he is unlikely to appear in it himself, sources say he wants KEVIN BACON for the role of the husband.

GWYNETH PALTROW confesses that although she is ``a very sexual person'' she quickly tires of her boyfriends. ``I'm lucky if I get past six weeks,'' says the commitment-shy actress who has dated BRAD PITT, BEN AFFLECK and is currently with her Royal Tenenbaums co-star LUKE WILSON. Paltrow, who won a Best actress Oscar for Shakespeare In Love, tells Harpers Bazaar she blames the misconception that she is ``an ice princess'' partly on her upbringing. ``In this day and age, if you sit up straight, chew with your m outh closed and have good manners, you're a snob,'' she says.

ERIN BROCKOVICH is on the verge of closing a deal to host her own hour-long television talk show. The exact format has not yet been determined but sources at the NBC network say the tone will be based on Brockovich's personality and interests. One of her first guests is likely to be JULIA ROBERTS, who won an Oscar for portraying her in Erin Brockovich. The film, directed by STEVEN SODERBERGH, tells of how an unemployed single mother became a legal assistant and almost single-handedly brought down a California power company accused of polluting a city's water supply.

British-born actress NAOMI WATTS, who is causing a stir with her graphic lesbian love scene in Mulholland Drive, is to star with ALFRED MOLINA and BRENDA BLETHYN in the comedy Plots With A View. Watts, who appeared in the BBC drama The Wyvern Mystery, has already begun rehearsals for her role in the story of two competing funeral parlours in a small town, which begins filming in Wales later this month.

GEORGE CLOONEY is planning to reunite with the film-making brothers JOEL and ETHAN COHEN, for whom he starred in O Brother, Where Art Thou? The new project is the black comedy Intolerable Cruelty, and JULIA ROBERTS, Clooney's co-star in Ocean's Eleven, may be his leading lady. Clooney will play a Hollywood divorce lawyer who finds himself the target of revenge by a client's ex-wife, with whom he falls in love.

The British female pop trio ATOMIC KITTEN will be spending half their time in America in the coming year to try to establish themselves with US audiences in the way the Spice Girls did. Virgin Records co-presi dent RAY COOPER believes the girls' cheery single Whole Again, which is set for release in January, will appeal to US audiences. ``We feel the song has the possibility of resonating not just with a young demographic, but also with an older audience. It's very majestic,'' he tells the Los Angeles Times. The same is true for the Kittens' image, which he believes could stand out for its contrast with the sex-oriented images of BRITNEY SPEARS and CHRISTINA AGUILERA. Teen People editor JEREMY HELLIGAR thinks it is essential for the Kittens to spend as much time as possible in the US during the next year. ``A lot of groups break big in Europe and don't spend a lot of time in America,'' he says. ``All Saints and Eternal didn't translate here while CRAIG DAVID did spend time here and ended up breaking big.''

COURTNEY LOVE is selling her five-bedroom Los Angeles home four months after paying more than 2 million for it because she says it is too small. She has moved out and is leasing a house while searching for another one to buy. Love, 36, is asking the same amount she paid for the 1920s Spanish-style estate, which also has a steam room and a pool.

EWAN McGREGOR and HEATH LEDGER have begun negotiations to cruise the Caribbean together as the stars of the thriller Nautica. Described as a character-driven project that is a throwback to such thrillers as Body Heat and Dead Calm, Nautica deals with a murder on a yacht in the Caribbean. The story is then retold through the eyes of three people.