Free Republic

COLUMBUS, Ga.— Aflac has fired Gilbert Gottfried, the comedian who is the voice of the insurer's quacking duck in the U.S. Gottfried, who has voiced the duck in numerous commercials since 2000, posted a string of mocking jokes about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan on Twitter over the weekend. "I just split up with my girlfriend, but like the Japanese say, 'They'll be another one floating by any minute now," he tweeted Saturday.

George Clooney has revealed the reason he will never become a politician - he has a bad boy past. The Hollywood star, who has campaigned tirelessly for the people of Sudan, said he wasn't squeaky clean and his past could come back to haunt him if he ever held office. 'I didn't live my life in the right way for politics, you knowI f***ed too many chicks and did too many drugs, and that's the truth,' he said.

Influential US Republican Mike Huckabee and Oscar-winning actor Jon Voight on Monday lent their backing to Jewish settlers in east Jerusalem, by laying the cornerstone for a new neighbourhood. The two were guests of honour at a ceremony to lay the foundation stone of a new settlement initiative called Beit Orot on the edge of the Mount of Olives. "The essence of freedom, the very heart of it, is self determination and self direction," said Huckabee, who has been touted as a possible Republican candidate in 2012.

LONDON (AP) -- He could have stayed in teaching. That's what his parents wanted: it was the safe, secure route for a young man with working-class roots and a face few would describe as handsome.Postlethwaite had little going for him when he started in an industry where good looks - think Robert Redford or George Clooney - are valued. He had few connections, a name that was hard to pronounce, and could distinguish himself only by his talent.

A movie starring Anthony Hopkins explores exorcism. The man who wrote the book behind the film talks about what chasing the devil really entails. Matt Baglio’s curiosity was piqued. An exorcism course at a Vatican-affiliated university in Rome? It was an unusual topic. As an American journalist living in the Eternal City, he thought it might make for an interesting article; as a non-practicing Catholic at the time, he approached it with some skepticism. Taught by exorcists and experts in theology, satanic cults, criminology and psychology, the course he took challenged many of his assumptions. But what really intrigued him...

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama met with activist-actor George Clooney at the White House on Tuesday to discuss U.S. involvement in Sudan ahead of a critical election early next year in Africa's largest nation. Clooney recently returned from Sudan, and is asking the U.S. and world community to use international pressure and robust diplomacy to prevent violence ahead of the Jan. 9 election. The election is an independence referendum on south Sudan that is likely to split the country in two, and there are fears that the vote could lead to a new outbreak of north-south civil war.<>

If it hasn’t happened already, Big Hollywood will end up like teachers unions who shilled for Obamacare but that end up getting a waiver to protect themselves from the same great things they lobbied to force on everybody else. In the meantime, the Hollywood left continues to pathetically pedal a bicycle that broke its chain months ago: (VIDEO)

Classic: This casting call for a "town hall meeting" with Obama was found by Arlen Williams at Gulag Bound, who found it at the Back Stage website. Back Stage describes themselves as "the most trusted place for actors to find performing arts and casting information.” What are you doing, October 14th? Would you like to be a “town hall meeting” shill for Barack Obama? According to this official casting notice in Nielsen’s Back Stage site, you still have time to apply and/or audition. (Excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net...

American actor George Clooney is visiting the little known region of Southern Sudan. The U.N. Security Council arrived to a raucous welcome on Wednesday, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum also made a recent trip here. The high-level visits are putting the spotlight on the Texas-sized area of Sudan that is far less known to Americans than the western region of Darfur, where mass atrocities have been committed over the last decade. Southern Sudan is three months from a Jan. 9 independence vote that could see Africa's largest country break in two. The vote _ and the potential of...

Tony Curtis Obit URGENT >> Oscar-Nominated Actor Dies At 85 (Undated) -- Actor Tony Curtis has died at the age of 85. A representative for his daughter Jamie Lee Curtis' has confirmed the passing of the legendary actor, but no further details are available. Curtis, whose real name was Bernard Schwartz, was perhaps most known for his comedic turn in Billy Wilder's 'Some Like It Hot' with co-stars Marilyn Monroe and Jack Lemmon.

Glenn Shadix -- famous for playing Otho the interior decorator in "Beetlejuice" -- died this morning after falling at his home in Alabama ... this according to his sister. Shadix's sister Susan Gagne told The Birmingham News that the actor was "having mobility problems" and may have fallen out of his wheelchair and "hit his head in the kitchen." Susan told the BN she believes the blow to the head caused his death. Glenn -- who famously participated in the iconic "Day-O" dance in the movie -- was 58.

LITCHFIELD, Conn. – Rip Torn's request for a probation program was rejected Wednesday by a judge who kept criminal charges in place against the Emmy-winning actor accused of breaking into a bank while drunk and armed in January.

James Gammon, the gravelly voiced Hollywood actor who owned a thoroughbred farm in Marion County, died Friday morning at age 70. Gammon died in Costa Mesa, Calif., where he and his wife, Nancy, lived part-time with one of their daughters and her family. Nancy said he had been diagnosed with cancer several years ago, but they thought he had beat it. Then, about a month ago, he ended up in the hospital where they found cancer in his adrenal gland and liver.At his age, surgery and chemo were out of the question, she said. He chose to come home and...

It's a lively game of cinema karaoke, with Obama as the unwitting star. See if you like him better in Bonnie and Clyde, Gone With The Wind, or maybe just on CNN.

What goes around comes around -- even for Hollywood snobs and elitists. Big-mouth Hollywood actor Val Kilmer is finding that out in New Mexico, where a number of residents are upset over incendiary remarks the Hollywood pretty boy has made over the years about veterans and rural life in northern New Mexico. Now, they're giving Kilmer a hard time over his efforts to obtain permits needed to turn his sprawling ranch outside Santa Fe into an upscale bed-and-breakfast. What, especially, are the locals so upset about? The Wall Street Journal provides details in an article today, "New Mexico v....

If you want to see where President Barack Obama’s response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster is heading, try following the urgings of the Center for American Progress. The liberal think tank with close White House ties appears to have more influence on spill policy than the president’s in-house advisers. On May 4, for instance, the CAP’s energy and environment expert, Daniel Weiss, called on the president to name an independent commission to look at the causes of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. On May 22, he did just that. On May 21, CAP president, John Podesta, privately implored White House officials...

George Clooney was quick to stifle recent rumours that he had split up with Italian girlfriend Elisabetta Canalis. And if these pictures of the couple getting intimate in Hawaii are anything to go by, breaking up could not be further from their minds. Clooney, 48, took time out from filming his new movie The Descendants with a stroll along the harbour with his Sardinian girlfriend.

Eighties teen idol Corey Haim died Wednesday morning of an apparent drug overdose, according to Los Angeles police. The Canadian-born actor, who starred in "The Lost Boys" but was probably best known for his roles with fellow actor Corey Feldman, was 38.

Watch the video (full segment is here). Some of it’s just strange. Hanks hand-wrings over parents not being able to get their kids to the hospital if GM is no longer in business. At least that’s what I think he says, because when you live in a bubble where no one ever says ‘Huh?,” much less challenges you, those are the kinds of things you start to say and believe. Scary. And when Hanks speaks of a propaganda network doing the President’s bidding, does he not see the irony of his being on MSNBC? The day before he was on...

It's hard to think of a movie that'd play better in the Obama White House screening room than Matt Damon's new Iraq War thriller, "Green Zone," in which the Oscar-winner adroitly portrays a soldier fighting to expose the Bush administration's weapons of mass destruction deception. Yet for all the ammo his movie may give Democrats, Damon admits he's "disappointed" in the man who replaced George W. Bush.