Free Republic

Japanese Pop Idol Recast as Junkie Earthquakes, tsunami tidal waves, typhoons, floods and landslides kept Japanese news gatherers busy over the Obon week when Japanese traditionally return home to pay respects to departed relatives who return briefly from the spirit world. It wasn't, however, any act of God that shocked the nation but alleged drug use by singer Noriko Sakai. Manufactured pop idols cranked out by Japan's powerful production companies have dominated Japan's music charts for decades. Sakai, who debuted at 15 in 1987 with squeaky voice, clean-cut image and cute nickname, Nori-P, was one of the most successful winning...

LOS ANGELES – Gale Storm, whose wholesome appearance and perky personality made her one of early television's biggest stars on "My Little Margie" and "The Gale Storm Show," has died at age 87. Storm, who had been in failing health in recent years, died Saturday at a convalescent hospital, said her son, Peter Bonnell. Before landing the starring role in "My Little Margie" in 1952, Storm starred in numerous B movies opposite such stars as Roy Rogers, Eddie Albert and Jackie Cooper. After her last TV series, "The Gale Storm Show," ended in 1960 she went on to a successful...

CSI" star Marg Helgenberger has filed for divorce from her husband, fellow actor and Screen Actors Guild President Alan Rosenberg.She filed her petition Tuesday in Los Angeles, citing irreconcilable differences.The couple got married in 1989 and have a son together.

I watched TV earlier, getting to be more of a rarity every day for me. This actress (?) was on a late night talk show. She said to the host "I just came back from Costa Rica. You know, they have no Army. How cool is that? (and what sounded like) At least they won't follow the bullying tactics of this country." What the hell is that?!?! Who is this twit? "How cool is that?"

Miyoshi Umeki, 78, a Japanese-born singer and actress who became the first Asian performer to win an Academy Award, for "Sayonara" (1957), distinguished herself onstage in "Flower Drum Song" and played a housekeeper on the TV series "The Courtship of Eddie's Father," died Aug. 28 at Licking Park Manor nursing home in Licking, Mo. She had cancer. "Sayonara," based on a best-selling James A. Michener novel, was about forbidden romance between U.S. servicemen and Japanese women during the Korean War. Ms. Umeki's naive character marries an Air Force sergeant, played by Red Buttons, and the relationship leads to his persecution...

LOS ANGELES - Phil Spector, now on trial for murder, asserted in a 2005 home video interview that the statuesque Lana Clarkson was standing when a gun was fired in her mouth and that he is too short to have done it. The video, broadcast Wednesday by the TV program "Inside Edition," also showed Spector offering $100,000 to unnamed women to take a lie detector test to prove their claims that Spector threatened them with guns. "The deceased, who was standing when she took her own life and she was 5-11 and she would have been 6 feet 2 with...

1. Nicole Kidman, $16 mil-$17 mil. What she should be earning: -$1 mil. That's right, I'm saying that Nicole should be paying film companies to hire her, not the other way around. That's because she's poison at the box office, the female equivalent of Sean Penn. Women dislike her, men don't think she's sexy, and those Chanel ads induce nausea. My guess is this price for Nicole dates back to Sony overpaying her for that bomb Bewitched. Since then, she's been doing smaller films, but is signing for studio projects right now. Note to majors: save your $$$ and hire...

Kidman Tops List of Highest-Paid Actress Nov 29 7:56 PM US/Eastern Nicole Kidman is the queen of Hollywood when it comes to money. The Oscar winner, who earns as much as $17 million per movie, tops the fifth annual list of highest-paid actresses released Wednesday by The Hollywood Reporter. Kidman, 39, ranked second on last year's list behind four-time top- earner Julia Roberts, who didn't make the list this year. She spent time with her 2-year-old twins. In second place, with $15 million per movie, was Reese Witherspoon, 30, who won the best-actress Oscar this year for her performance in...

She has been dubbed Iran's Paris Hilton after appearing in a sex video on the internet. But while Paris's exploits propelled her to worldwide stardom, Zahra Amir Ebrahimi faces ruin, a public lashing and even a jail term. Ebrahimi is one of the best-known actresses in the strict Islamic country and made the 20-minute sex tape privately with her boyfriend on a camcorder at the flat they shared two years ago. Unbeknown to her, it was posted on the internet and widely released as a DVD - angering millions in Iran. Her boyfriend, who has not been named by the...

HOLLYWOOD starlets who regret topless appearances in B-list films made before they hit the big time should spare a pitying thought for their Iranian counterparts - who risk far more than mere embarrassment.In a scandal now gripping the conservative Islamic country, police are investigating a private film circulating on the black market that purports to show a rising young soap star making love to her boyfriend. The woman is being investigated for a suspected breach of the country's morality laws that prohibit sex outside marriage. Lashing is the penalty. Her alleged partner in the footage, which has spread across the...

Frances Bergen, a model and actress who married ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and was the mother of actress Candice Bergen, has died. She was 84. Bergen died Monday at a Los Angeles hospital after a prolonged illness, Heidi Schaeffer, a publicist for Candice Bergen, said Tuesday. She declined to specify the illness. Born Frances Westerman in Birmingham, Ala., she moved to Los Angeles with her mother after her father died of tuberculosis. When she was 19, she attended a recording of "The Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy Show" and caught the attention of the 39-year-old vaudevillian who, with his impish, top-hatted dummy Charlie,...

PARIS - Brigitte Bardot, angered over what she called France's insensitivity to the plight of minks, has threatened to move to Sweden. The French film star, who runs a foundation for animal rights, wrote a letter Wednesday to Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson calling his nation one of only a few countries "that takes into consideration animal well-being." Bardot also contacted the French Finance Ministry to criticize France for attacking Sweden's proposal for new European Commission rules on conditions for raising minks in Sweden. "The intervention of my government makes me ashamed, ashamed to be French," she wrote. While Bardot...

NEW YORK -- A man convicted of raping Top Gun actress Kelly McGillis in 1982 went on trial Wednesday for a similar crime against two women years later. Leroy Johnson Jr., 39, is accused of forcing his way into the women's home and attacking them at knifepoint on Nov. 18, 1996. Both were blindfolded and unable to identify their attacker. However, Johnson was arrested and charged after cold-case investigators said DNA tests tied him to the crime. Jurors in the trial in state Supreme Court in Manhattan will not be told of Johnson's conviction for raping McGillis, by law, because...

U.S.-born actress warned 'she will be sorry' unless she pulls out of film Sienna Miller Sienna Miller reportedly feared for her life after getting a flood of death threats from Islamic extremists. The American-born, British-bred actress best-known for starring in the remake of "Alfie" as well as her engagement to actor Jude Law, is said to have received a torrent of vicious threats from Muslims furious she's starring in "Interview," a remake of director Theo van Gogh's 2003 thriller. Van Gogh is the Dutch director who was shot and killed in 2004 by an Islamic extremist in connection with his...

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Keisha Castle-Hughes Keisha Castle-Hughes, the Oscar-nominated teen-aged star of "Whale Rider," has been cast as Mary in "Nativity," which looks at the life of the Virgin Mary before the birth of Christ. Catherine Hardwicke ("thirteen") is directing the New Line Cinema project. The story, to be told with a strong female perspective, will follow Mary and Joseph‘s life before the birth of Christ as their love, faith and beliefs are tested. The script incorporates their departure from Nazareth and travel to Bethlehem and includes such biblical figures as King Herod, John the Baptist and the...

LENOX, Mass. - Actress Maureen Stapleton, whose long career included award-winning performances on stage and in film, has died at her home in Lenox. She was 80. A funeral director says Stapleton died this morning of natural causes. She was a native of Troy, New York and had lived in Lenox for about the past 20 years. Stapleton won an Oscar as Best Supporting Actress in 1982 for her portrayal of the anarchist Emma Goldman in "Reds." She was nominated three other times for Best Supporting Actress, for "Lonelyhearts" in 1959; "Airport" in 1971 and "Interiors" in 1979. She won...

Here's a speech we would like to hear from an Academy Award winner: I thank you for this wonderful award. Receiving an Academy Award gives the recipient an almost unique opportunity to speak to hundreds of millions people around the world, so I would like take this once-in-a-lifetime moment to say this:

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A paparazzo facing charges involving an incident with actress Reese Witherspoon was found dead this month in a Brentwood apartment, the coroner's office confirmed Thursday. The body of Todd Kevin Wallace, 44, was positively identified but the cause of death was not determined pending results of toxicology tests, said Brenda Shafer, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County coroner. The decomposed body was found on Feb. 5. In December, an arrest warrant was issued for Wallace by Orange County authorities after he failed to show up for a bail hearing on misdemeanor charges that included battery....

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A Minnesota actress was arrested Friday on charges that she lied to cover up a scam to con more than 70 people into investing $5.5 million into a television series about the Department of Homeland Security, federal authorities said. Alison Ann Heruth, 41, of Oakdale, Minn., was named in a revised indictment that in October accused Hollywood producer Joseph Medawar of falsely telling investors that President George W. Bush endorsed "DHS: The Series." Prosecutors allege that from May 2003 through September 2005, Medawar falsely told investors that his production company, Steeple Entertainment, was about to sell...

Former Full House cutie Jodie Sweetin has earned herself a spot on the lengthy list of child stars gone wrong. During an appearance on Good Morning America Wednesday, Sweetin, who played middle sister Stephanie Tanner on the hit sitcom, revealed that she is a recovering meth addict and once battled a daily drug habit. The ex-actress, 24, said she had trouble figuring out how to adjust to a regular childhood existence after Full House ended its run in 1995. "There is a certain sense of loss when a series ends," Sweetin said. "It is kind of hard to figure out...

#6 -- The state of the world. How about that indictment?! And why did it take so long to respond to the crisis in New Orleans? Everything is imploding. It all seems to lead back to our dear president.

MIAMI - Frances Langford, whose steamy rendition of "I'm in the Mood for Love" captivated soldiers stationed overseas on Bob Hope's tours during World War II, died Monday. She was 92. Langford died at her home in Jensen Beach, her lawyer Evans Crary Jr. said. She had been ill with congestive heart failure, he said. Langford, a recording artist, radio star and actress from the 1930s to 1950s, joined Hope's troupe to boost wartime morale at military bases and hospitals through Great Britain, Italy, North Africa and the South Pacific. She entertained a new generation of soldiers in Korea and...

I just traded VRWC books with a friend and am starting to read Ed Klein's THE TRUTH ABOUT HILLARY. This anecdote is from the back cover. ==================================================== "She's the most unbelievable actress I have ever met," said a woman who worked on Hillary's Senate campaign. "I remember one time at a Women's Leadership Forum event in New York, thirty of us sat around Hillary, talking about politics. And she said, 'You know, I love this organization, not just because we sit around and talk about politics, but because of the bonds of friendship forming around us.' The way she said...

Former actress works to overturn Roe vs Wade Spreads new evidence of the physical, emotional, and psychological damage to women who have experienced abortion   Monday, June 06, 2005 by Matt C. Abbott Caron Strong is a former actress who has appeared on TV and in film. She's the mother of a young daughter, Cayla, her pride and joy. Caron recently became the national director of mobilization for Operation Outcry: Silent No More (www.operationoutcry.org), an organization "working to overturn Roe v. Wade in light of new evidence of the physical, emotional, and psychological damage to women who have experienced...

English actress Elizabeth Hurley reportedly plans planning a traditional Indian wedding when she marries textile magnate Arun Nayar next year. The Mirror said Hurley has advised her friends to reserve a month for the festivities. The wedding is scheduled for February in Rajasthan in northeast India. The Mirror cited a source close to Hurley and Nayar, who said that she wants a "traditional Indian princess-style wedding." "She loves the colorful traditions of the country and wants to embrace them," the source said. "She is very keen to involve elephants in some way and hopes to arrive on one -- but...

PALMDALE - While "Everybody Loves Raymond" character Debra Barone will live on in television reruns, a generous gift from actress Patricia Heaton will live on in the lives of babies born to Antelope Valley women who were considering having abortions. Heaton, who has won two Emmy awards for her role in the hit sitcom, was honored Tuesday for donating a $25,000 high-tech ultrasound machine to the AV Pregnancy Counseling Center, which was renamed Women's Clinic of the Antelope Valley. Ultrasound machines offer pregnant women a detailed view of their unborn children, even at only a couple of months along, and...

Mexican TV Actress Dies After Seeing Gun MEXICO CITY - A Mexican television actress died on Friday of a heart attack after a man armed with a pistol approached her vehicle on a Mexico City street, officials said. Mariana Levy, 39, featured on the "Nuestra Casa" show on the Televisa network, developed labored breathing after seeing the weapon, said prosecutor Carlos Gurrea. Her husband, Jose Maria Fernandez Jr., drove her to a nearby clinic where she died, Gurrea said, quoting Fernandez. A man was arrested and later identified by Levy's husband as the man who approached the vehicle, in which...

AMELIA ISLAND, Fla. - Actress Debralee Scott, a regular on the TV sitcom "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman," and frequent face on the 1970s game show circuit, has died. She was 52. Scott died of natural causes April 5, three days after her birthday, at her home in Amelia Island, said her sister Jeri Scott, a talent manager in Beverly Hills. The exact cause was not released. Scott came from a family of show business insiders. Her eldest sister, Scott Bushnell, produced many of director Robert Altman's films. Middle sister Jeri Scott is an agent turned manager. The two older Scotts...

Jerusalem’s Hadassah hospital received a $50 million donation last week from one of the people born there – famed Jewish actress Natalie Portman. Portman’s donation is earmarked for an improved and expanded emergency trauma center being funded by the Hadassah Women's Zionist movement. The expansion will enable three times as many victims to be treated at once. At a ceremony Thursday evening at the Jerusalem Theater, Dr. Kobi Assaf, Hadassah Hospitals’ director of surgery and shock trauma said the expansion of the trauma center will save many lives. "One of the most crucial things we can do for trauma patients...

Nicole DeHuff, an actress who played Teri Polo's sister in Meet the Parents, has died of causes related to pneumonia. She was 30. The actress died Feb. 16 in Hollywood, four days after she reportedly checked into a Los Angeles hospital, was misdiagnosed and sent home with orders to take Tylenol. When her condition worsened, she returned to the hospital and was prescribed antibiotics for bronchitis and again sent home. Two days later, paramedics were called to her home after she collapsed, gasping for breath. By the time she reached the hospital, she was unconscious and passed away soon after....

February 3, 2005 -- A high-school cheerleader was charged with murder yesterday for participating in the Lower East Side street attack that killed aspiring actress Nicole duFresne last week, cops said. (Linda) DuFresne, who spoke from her home in Minnesota, said she hopes her daughter's death will convince people to think more seriously about enacting stronger gun-control laws.

Lara Flyn Boyle Accused Of Stripping Naked On Flight To London January 31, 2005, 6:45:30 Lara Flynn Boyle FLYNN BOYLE'S 'SCANDALOUS NUDE FLIGHT' Movie beauty LARA FLYNN BOYLE has been accused of stripping nude and trying to seduce a fellow passenger during a recent first-class flight to London. Passengers claim the MEN IN BLACK 2 star started behaving strangely halfway through the ten-hour British Airways journey from Los Angeles to the capital's Heathrow Airport. But they were stunned when she stripped off her clothes and tried to climb into the bed of a sleeping stranger, reports British newspaper THE MAIL...

LOS ANGELES (Nov. 6) - James Belushi has sued his next-door neighbor, actress Julie Newmar, accusing her of a "campaign of harassment" to drive him from his home. In a lawsuit filed Nov. 2, the 50-year-old actor claims Newmar vandalized his estate by destroying a fence and landscaping. He also contends she bad-mouthed him to neighbors and friends, spied on his family and caused a nuisance by playing loud music directed at his backyard. A telephone number for Newmar, who played Catwoman in the 1960s television series "Batman," was not immediately available. A call to Belushi's lawyers was not returned...

Actress Tara Reid suffered an embarrassing wardrobe malfunction on the red carpet outside P. Diddy's 35th birthday bash at Cipriani's in New York City on Thursday night

XENIA, Ohio — Sen. John hunted for votes yesterday in the nook and crannies of the Buckeye State, telling crowds in farm country and jobstrapped southern Ohio that President Bush is deceiving them about the economy and the Iraq war. Joking that he will be in Ohio so often before Nov. 2 that "I’m about to have my mail forwarded here," Kerry beseeched voters to believe their eyes, and not Bush, when assessing whether they are better off now than four years ago. "George Bush has a very simple strategy when it comes to reality: Ignore it, deny it and...

Sat Oct 16, 6:34 PM ET Democratic Presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites), D-Mass.,visits the Village Grocery in Buchanan, Ohio, Saturday, October 16, 2004. He was there to buy a hunting license. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

The world just learned that "Catholic" actress Brooke Shields is the proud mother of a new baby girl. For a long time infertility problems made it impossible for her and her husband to conceive, and after many failed attempts to conceive naturally she resorted to the technological solution: in vitro fertilization (IVF). Now she is pictured on the covers of glamorous magazines with a smiling beautiful baby girl, but some have questioned her decision to use IVF. I am one of them. Was this star wrong to have a "test tube" baby? Yes. Dead wrong. While recognizing the pain of...

Chinese Press Predict Kim Hee-sun to be Reborn as Representative Brand of Asia Korean actress Kim Hee-sun received high praises from the Chinese press which said that, “She will be reborn as the ‘representative brand of Asia’ by working with four major Chinese directors.” A daily newspaper, published in Beijing reported in its Sunday paper that “The four major directors representing China -- Stanley Tong, Chen Kaige, Ang Lee, Zhang Yimou -- are all currently working with Kim Hee-sun or either planning on working with her. Kim will grow to be a higher level actress while working with them.”...

Did anyone just see Raquel Welsh on O'Reilly? WOW she looks great! She talked about how much she admired Mel Gibson and how she was brought up with traditional values. Bill seemed shocked! Good for her! Catch the rerun at 11:00 if you missed it.

Religious-rights lawsuit by student actress is back By Elizabeth Neff and Celia R. Baker The Salt Lake Tribune A federal appeals court on Tuesday revived a lawsuit brought by a former University of Utah student who claims she was forced out of the school's Actor Training Program (ATP) for following her religious beliefs. Christina Axson-Flynn, a member of the LDS Church, refused to take God's name in vain or use the f-word while performing scripted monologues in class. She claimed in a lawsuit that being required to set aside her religious beliefs violated her First Amendment rights, but the allegations...

Actress Gwyneth Paltrow is ruling out the prospect of returning to America to raise her child - because she deems her homeland too dangerous. The Oscar winning beauty - who is pregnant with her husband Chris Martin 's baby - has been living in London since settling down with the Coldplay star, and she has no intention of bringing up their child in a threatening environment. She says, "I worry about brining up a child in America. At the moment there's a weird, over-patriotic atmosphere over there, like, 'We're number one and the rest of the world doesn't matter.' And...

Female, forty and furious January 19, 2004 - 11:24AM On the attack ... Sharon Stone, Holly Hunter and Meg Ryan. Hollywood's most formidable female stars have united to condemn "sexist" film moguls for failing to find roles for women over 40. Meg Ryan, Holly Hunter, Charlotte Rampling, Sharon Stone and Whoopi Goldberg are among a group of 30 actresses who have taken part in a documentary by Rosanna Arquette to be screened in Britain this summer. The documentary is seen as a thinly veiled attack on moguls such as Harvey Weinstein - the portly co-owner of Miramax - who control...

Hope Lange of 'Peyton Place' Dies at 70 Dec 22, 8:08 AM (ET)   (AP) Actress Hope Lange is seen in this Jan. 1958 file photo. Lange, who starred opposite Hollywood's... Full Image SANTA MONICA, Calif. (AP) - Hope Lange, who starred opposite Hollywood's top actors over a decades-long career and earned an Oscar nomination for her supporting role in the 1957 film "Peyton Place," has died, her husband said Sunday. She was 70. Lange died Friday at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica after suffering an infection caused by an intestinal inflammation known as ischemic colitis, said her...

Janice Rule, an actress in film and onstage who became a psychoanalyst late in her career, died on Friday at her home in Manhattan. She was 72. Born in Norwood, Ohio, Ms. Rule studied ballet and began dancing in Chicago nightclubs in her teens. She soon attracted attention in Hollywood and made her film debut in 1951 in "Goodbye, My Fancy," with Joan Crawford and Robert Young. She was pictured on the cover of Life magazine on Jan. 8, 1951, as a rising young actress. Her films in the 1950's included "Starlift," "Holiday for Sinners," "A Woman's Devotion" and "Bell,...

I've now found three actresses who say they were not molested by gubernatorial candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yes, I'm telling you this for a self-serving reason — I'm hoping to save my job by preventing more people from canceling their subscriptions because of all our stories about Arnold groping women. But there's more to it than that. On this election day, I'm doing it out of a sense of fairness. At a rally in Costa Mesa, I met Angela Fair, who says she was a double in "Terminator 3." Fair told me Arnold never did anything untoward on or off the...

<p>That Jane Fonda had to audition for a part in director James L. Brooks film 'Spanglish' starring Tea Leoni and Adam Sandler and didn't get the part..</p>

Los Angeles — Police investigating the death of actress Lana Clarkson say they have concluded that legendary record producer Phil Spector was responsible for her shooting. They have submitted their findings to prosecutors. "It's not an accident; It's not a suicide," Capt. Frank Merriman told the Los Angeles Times in a story for Friday editions. "Phil Spector shot her." No immediate decision was expected on whether criminal charges would be filed, said Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for the district attorney's office. Spector, whose "wall of sound" recording technique transformed 1960s pop music, was arrested Feb. 3 for investigation of murder...

MANHASSET, N.Y. (AP) _ Jinx Falkenburg, an actress, model and radio and television star who along with her husband, Tex McCrary, helped establish the talk show genre, died Wednesday at a Long Island hospital. She was 84. Falkenburg and her husband, Tex McCrary, together known as "Tex and Jinx," had two radio talk shows, several television shows and a column in The New York Herald Tribune. Their first show together, "Hi Jinx," was broadcast on the station WEAF in 1946, and they later hosted the popular "Meet Tex and Jinx." On television, the couple starred in "At Home" on NBC,...

After dropping out of art school in NYC in 1982 and now fully immersed in the "gay" lifestyle, I decided I was going to make it in the art world as a "famous" portrait painter. My goal was to be "Stephen Bennett: Celebrity Artist to the Stars." My dreams were to have my own art gallery on Rodeo Drive in California, Mercedes Benz and boyfriend extraordinaire. I figured my paintings would sell for $50,000.00 and up - mere pocket change for the celebrities. In the late '80s, my dreams slowly began to happen. I began doing celebrity portrait work (hardly...

Reclusive rock 'n' roll producer Phil Spector has broken his silence about the shooting of a B-movie actress at his mansion - describing how she drunkenly "kissed the gun" and killed herself. "I have no idea why," Spector told Esquire magazine in a rambling interview about Lana Clarkson's mysterious death and his arrest in February. "I never knew her, never even saw her before that night. I have no idea who she was or what her agenda was." Spector, 62, was detained after cops responding to a 911 call found Clarkson, 41, lying in a pool of blood in the...