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The star’s much-lauded effort to help girls in the African nation of Malawi just imploded. In this week’s Newsweek, Wayne Barrett asks: Is Kabbalah to blame?Late last month, it was reported that Madonna’s Raising Malawi foundation, one of the most visible celebrity-driven charity efforts in the Third World, one that pulled in major donations from around Hollywood and elsewhere, was abandoning its planned mission: to build a $15 million girls’ academy in Malawi, one of the poorest countries in the world. A report by the Global Philanthropy Group, which Madonna brought in to represent her as trouble developed in the...

In an in-depth interview with THR, the 'Goonies' and 'Lost Boys' star opens up about his late best friend Corey Haim's rape by a producer at age 11, the pre-teen parties where predators stalked and groomed their marks and the "dark side" of his close pal Michael Jackson: "The man is gone. Let him rest in peace." A recent interview with Elijah Wood has reignited the conversation on pedophilia in the entertainment business. The Lord of the Rings star later clarified first to The Hollywood Reporter and then on his personal Twitter account that his comments about "something major ......

Thirty-seven years ago, at the age of 32, Moustapha Dali quit show business. An Algeria native, he'd begun to build an acting career in France but tired of his Paris agents telling him he'd have to change his name to one "less Arabic, more French." As Dali recounts it, "I told them I wanted to keep my name. I said Omar Sharif didn't change his name, but they said, 'He's not a French actor, he works in Hollywood.' " Today, at age 69, the scholarly, erudite Dali is the soft-spoken but righteous rector of the Mosquee Al Madina, the main...

This video is almost certain to start your day off right. One U.K. farmer got so mad at Oscar winning actress Emma Thompson and her sister for breaking a court injunction protecting a fracking site on his land that he sprayed raw manure at them.

A survey has found that tens of thousands of voters, including Demi Moore and other celebrities, have mistakenly registered as members of a conservative minor political party in California in a mix-up over its name, a newspaper reported Sunday. The Los Angeles Times said that a telephone survey of 500 members of the American Independent Party found nearly 3 of 4 people did not realize they had enrolled in a political party that opposes abortion rights and same sex marriage and calls for building a fence along the U.S. border. The newspaper said voters were confused by the use of...

Sharon Stone is the latest celebrity to weigh in on the 2016 presidential election.Like many in Hollywood, the actress endorsed Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton in 2008. Now eight years later, Stone feels it's the female candidate's time. "Look at everything she's been through. Why would she have been secretary of state during the most demanding and dangerous time this country has seen since World War II?" Stone tells The Hollywood Reporter. "She could go retire somewhere great, write a book, relax a little. It's not like she needs the $200,000 or whatever you make being president. She just cares...

Sharon Stone has cancelled filming of an upcoming project in Mississippi as a result of the state’s newly passed anti-LGBT ‘religious freedom on steroids’ bill, HB 1523. The film’s producers informed Mississippi Film Studios president Rick Moore that the law was a deal-breaker for Stone. The unnamed film project reportedly tackles the consequences of cyberbullying. James Cromwell is slated to direct. “Unfortunately, Sharon Stone feels strongly that shooting in Mississippi is not an option while the law exists,” Moore said. “The other producers have chosen to regroup and find another location.” Moore said he has heard of projects on the...

President Barack Obama is praising Democrats as more willing to make tough choices and criticizing Republicans as afraid to do anything, including vote on his Supreme Court nominee. Speaking at a California fundraiser, Obama lauded House Democrats for casting difficult votes “because we understood we had a certain responsibility to get things done.” “And that’s what we have not seen from the other side,” Obama told about 100 people, including Hollywood stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Julia Roberts and Gwyneth Paltrow, seated at round dining tables in a tent at the Bel Air home of Walt Disney Studios Chairman Alan Horn.“And that’s...

LeVar Burton was initially skeptical of remaking "Roots," the groundbreaking miniseries that launched his career in 1977. But Burton, who played a young Kunta Kinte, overcame those concerns after seeing the educational value in helping the new generation of Americans better relate to the plight of slaves and African-American history, particularly after the election of Barack Obama, the United States' first black president.

Director Lilly Wachowski made her first public appearance since coming out as transgender on Saturday as she attended the GLAAD Media Awards. Wachowski walked the red carpet in Beverly Hills, California, Saturday evening in a floor-length black gown. The filmmaker announced her gender transition to a woman in a heartfelt statement on March 8, six years after her sister Lana Wachowski came out as transgender

Actress Martha Plimpton, who plays the mother Eileen O’Neal on ABC’s “The Real O’Neals,” recently wore an “abortion dress” to promote her views on abortion, according to the Independent Journal. The shift dress features the word abortion repeatedly with hearts in between. It is part of a social media campaign called #ShoutYourAbortion, which began in 2015 and encourages women – including Plimpton - to share “positive stories about their abortion experience.” The dress is sold on the website Paom, which stands for Print All Over Me and is “an online platform for real world collaboration and creation,” according to the website.The dress...

Lilly Wachowski, one-half of the sibling filmmaker duo best known for their Matrix trilogy, has come out as a transgender woman in an essay published in the Windy City Times, a Chicago LGBT newspaper. The 48-year-old Wachowski, whose older sister Lana is also transgender, wrote that for the last year, media outlets have been indicating that they would break the news of her transition from Andy to Lilly — a prospect, she writes, that brought “dread and/or eye rolling exasperation.” She finally decided to come out herself after a reporter from the Daily Mail arrived on her doorstep, trying to...

Fifty Shades of Grey and Fantastic Four triumphed at the awards ceremony where no one wants to win, claiming the joint prize of Worst Picture at the Razzies on Saturday night. The adaptation of EL James' erotic novel hit the spot in several categories, also being awarded worst actor and actress for Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson's performances.

In one of the most exhaustive and damning reports on diversity in Hollywood, a new study finds that the films and television produced by major media companies are "whitewashed," and that an "epidemic of invisibility" runs top to bottom through the industry for women, minorities and LGBT people. A study to be released Monday by the Media, Diversity and Social Change Initiative at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism offers one of the most wide-ranging examinations of the film and television industries, including a pointed "inclusivity index" of 10 major media companies -- from Disney...

Leonardo DiCaprio has officially met the Pope. The actor had a private meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican on Thursday morning. "Leo explained that he wanted to discuss a subject they both have very much at heart: protecting the environment and climate change," a source tells PEOPLE. DiCaprio, 41, arrived at the Vatican at 11:15 a.m. local time and was accompanied by his father, George DiCaprio, and Milutin Gatsby, global fundraising chair for the actor's namesake charity, the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation. During the 15-minute meeting, the actor presented the pontiff with a check from his environmental philanthropy for him...

Gerald Molen, a voting member of the Academy who earned a best picture Oscar for producing Schindler's List, has some very choice words for the "spoiled brats" who are crying racism over the lack of diversity in the nominations this time around. "There is no racism except for those who create an issue. That is the worst kind. Using such an ugly way of complaining," Molen told The Hollywood Reporter on Thursday. So far, Spike Lee, Michael Moore, Jada Pinkett Smith and her husband Will Smith have said they will not attend the Oscars because all of the 20 acting...

<p>A television director with credits on “Law & Order” and other shows has pleaded guilty to child pornography charges.</p> <p>Westchester County District Attorney Janet DiFiore says 51-year-old Jason (Jace) Alexander pleaded guilty Tuesday to promoting a sexual performance by a child and possessing an obscene performance by a child.</p>

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will weigh new rules intended to encourage more diversity among its membership and its nominations, The Times has learned. The academy's 51-member Board of Governors has added the diversity issue to the agenda for its regularly scheduled meeting Tuesday night in response to an outcry over an all-white slate of acting nominees for the second year in a row, according to a person briefed on the matter.

Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith’s teen son Jaden Smith has scored a gig as the face of Louis Vuitton’s womenswear line.

No event of the last 30 years was more financially traumatizing than the mortgage meltdown of 2007-08. Some 7 million Americans lost their jobs, 6 million lost their homes, and countless millions more lost their life savings.