MR.SHOWBIZ

By Mary Bruno

April 19, 1996

Mondays with Brad and Gwyneth

When your average American couple wakes up on Monday morning, the first thing they do is reach for the Pop Tarts. But let's face it, lovebirds Brad Pitt and Gwyneth Paltrow are not your average American couple. "We get faxes from our publicists every Monday," explains Gwyneth. That's because the tabloids come out on Mondays, and Brad and Gwyneth's respective flacks--God bless 'em--fax their clients all the relevant stories. "It's like a joke now," she says. "We read through them and see what we're doing." And most of it, she says, is "total, total lies." Oh well, speaking of relationships, how did mom and pop Paltrow (actress Blythe Danner and TV producer Bruce Paltrow) react when they first heard their daughter was dating a movie star? "They were like, 'Aiyeee! God, please,'" recalls Gwyneth. "You know what most movie stars are like, especially the young good-looking ones: they've slept with a million people and they're vain and shallow and vapid and everything. And Brad could not be further from that. He has so much integrity, and is a really wonderful person, and my parents love him. Really they do." Aw, heck, we do too.

May 14, 1996

Dennis, anyone?

There wasn't a scaly beast in sight when Dragonheart headliner Dennis Quaid was on location in Slovakia shooting scenes with his costar. Just a crew member holding up two sticks with tennis balls on the ends and director Rob Cohen reciting Sean Connery's lines in a pretty darn good Scottish accent. (Connery does the dragon's voice.) But Quaid had no trouble imagining the mythical creature; he is, after all, an actor. "I sort of played to the dragon inside me," he says. Okay, but how was it talking to a pair of tennis balls? Honestly, says Quaid, "I've worked with actors who've given me less."

May 30, 1996

You see London, you see France, but not Ashley's underpants

Ever since Ashley Judd told Oprah last year that she never wears underpants, complete strangers feel free to inquire about her intimate apparel. "People ask me all the time," Ashley says breezily. Last fall, for instance, when she was flying back from Mississippi, where she had been shooting the Warner Bros. thriller, A Time To Kill, "This flight attendant said, 'I just adore your family. I feel like I know you. Do you have on underpants?'" It's not that Ashley doesn't own underwear--she keeps "a couple of cute flowery pairs in cotton" from the Garnet Hill catalogue "for those first wardrobe fittings, so I don't shock everyone in the department, and for going into Armani to try something on. You don't want to gross out the salespeople, or take advantage of their fabulous loan policy." It's just that Ashley finds panties and bras sort of a nuisance, and frankly, we agree. A Time To Kill won't be out until July. But this month, you can catch Ashley (as Norma Jean), opposite Mira Sorvino (as Marilyn) in the HBO movie Norma Jean and Marilyn. And you know what, says Ashley, "Marilyn Monroe didn't wear any underclothes either."

June 13, 1996

Better than Twister

Bonnie Hunt had an attack of the blues last weekend while she was manning the whack-a-mole booth at the seventh annual Pediatric AIDS Foundation carnival. "My show was cancelled, and here I am running this booth where kids get to hit little beavers with mallets," says Hunt. "I think I'm going to get in trouble with the animal-rights people." CBS did can Hunt's eponymous sitcom, but she's not in dutch with the animal rights crowd and she's not out of work. Hunt appears opposite Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire, a TriStar film that is almost wrapped. "My character hates him, which is hard because he's really a nice guy," says Hunt of her co-star. "He's a family man, which is something you get to see when you work closely with him." And, adds Hunt, in a gesture of solidarity, "Mission: Impossible was better than Twister."

March 19, 1996

A Time To Party

As you know—unless you've been vacationing on Pluto—there's been a ton of buzz accompanying Matthew McConaughey's star turn in A Time To Kill, which opened last week. Ordinarily, this kind of hyper-hype tends to turn us off, so we attended the film's recent L.A. screening with what is best described as a "show me" attitude about the young star. Well, guess what? McConaughey proved to be as charming in person as he is on the screen. During the post-premiere party at Chasen's, we had the pleasure of sitting with McConaughey and his date for the evening, his mom, Kay. "Who else should I bring to my first big Hollywood premiere?" shrugged the twenty-six-year-old actor. "She's been the best influence for me." McConaughey graciously held court at his booth, while Joan Collins stopped by to coo at him, ex-girlfriend Ashley Judd to kiss him, and directors Ed Zwick (Courage Under Fire) and Ron Shelton (Tin Cup) to assure him they'd be working together real soon. All in all, we have nothing bad to say about McConaughey. Well, actually, he and Time To Kill costar Kevin Spacey, whom McConaughey calls "bug head" for some unknown reason, did loudly hoot and holler all the way through the screening. But we can't really hold that against him. "This is my first premiere," he said. "It's a big day for me. I'm having a great time."

July 19, 1996

Where's Bill?

It's hard to imagine writer-director-actor Harold Ramis making a movie—a comedy, no less—without his old pal Bill Murray. Their résumés include Caddyshack, Stripes, Meatballs, and Groundhog Day, all of which Ramis co-wrote and/or directed. And, of course, there's the Ghostbusters series, in which they both starred. But when it came time to cast Multiplicity, director Ramis went with Michael Keaton, and we've been wondering why ever since. Well, says Ramis, "for me to do another sort of character transformation film with Bill might have seemed a little too familiar." Besides, "Bill's always trying to break new ground with what he does, and there are sufficient echoes of Groundhog Day in this movie." (Right down to Andie MacDowell, Bill's Groundhog Day co-star.) Okay, then: how do the two comics compare? "I wouldn't say one is funnier than the other," says Ramis. "They have a lot in common. They are both from Irish Catholic families. Michael is from Pittsburgh; Bill is from Chicago. They would enjoy playing basketball together, and they'd both be good and real competitive. But their personalities are very different. Michael is a guy who has great depth of character, and it seems he has wrestled with and come to terms with a lot of his darker moods. Bill wrestles other people."

September 12, 1996

Easy Ryder?

You'll recall that in its September 9 issue, TV Guide reported that David Duchovny and Winona Ryder were so madly in love that their torrid summer romance had become the talk of The X-Files' Vancouver, Canada, set, and that the two planned to make their romance public at the Emmys. Within a week, Ryder had publicly denied the TV Guide allegation — insisting she and Duchovny are just good friends — and Duchovny went to the Emmys alone. What we're hearing now is that Duchovny and Ryder were indeed a hot item — so hot, in fact, that Duchovny had even talked about an engagement ring — but that things cooled, at least on Ryder's end, when old flame and Soul Asylum frontman Dave Pirner, stepped back into the romantic picture. Sources say the dumped Duchovny is devastated. (Of course, hard to muster sympathy for the X-Files star, who has a love 'em-and-leave-'em kinda rep himself.) Ryder, meanwhile, is in New York promoting The Crucible, which opens November 27, and training for her upcoming role, opposite Sigourney Weaver, in Alien Resurrection, which starts shooting this fall.

November 14, 1995

Whoopi MIA at Comic Relief

Anyone looking for host Whoopi Goldberg at last Saturday's annual Comic Relief concert in L.A. didn't have to go too far. When Whoopi wasn't on stage yukking it up with co-hosts Billy Crystal and Robin Williams, she was out back of the Universal Amphitheater (at Universal Studios) yakking on her cell phone and smoking cigarettes. Cig breaks or cell breaks? We'll never know, but whoever Whoopi was talking to was one funny character. As one Comic Relief attendee noted, "she was laughing her head off." Meanwhile, inside the V.I.P. tent, Anthony Edwards was winning the Mr. Congeniality Award; the E.R. star managed to remain gracious and genuine despite being hounded by press all evening. And agents and execs were falling over each other to meet O.J. prosecutor Christopher Darden, who just sold his book to HarperCollins for $1.3 million. Darden's composure astounded many attendees, but not the female agent who was overheard explaining why the down-to-earth Darden was taking all the fawning in stride, "You know what? Christopher Darden: he's bigger than Hollywood."