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Show Friday, May 30, 2008 in DAILY HERALD D3 Spy H : i CELEBRITY NEWS AND NOTES Jo 1 1 i Ln. I "I tJ " " (7$lS Cilr, rd(35 Sydney Pollack was Starlet sheds good girl image WWarJnc: an actor's director and an actor's actor ' Lewis Beale NEWSDAY ay goodbye, Lizzie say hello, Eastern European pop tart. Yep, Hilary Duff is all grown up Carrie Rickey e, THE now, a beautiful old, and in her latest film, "War, Inc.," she makes a big ca 20-ye- ar ' reer move. ' ' u ) v p rt h ft:. ,1 camera. Significantlythe filmmaker who called himself "Mr. Mainstream" and scored his biggest critical success with the ' , Oscar-winnin- ! y ..". ,v. ASSOCIATED chael Clayton," "Eyes Wide Shut" and "Changing Lanes." It was wearing his actor's hat that the producerdirec- " : Hilary Duff portrays pop film "Greta," where you have a relationship with a black guy. Was that interracial angle something deliberate on your part? SIMON VERSANORrst Look Studios star Yonica Babiak in the film "War, Inc." A. I didn't even think about the racial angle. I just have a lot of friends in interracial relationships, and I've never been the type of person to judge that. Growing up in Los Angeles, everything's accepted. Q. Your mom and dad separated two years ago after being married more than 20 years. You wrote about the pain of this in your hit songs "Stranger" and "Gypsy Woman." How has the breakup affected you personally? Has it also affected your career? A. I don't think it has affected my career. I knew people would find out about it, because when I was making that album, it was on my mind. It has changed my life forever, and I wanted my fans to know about it. I was 18 when it happened, and I think growing up in my business, I grew up a little faster. You just never think it will happen to you when you're that age, when your parents have been together for so long. It was aishock, it's tough, and it's still tough every day. ter from the Tibetan Foundation asking her to help quake LOS ANGELES Sharon Stone's "karma" comment is having an instant effect on her movie-sta- r status in China. The actress suggested last week that the devastating May 12 earthquake in China could have been the result of bad karma over victims. "They wanted to go and be helpful, and that made me cry," she said. "It was a big lesson to me that sometimes you have to learn to put your head down and be of service even to people who aren't nice to you." the government's treatment of Tibet. That prompted the founder of one of China's biggest cinema chains to say his company would not show her films in his theaters, according to a story in The Hollywood MATT SAYLESAssociated Press Reporter. Sharon Stone speaks during the amfAR's annual Cinema "I'm not happy about the Against AIDS 2008 benefit in Mougins, France, on Thursday. way the Chinese are treating the Tibetans because I don't think anyone should be unkind founder of the the Reporter. to anyone else," Stone said Ng UME has branches in BeiUME Cineplex chain and the Thursday during a Cannes interchairman of the Federation of jing, Shanghai, Chongqing, Film Festival view with Hong Kong's Cable Hong Kong Filmmakers, called I langzhou and Guangzhou, Stone's comments "inappropri. China's biggest urban movie Entertainment News. "And markets. ate," adding that actors should then this earthquake and all During the brief interview, this stuff happened, and then I not bring personal politics to which has also surfaced on comments alxwt a natural dithought, istruit karma? When saster that has left five million YouTube, Stone ako said she you're not nice that the bad Chinese homeless, according to cried when she received a let to you?" things happen swell of anger on the Internet, including at least one Chinese Web site devoted solely to disparaging her comments. "To Sharon Stone's comment, it's unlikely that we will respond," said a woman who answered the phone at the Foreign Ministry in Beijing. She refused to give her name or position. After-hour- s phone calls and email to a representative for Stone were not immediately returned Tuesday night. According to the database imdb.com, Stone has at least four movies coming up between now and 2010, including "Streets of Blood," "Five Dollars a Day" and "The Year of Getting to Know Us." Stone's words created a See-Yue- red-carp- They?" (1969), Pollack's first critical hit as a director, is a Depressionnera allegory of American desperation, in which a marathon dancer (Jane Fonda) competes for cash under the gimlet eye emcee (Gig of a Young). Fonda and Young are two of the dozen actors whose performances in Pollack films won them Oscar bids. While Young took the supporting hard-boile- d actor prize that year, Fonda got a bigger prize: Under Pollack's hand, she transformed herself from sexpot to serious actress. The fatalism that tinged so many Pollack films was evident in the spy thriller "Three Days of the Condor" (1975), in which Redford is a CIA researcher who blunders into a lethal conspiracy within the Agency. Redford and Pollack, who made their movie debuts in the 1962 feature "War Hunt," collaborated on six films and were longtime friends and neighbors in Park City, Utah, near where they filmed the wilderness Western "Jeremiah Johnson" (1972). Though he enjoyed a marriage (to his former pupil, actress Claire Griswold), Pollack was drawn to scenarios that explored arrangements. "The Way We Were" (1973) is a case study in how interpersonal chemistry can be both thrilling and scarring. In that film, he established the Pollack Romantic Rhythm: less-ide- torperformer articulated the pragmatic melancholy that flowed through his romantic movies. As lawyer Stephen Delano, Ben Affleck's boss in the shamefully underknown PRESS " "Out of Africa" g was a director's producer. His company Mirage Enterprises supported decidedly fare such as "The Fabulous Baker Boys," "Michael Clayton," "Searching for Bobby Fischer," "Sense and Sensibility," "Songwriter" and "The Talented Mr. Ripley." Trim and brusque, Pollack, initially an acting instructor, was also an actor's actor, distinguishing himself in roles as the corruptible elder in "Mi- Stone: Was China quake 'bad karma?' THE INQUIRER conjunctions and alignments. He made Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand a couple in "The "Way We Were," Dustin Hoffman a woman in "Tootsie," and eternal boy Tom Cruise a man in "The Firm." Because Pollock, who was 73 when cancer claimed him Monday, came of age as the power of studios was in decline and that of stars on the rise, he was able to see the industry in new alignments as weLL He would play multiple roles in Hollywood, both behind and in front of the J with John Cusack and PHILADELPHIA Director Sydney Pollack was an actor's director who saw stars in uncharacteristic 1 K Marisa Tomei, Duff plays Yonica Baby oversexed and yeah, a underdressed Central Asian pop singer so outrageous, she makes Madonna look like a nun. It's a role that might shock her fan teeny-boDuff's base, but could also jump-stamature movie career. To find out what Duff was thinking, Lewis Beale caught up with her at the TriBeCa Film Festival, where "War, Inc." had its New York premiere. Q. You drop a major expletive quite a few times in this film. That's quite a change for you. What were you thinking? A. Not only am I doing that, but I'm smoking ... the character was a bit vulgar. I don't think using the . . . word would have bothered me if I had said it once or twice, but it's throughout the whole movie. But I'm just acting. ' Q. Are you worried how your longtime fans will react to a role like this? A. I think that's the risk that I take. But I'm growing up, and my fans are going to grow up with me. I think there will be a mixed emotion about it. But if I lose fans, well, I don't want to limit myself in my career. Q. Is that the reason you chose this part? A. A lot of people didn't want to give me a chance for a long time, because I was doing movies where I was nice, and I was still a kid. But that put me in a box, and people didn't want to take a chance on me. When I got this script, I flipped over it. 1 felt 'I need this, I want this.' It was great just getting to play a character that was so out there and crazy. Q. You were 13 years old when you first appeared in the hit Disney Channel show 'Lizzie McGuire." What's it like growing up in public? A. It's all I know, really. There are things that were hard, because I was thinking things like, 'If I say this, someone could take it this way or that way.' I also went through a period where I felt awkward with my body. There were times I would have a meltdown, because you're working hard like an adult. But my mom treated me completely normal She never used the ... word, or said, "Oh, Hilary's famous." I would get put in my place really fast. Q. It seems with this movie you have some sort of career plan, a way to move from teen star to adult. Do you? A. I do have those conversations, but things change every day. I think, "Hmm, it might be interesting if I did that." I'm taking a break for awhile, and reading scripts. But I'd love to do a big movie, an action movie. Q. Well, it still seems you're going in a different direction, like in your upcoming Press Associated Award winning film director Sydney Pollack listens to a student's question at Harvard university in Cambridge, Mass., on July 17,1 993. Pollack died of cancer Monday at his home in Pacific Palisades, Calif., according to his agent. He was 73. Web-base- d Boy Meets Girl, Boy Gets Educated by Girl, Boy Gets Overwhelmed by Girl's Expectations. You can hear its echoes in "Absence of Malice" (where the genders are reversed) and "Out of Africa." Even "Tootsie," Pollack's only "Changing Lanes," Pollack barks to his protege, "It's all pure comedy, has an undera moral tightrope, you gotta current of romantic doom in learn to balance." When the the relations between Dustin protege asks how he can live Hoffman and Jessica Lange. like that, Delano replies, "I can As Pollack grew increaslive with myself ... because at ingly invested in helping the end of the day, I think I do produce indie features, "Mr. more good than harm." Mainstream" lost his grip with Pollack was the face of features such as "Random Hearts" and "The InterpretHollywood's "generation of compromise" (as the title of a er." His last big hit was "The Firm" (1993), where he helped Spanish documentary nicely Tom Cruise graduate into put it). Unlike the filmmakers of Hollywood's golden age, he adult roles. didn't have a Manichean view Finally, Pollack was an of characters as good and evil, astronomer who understood how best to present his celeshut as deeply flawed, often an astronomer tial subjects compromised individuals. who was himself a star. "They Shoot Horses, Don't Ashlee Simpson wffl take the Wentz name THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Ashlee LOS ANGELES Simpson is so over. The newlywed pop singer will go by Ashlee Wentz in private, and be professionally known as Ashlee Simpson-Wentaccording to a report posted Wednesday on People, com. The heretofore Simpson was married on May 17 to Fall Out Boy bassist Pete Wentz. z, "I think that that's some- thing that a woman should do when they're marrying a man," the pop star liT sis of Jessica Simpson told the magazine. "It's a tradition that 1 think is a great tradition." Phone and messages left with Simpson-Wentz'- s publicist regarding the name change were not immediately returned. Simpson-Went- 23, and Wentz, 28, exchanged vows earlier this month at her parents home in Encino, Calif. Joe Simpson, her father, performed the ceremony and sister Jessica was the maid of honor, the MATT SAYLESAssotWl;-- ; fVass Ashlee Simpson and Pett Wentz, of the band Fall Out Bov, arrive together at the Rolling Stone 40th anniversary party in Las Vegas on Sept. fl, 2007. magazine earlier reported. Simpson-Wentand Wentz began dating in fall 2006 and announced tlieir engagement z April 9. |