Dodging Bullets

Dodging Bullets

Posted June 17, 2005

It’s not the first time news of a much-rumored big-movie romance has gone supernova. But… the saga of [Brad and Angelina] sets a new, 21st-century benchmark–a sort of perfect publicity storm centered on two beautiful people whom the public is treating as daydream playthings, to the chagrin of at least one player among Mr. & Mrs. Smith‘s creative team. “I don’t like the exploitation of personal lives in tabloids,” says Akiva Goldsman, one of five main producers on Smith. “I think it’s grim. I don’t think it helps anybody. Do I think it helps or hurts the movie? I think […]

Sex and the Single Mom

Sex and the Single Mom

Posted June 17, 2005

“You know, you’re sleeping with your kid all the time and you’re like, I haven’t had sex in months, let alone tempted anyone,” says Angelina Jolie. She’s sitting cross-legged beside me on an overstuffed couch at a hotel bar in Beverly Hills. She’s slender in jeans and a silky tunic. A soft black shawl keeps slipping from her bare left shoulder, where there’s a tattoo of a dragon and a smudge of makeup covering up the shadow of the lasered-away name “Billy Bob.” When you said you sleep with men in hotel rooms, I was like, Oh, yeah, I do […]

American Idol

American Idol

Posted June 1, 2005

With a divorce in the works and paparazzi in his rearview mirror, Brad Pitt should be in lockdown. Instead, he’s having a candid conversation about how it feels to be the most hunted man in Hollywood. Tucked behind the Chateau Marmont, past the pool, sits bungalow 3, a slablike outbuilding for the privacy-minded guest. The entrance used to be a simple metal gate. Now the gate is covered by a gawker-proof tarp with a fist-size peephole cut into it. Shortly after I ring the bell, a familiar blue eye fills the hole. “Hello!” In the tranquil twilight, there’s a neighborliness […]

Sex on the Beach with Orlando Bloom

Posted May 1, 2005

The action star of Kingdom of Heaven is dyslexic, accident-prone, in pain from a dozen broken bones, intimidated by heartthrob fame and a Buddhist ready to get in your face if you don’t let him live life to the fullest Orlando Bloom drops anchor about 200 yards off the shore of Bequia, an island just south of where he and Johnny Depp are filming back-to-back sequels to Pirates of the Caribbean. Though his personal assistant and trainer decide to take a leisurely kayak ride to shore, Bloom chooses to swim. A race to the beach is suggested to make things […]

Orlando Bloom| Canterbury Tales

Posted May 1, 2005

Growing up in the historic English cities of Canterbury and London may explain why dashing young actor Orlando Bloom is so well-suited for epic films like the upcoming Kingdom of Heaven. Once upon a time, in the verdant county of Kent, in the city of Canterbury, England, a boy was christened Orlando Jonathan Blanchard Bloom, after 17th-century composer Orlando Gibbons. Alas, this Orlando, being from Canterbury, where Geoffrey Chaucer based his famously unfinished tales, would soon take a more dramatic turn with his life. Having excelled in local plays at an early age, he moved to London at 16 to […]

The times of their lives starring Wentworth Miller

Posted February 1, 2005

RW: Your first major film, The Human Stain, dealt with race and identity, so I know it’s something you’ve spoken about at length. Is it a subject you’re sick of talking about?WM: I was when the movie came out. Part of me thought, I don’t want to be forever linked with this issue as an actor. But at the same time I thought the movie spoke to such important and often unaddressed issues that it was necessary to talk about it. I’m very proud of The Human Stain, but it was not a critical or commercial success; I think part […]

Lost Boy

Lost Boy

Posted January 1, 2005

How Dominic Monaghan snapped out of his hobbit depression and found himself Lost. On a hilly Hawaiian road, the centuries-old trees tower over the tarmac, forming a green pavilion that dwarfs the Toyota Prius driven by twenty-eight-year-old Dominic Monaghan. He interrupts his anecdote about fleeing from Paul McCartney at an Oscar party and marvels at the verdant world around us. “Isn’t that great?” Monaghan says with a grin. “It’s like the Shire.” He spent almost two years in New Zealand filming the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Now he’s part of the ensemble on Lost. Charlie is a pleasant bloke […]

Leonardo DiCaprio| The Sky’s the Limit

Posted December 24, 2004

Seven years after Titanic made Leonardo DiCaprio the object of global mania – and a $20 Million per picture star – he has finally satisfied a longtime obsession of his own. This month, in Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator, DiCaprio will play Howard Hughes, the visionary tycoon whose brilliance was swallowed up by madness. Riding up an elevator in a no-frills office building at an unremarkable address, a short, middle-aged man looks up at the young guy in the backward baseball cap. “Haven’t I seen you somewhere?” the man asks, squinting his eyes. Bingo. “You’re that kid from Titanic.” “Yeah,” says […]

Leonardo DiCaprio| Leading Man

Posted December 24, 2004

With two confident, unsettling performances, the former boy wonder grows up (finally) and becomes the actor of his generation.  He was already a successful, cheeky, sweet-faced TV actor when Leonardo DiCaprio saw the first two film performances that really turned his head. One was James Dean’s in East of Eden. The other, in Taxi Driver, was by Robert De Niro (whom the teenage DiCaprio had just been cast opposite in This Boy’s Life). “I never said, ‘This is what I’m going to aspire to be,’” he remembers, “because at that age, it’s something that’s so beyond anything that’s a possibility. […]

Christian Bale Dossier

Christian Bale Dossier

Posted November 24, 2004

Before he becomes Batman, the Welsh actor literally starves for his art in this month’s The Machinist. By now you may have heard that Christian Bale lost 63 pounds for his role as tormented insomniac Trevor Reznik in the new thriller The Machinist. Best to get that out of the way early, because when watching the film – in which Bale resembles a stick figure with skin – it takes a long time, and a strong stomach to get past it. Bale lost more weight than Tom Hanks (Castaway) and Adrien Brody (The Pianist) did combined. As shocking as it […]