What does shoot-from-the-hip actress Whoopi Goldberg, currently starring with Ray Liotta in the romantic comedy Corrina, Corrina, put down on her census form? "I wouldn't put 'African-American.' I just put down 'American,' because that's what I am," says Goldberg, 44, who created a firestorm of controversy when ex-flame Ted Danson appeared in blackface with her onstage at a 1993 Friars Club roast for Goldberg. "Yes, I've been criticized by the black community, and loudly," she admits. "But I'm fifth-or sixth-generation American, and I also have Chinese and white in me. I don't see a lot of people calling themselves Russian-Americans. I'm not culturally from Africa. I've been in Africa—I know better. I'm real proud that I helped build America, so I'm not going to let anybody call me anything except American."
OLD BEFORE HIS TIME
"They made me too old—I looked like babaganoush!" says Love & War's Jay Thomas, 46, of the first makeup attempt to age him from 30 to 60 in Mr. Holland's Opus, an upcoming buddy film costarring Richard Dreyfuss. To prep for the thirtysomething scenes, Thomas hit the gym before arriving on the Portland, Ore., set. "Somewhere within me there was a 30-year-old body, and working out 2 hours a day, I found it," he says. "I lost 15 pounds and started seeing muscles in my neck. But don't worry, I won't become Joe Piscopo. I don't have muscles ready to ripple." Why not? Because in the lakeside home he's renting, Thomas "found some ice cream the kids [Sam, 3, and Jake, 1] had in the freezer—some sort of almond swiss flavor—forget it! There were sparks flying off that spoon!"
ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTE
"I was a runty kid in high school; I wasn't athletic, and I mostly hung out with the girls," says Harrison Ford, 52, of his unlikely career as an action hero. As Jack Ryan in Clear and Present Danger, the new thriller based on the Tom Clancy novel, Ford once again performs his own studly stunt work—that's really him you see dodging explosions and scrambling onto a moving helicopter. Why does Ford, who endured real snakes and falling boulders in three films as adventurer Indiana Jones, put himself through all this? "Using a stunt person is like going off on vacation and asking somebody else to make love to your wife while you're gone. If you can do it yourself, you certainly should."
LET A GIRL DO IT
Before "the show must go on" comes "the singer must escape from the bus." Country singer Patty Loveless, 37, figured when her fiddle player started screaming "We can't get out!" that the jammed door handle on her tour bus might make her a bit late for her July 24 performance at Nashville's Opryland USA. After the crew's efforts to unscrew the doorknob failed, Loveless, in good mountain-girl fashion, found a nail file and did the job herself—and was only 10 minutes late for the show (that's 1 hour and 50 minutes earlier than Axl Rose generally arrives on a good night). Touring now behind her new LP When Fallen Angels Fly, Loveless wants to buy a new bus but admits that her old, rusty rig has a silver (chrome) lining: "Accidentally getting yourself locked in before a show really takes your mind off going onstage."
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
