Nick Nolte doesn't credit his casting as Thomas Jefferson in the new Merchant-Ivory biopic Jefferson in Paris to his imposing physical stature or vigorous masculinity. "I have good calves," says Nolte, 54, whose gams are on display in the movie's 18th-century period costumes. "Calves were what men presented to women as a sexy thing in that day. Fortunately I was fine in the calf department." Nolte liked the era's sartorial splendor, the pesky headgear excluded: "The minute I put that powdery wig on, I'd have a huge itch attack. Finally the crew got me a special scratcher that fit under the wig for that purpose. But I found those frilly period costumes to be beautiful. People dressed in those days. When we'd finish shooting, I'd put on a pair of jeans and feel like such a slob."
NO PURPLE POSE
"I think that being involved with rap music paints a picture of me for people before I even walk into a room," says rapper LL Cool J, 27, who has been looking for a way to alter his tough-guy image. He thinks he may have found it playing the role of Marion Hill, an injured football star, in the NBC sitcom In the House, costarring Debbie Allen, which debuts Mon., April 10. "I'm not some type of crazy, wild comedian, falling over couches or throwing tomato sauce," he says of his part on the show. "I just do what I do, and the jokes are good. I have a sense of humor, I think, but I'm not like a stand-up comic with a tight purple chiffon suit on."
GETTING THE LANGE OF IT
Jessica Lange puts age before beauty. "It's strange, because at 45 I'm coming into what everyone perceives as the end of a woman's [acting] career," says Lange, who last month won the Best Actress Oscar for her role as a manic-depressive Army wife in Blue Sky. She now costars with Liam Neeson in the new Scottish epic Rob Roy. "I feel like I just figured out now how to do this acting thing. There was a time when I was worried about being taken seriously. When I was taken seriously, I worried about losing my looks." Lange, who lives with actor-playwright Sam Shepard, says she owes her perspective to her children, ages 14, 9 and 7. "I have kids, and I have to go home and deal with them. That's a great reality check." As for the unreality of shooting Rob Roy's love scenes with Neeson: "Oh, they were so difficult," she says, laughing. "Those scenes were pure torture."
STEEPED IN SOAP
Actress Lisa Rinna, who for more than two years has played the ex-drug addict-turned-cosmetics executive Billie on the NBC soap Days of Our Lives, won't renew her contract when it expires in August. "That's it for me," says Rinna, 29, who grew up in Medford, Ore., watching Days with her mother. Now, she says, her father, an artist who once scoffed at the soaps, not only watches but saves the tapes—albeit only the scenes involving Lisa. "I didn't necessarily want to be an actress," says Rinna, "but I did want to be a movie star." She went prime time last Monday in the TV movie Danielle Steel's Vanished and is hoping her post-soap career will include feature films. "Meg Ryan and Demi Moore both worked in soaps," she says. "If you don't do tons of theater, it's the best training."
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!
