Although movie director Spike Lee has spent much of the past two years working on Malcolm X—his three-hour opus starring Denzel Washington as the pimp turned Black Muslim preacher turned political leader that will open in theaters in November—he says Malcolm X really entered his life some 20 years ago, when Lee was a junior high school student in Brooklyn. "Back then, I did not know I wanted to be a filmmaker," says Lee, 35. "I thought I would make the major leagues as a second baseman. It was my dream but an unrealistic one. I had the heart but not the physical tools. Then I read [The Autobiography of] Malcolm X. It changed my life, and I've just been on course ever since. It gave me a different way of seeing things, and about our roles as African-Americans in this country."
GOLLY, DOLLY
Dolly Carton, 46, defies the effects of gravity with the greatest of ease. But let her tell it, as she did to London's Daily Mail when asked how she holds up so well. "Sure, I had a few nips and tucks," said Parton, whose most recent film is called, appropriately enough, Straight Talk. "I had my boobs lifted. I did not have silicone implants. It was more a reconstruction job, because I lost a lot of weight and they started to droop a bit. So I had some surgery. I just wanted to lift them off the street."
DADDY INTERFEREST
Steven Spielberg is a participatory father. "The best thing that ever happened to me, really, is having kids," says the 44-year-old director. Spielberg and wife Kate Capshaw, who have each been previously married, have five children altogether: sons Max, 7, Then, 3, and Sawyer, 3 months, and daughters Jessica, 15, and Sasha, 2. "I only make a movie every 18 months as a director, and between movies I'm in my kids' faces. I'm in my house every night by 5:15, and I'm not in the office till 9:30 A.M. I get on the floor and play with everybody. I can act sillier than my 7-year-old. I'm the guy who tries to keep the kids downstairs when my wife is trying to get them to bed."
WAKE ME UP BEFORE YOU GO-GO
By night, Tonya Pinkins plays Sweet Anita, the lover of Jelly Roll Morton (Gregory Hines), in the Broadway musical smash Jelly's Last Jam, for which she just won a Tony as best featured actress. By day, she plays lawyer Livia Frye on the ABC soap All My Children. In between, she's Mom to her two children, ages 4 and almost 2. In answer to your next question, here's her schedule: "I get up at 5:45 in the morning with my kids and do breakfast with them," says Pinkins, 30. "Two or three days a week I'm at the soap about 7:30, and they let me out about 5. They don't use me on Wednesdays [theater matinee day]. I go home and have dinner with my kids, put them in the bathtub, and my husband [soap opera musical director Ron Brawer] puts them to bed. I leave for the theater about 7:30, since I don't go on until the end of the first act." And on vacation? "I have a week and a half off from the soap at the end of June. I'm hoping to move into my house I've had for six months. I've been too busy."
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!
