Now that The Who finished what may have been their final tour, lead singer ROGER DAUREY has resigned himself to acting full-time. "One of the problems with rock is that it doesn't seem to accommodate the emotions of middle age very well, mainly because there are not many very intelligent songwriters out there," says Daltrey, 45, who plays a washed-up boxer in Father Jim, a drama due later this year. "Rock and roll accommodates naïveté and arrogance, and as much as you can give it, it loves it. But it has never been a graceful beast and never really had much dignity. That's why I'm moving into acting. There's plenty of work for old actors."
BARE ESSENTIALS
Actor and sixties emblem DENNIS HOPPER, who portrays a raffish throwback to that decade in his latest movie, Flashback, doesn't have a lot of fond memories of the fifties. "We came out of a very conservative time in the fifties," says Hopper. "It was very stiffing—Eisenhower, prepill. The only good part of it was that it was prepanty-hose. I hate pantyhose. And prepill—you never got laid then."
TOOTH OF THE MATTER
He may be the all-time NBA points record holder, but former Los Angeles Laker great KAREEM ABDUL-JABBAR didn't always know the score. "There was this girl in high school I really liked and finally got the nerve to ask out. So we went to the movies, and then I took her home. I thought we'd had a really good time, but she jumped out of the car and ran into her house," says Abdul-Jabbar, who's revving up his acting career with a role on 21 Jump Street this Monday (Feb. 12). "I didn't understand it until I got home and looked in the mirror and realized I had gotten the broccoli from dinner stuck on my teeth. To this day I can't stand broccoli—won't eat it."
BOSOM BUDDY
"I have discovered the greatest method of dieting ever," says the ample NELL CARTER, who two months ago as a single mom (her divorce is pending) adopted an infant son, JOSHUA. "I just place Joshua in his pouch, strap him to my bosom and carry him around with me. I quickly found out that I won't open the stove to cook because I'm afraid he might get burned. I won't open the refrigerator because I'm afraid hell catch cold, and I won't smoke a cigarette because I'm afraid of dropping ashes on his tiny face. I lost 19 lbs. the first two weeks. At this rate, I'll be a thin woman by the time the kid starts to walk."
THROUGH THE MILLS
Former Knots Landing star DONNA MILLS was tripped up just before her strut on the Great White Way recently when she abruptly discovered that A. R. GURNEY's Broadway play, Love Letters, was set to close before her scheduled week-long appearance in it. Mills was informed of the cancellation by her publicist, who had read about the show's closing in a New York City newspaper. "I said, 'It must be some mistake.' I think it would have been nice of them [the producers] to let us know before they put it in the paper," says Mills, who made her Broadway debut 22 years ago in WOODY ALLEN's Don't Drink the Water. "They had other people booked after me too. They then called and were very apologetic and blah, blah and blah, but I was disappointed. People say to me, 'Aren't you glad it didn't close after you were in it?' I guess that would've been worse."
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!
