Oscar-winning actor Denzel Washington, who sports an Afro in Spike Lee's new basketball drama He Got Game, says growing the hair-raising style took him back to his roots. "I haven't had an Afro for about 20 years," says Washington, 43, "but I had a big one in the '70s. This really took me back in time. And it made it easy for me to go out in public. I was just a man with a beard and an Afro walking down the street; nobody recognized me. Actually. I think I scared people."
Sizing up a role
He packed on 40 extra pounds to play Mafia boss John Gotti in the NBC miniseries Witness to the Mob, airing May 10-11. So is Tom Sizemore a glutton for punishment? "I had to gain the weight, and not just because Robert De Niro did it for Raging Bull and his company was producing Witness to the Mob," says Sizemore, 36. "I did it because that's what I had to do to feel real. The man couldn't lay off the cannoli. John Gotti's belly was a sign of his success. He was a big man in every way, and that was his tragic flaw." Even so, the weight gain was a lot for the actor to digest. "I got the part right after I finished making Saving Private Ryan for Steven Spielberg," says Sizemore. "I was in the best shape of my life—180 lbs., all muscle—from playing a World War II sergeant. It was fun being a pig for about a week—-then it was work. I got sick of eating so much." Now on a diet under a doctor's supervision, Sizemore says, "It's a nightmare. Look at me—for months, I gotta eat egg whites."
One-upmanship
Having given voice to the character of Lady Juliana in the animated kids' flick Quest for Camelot, due May 15, Dr. Quinn's Jane Seymour will next publish a series of children's books this fall based on her 2-year-old twin sons Kristopher and John. But the toddlers won't be making big names for themselves. "The characters are called This One and That One because when the boys were in my tummy, my doctors used to call them that," says Seymour, 47, who is married to actor-director James Keach. "And they were born with us saying, 'This One has more hair than That One.' " And now that they've reached the terrible 2's, Seymour adds with a laugh, "We always say, 'This One went that way. I'll go get him. You take That One.' "
Role playing
"I've worked for a tabloid [on NBC's The Naked Truth]; here I'm a TV anchor—in my next part, I'll have my own radio show," says Téa Leoni when asked about her latest role, in the new disaster flick Deep Impact. But don't expect the actress to costar with hubby David Duchovny any time soon. "Not until we're ready to do Mr. and Mrs. Bridge," says Leoni, 32, of the 1990 husband-wife film that husband and wife Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward made in their sixties. When it comes to marriage, she says, "I'd like to keep that side of our life pristine. But gosh, we'd have fun. I've said it often enough that I'd like to make a movie where I get the guy. Of all the guys I could get, David would be the best."
My tummy doth protest
Having appeared onscreen in 1996's William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet, Paul Rudd feels prepped to costar this summer with Helen Hunt and Kyra Sedgwick in a New York City theatrical production of the bard's Twelfth Night. So why do so many movie actors return to the stage? "There's instant gratification," says Rudd, 29, now costarring with Jennifer Aniston in The Object of My Affection. "Actors tend to be fairly self-obsessed. [They need] that immediate pat on the back from an early age, and theater is the only place you can really feel that." But Rudd, who will play Orsino, must contend with his stage fright. "I'm walking on and starting the play," he says. "If I really give that a thought, I might throw up."
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!
