Since winning a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination last year for As Good as It Gets, does Greg Kinnear get noticed more often in public? "I actually don't get recognized that often—unless I'm wearing sunglasses," says Kinnear, 35, who currently costars in the Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan romantic comedy You've Got Mail. "If I'm wearing sunglasses, people will say, 'Hey, I know you!' But if I'm not wearing sunglasses, I could be eating dinner with them, and they wouldn't have a clue of who I am. People think that if they put on sunglasses they've got a disguise, but what they're really saying is, 'Hey, look at me—I've got sunglasses on!' "
Wings dinged
If you're sitting next to Tim Daly on an airplane, don't joke with him about playing a pilot on Wings, which ended its run on NBC in 1997. "I can't get on a plane without someone saying to me, 'Hey, if anything happens, you could always fly the plane,' " says Daly, 42. But the actor has, in fact, prevented at least one airplane catastrophe. "I was on a flight once where we were on the runway, I was looking out the window, and the engine was on fire," he says. "I said to the flight attendant, 'Is it just me, or is the engine on fire?' " Daly, who next stars in the Stephen King-penned mini-series Storm of the Century, airing on ABC Feb. 14, 15 and 18, says he has lost his Wings for good. "Never in a million years," he says, when asked about reteaming with the sitcom's cast. "If there is one thing I loathe, it's reunion shows."
Male calling
Playing a pregnant wife who swaps personalities with her quarterback hubby (David Alan Grier) in the ABC Wonderful World of Disney movie A Saintly Switch, airing Jan. 24, Vivica A. Fox gained some insight into the male psyche before her Dec, 19 nuptials to R&B singer Christopher Harvest (known as Sixx-Nine). "I had to definitely get in touch with my male side," says Fox, 34. "It was fun for me, because I was a tomboy growing up. It was so great not to sit in the hair-and-makeup chair for two hours. For once, I didn't have to be in super shape. I didn't have to starve myself. You couldn't ask for a better role." So will the newlywed be changing her name to, say, Vivica Nine? "No, not at all," she says with a laugh. "I'm a Fox for life!"
Fiennes art
British actor Joseph Fiennes, who winneth Gwyneth Paltrow in Shakespeare in Love, says that filming their love scenes was nothing to rhapsodize about. "Oh, it's not as glamorous as one might think," says Fiennes, 28. "Let's start with the fact that Gwyneth's boyfriend, Ben Affleck, is in the movie, and he's a big guy. You don't want to get on the wrong side of Ben." But Fiennes, the younger brother of Ralph, was undaunted about playing the Bard. "In one sense he's sacred ground to so many people like academics and theatergoers," he says. "On the other hand, from the research that I did, William Shakespeare is a blank sheet. No one really knows anything about him as a man. You can profile him from the sonnets and the plays, but his take on life is a mystery. From my sense, that's great. No one can say I did it wrong."
Take 76
Shooting the World War II drama The Thin Red Line, director Terrence Malick's first film in 20 years, was a battle of wills for Nick Nolte. "I shot a scene with John Cusack maybe 10 times," says Nolte, 57, who plays Lieutenant Colonel Tall. "I said, 'Terry, I think we have it.' He said, 'Wait, didn't you tell me you once did 75 takes for James L. Brooks?' We ended up shooting that scene with me and John for the rest of the day. It went from a scripted-dialogue scene to me making up dialogue to total silence to John making up dialogue to Terry shouting dialogue at us during pauses."
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!
