Macaulay Culkin and Rachel Miner head for a first anniversary
Focus
A lot has happened to Macaulay Culkin and Rachel Miner since they became husband and wife a year ago. For starters, they're now old enough to vote. And, should they feel so inclined, they can try their luck purchasing a lottery ticket in Connecticut or Massachusetts. A champagne celebration of their first anniversary—June 21—is still out of the question, though, at least if they want to buy the bubbly themselves.
As happens with many newlyweds—not just those who marry at 17—the first year was not without bumps. "They have had a rough time and separated briefly to give them time to work things out," says Rev. David Thompson, who performed their wedding at the New Preston Stone Church in New Preston, Conn. Today, though, "they're very happy together," says a friend of Rachel's and TV director Peter Miner's, Rachel's father. "They moved into a nice place of their own on Manhattan's Upper West Side and go up to Connecticut on weekends to visit Mac's aunt. Oh, sure, they have the normal fights any married couple has, but they are still very much in love."
And, after a quiet stretch, Culkin is beginning to focus on his career (his most recent film was 1994's Richie Rich). The actor recently hired a new agent and is looking at scripts. "There are a lot of projects Macaulay's considering," says his spokesman Paul Bloch. One possibility: The Diary of a Mad Freshman, an independent film about a college student. That role is one that Thompson wishes both Culkin and Miner, an actress who starred last year on Broadway in The Diary of Anne Frank, would take very seriously indeed. "What I'd really like to see both Macaulay and Rachel do," says the minister, "is go to college and get an education."
Sing It Again, Julie
On Broadway, it was a big year for revivals, from Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, first produced in 1949, to Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh (1946). But the most dramatic revival on display wasn't a play: It was Julie Andrews's voice. Only last November there was talk that Andrews, 63, recovering from surgery to remove noncancerous throat nodules that had plagued her two-year Broadway run in Victor/Victoria, might never sing again. "If you heard [her voice]," her husband, Blake Edwards, said at the time, "you'd weep." But on the stage of Manhattan's Gershwin Theater, where Andrews sang a duet of Stephen Sondheim songs with Carol Burnett, things were supercalifragilistic-expialidocious and more. "She looked gorgeous and sang beautifully," says Anne Runolfsson, Andrews's understudy in Victor/Victoria. The Tony telecast did less beautifully. With last year's host, Rosie O'Donnell, absent due to family commitments, ratings slipped 23 percent. The revival all Broadway is probably hoping for in the year 2000: Rosie, at the Tonys.
Just Married
Cruel Intentions? Not when Ryan Phillippe, 24, and Reese Witherspoon, 23—costars in that film—wed on June 5 in Charleston, S.C.
Morning Blend
Bacon and eggs. Coffee and cream. Gumbel and...well, CBS is still not sure which breakfast partner will click with Bryant Gumbel (below) on its new morning show, slated to begin in November. Scoop sought expert opinion.
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The Sheens Talk Clean
In May of last year, fearing he was suffering a heart attack, Charlie Sheen checked himself into a Los Angeles-area hospital—and discovered that the pain was actually fallout from his daily drug habit. When his father, Martin, heard the news, Sheen senior, who had helped get his son into rehab in 1990, took the only option left: He told the authorities his son was using drugs. On June 5, both Sheens reflected on those events—Martin live, Charles on videotape—before a conference of the National Association of Drug Court Professionals in Miami Beach. The approximately 450 drug courts nationwide allow suitable offenders to be supervised closely by a judge. A year later and after nearly six months in a live-in rehab clinic, Charlie's clean and sober—and undergoing regular drug tests—while shooting a movie with his brother Emilio Estevez. "I've got my family back; I've got my friends back," he said. Martin Sheen credited the court's regimen with saving his son's life. "The best thing we can give this country," he said, "is recovery."
It's a Mod, Mod World
Granted, Austin Powers is an international man of mystery, but there's no question to whom he and his friends owe some of their fashion sense: Mary Quant, whose miniskirts and vivid palette helped set London swinging in the '60s. With Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, the Mike Myers spy-spoof, due to open this week, Scoop asked Quant, now 65 and still a successful designer, to reflect on that flower-powered era.
Why are the '60s and '60s fashions so popular again?
I think because the '60s were so optimistic. The '60s were a revolution right across in so many things. Theater, art, film, photography. It was called youthquake—it burst through, particularly with fashion. It was clothes and fashion to live in and dance in.
How daring were your designs back then?
They were thought very daring. I didn't understand why it shocked people, but there were bowler-hatted men bashing on the shop window.
Do you have a favorite memory?
Well, you know what they say. If you were there, you don't remember it.
Do you get asked to talk about the '60s a lot?
I suppose. People do seem to like it. It was such a happy and exuberant time. But I think life is more exciting today.
Do you have any of your own '60s designs at home?
No. I'm always living in the next season. Fashion is about tomorrow and change. I always want something new.
Did you catch the Austin Powers film?
I'm afraid not.
One more question. The Austin Powers movies strongly suggest that Britain, as a nation, is dentally challenged. Fair assessment or vile slander?
Americans do have beautiful teeth. That's absolutely true. Especially if they take them to Hollywood.
ON THE BLOCK
DIAL-A-MANSION
Money mattered to oil billionaire Jean Paul Getty—so, after bills revealed that guests had placed calls to faraway Australia and the United States, he installed a pay phone in the hallway of his 16th-century English mansion, Sutton Place. By contrast, the current owner, art collector Frederick Koch, had no problem opening his wallet: He spent $19 million renovating the 775-acre estate. Now Koch is asking $40 million for the Surrey property, which includes 25 public rooms and 20 cottages. The pay phone was removed. The new owner might consider reinstalling it, though, to help pay the mansion's $2.5 million annual upkeep.
- Contributors:
- Larry Sutton,
- Mike Neill,
- Liz Corcoran,
- Todd Foster,
- Bob Meadows,
- Ward Morehouse III,
- Ulrica Wihilborg,
- Margaret Wright.
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!
