So how did Paul Reubens, the actor formerly known as Pee-wee Herman, get along with the other boys and girls on the set of the superhero comedy Mystery Men? Just swell, as long as they didn't do any Pee-wee imitations. "That was forbidden," says William H. Macy, who plays the bad-guy basher the Shoveler. "Everyone does Pee-wee all the time, so we had to be on good behavior. But three-quarters of the way through, someone slipped out a Pee-wee laugh, and then the cat was out of the bag, so once or twice [Reubens] did a couple of Pee-wee things." Even Macy, 49, was a bit starstruck. "I own the entire Pee-wee [video] collection," he says, "so it was thrilling to get to hang out with him. He's gotta sign my collection someday."
The Cable Gal
Although she costars in two HBO dramas, The Sopranos and Oz, Edie Falco laughs at the suggestion that she should be entitled to a free subscription to the cable network. "I was never much of a cable person until I started working on these two shows," says Falco, 36, who is up for best actress in a drama at next month's Emmys for her role as Carmela Soprano. "Then I thought I should probably watch them occasionally, so I finally got HBO." Will Falco be squeezing any more work for the network into her schedule? "I was thinking if they could find some room for me on Arli$$, I would be a happy person," she says.
Buns of Steel
Halle Berry, who plays the title role in the HBO biopic Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, premiering Aug. 21, plans to write a book about her own life. "I'm really too young for an autobiography," says Berry, 33, "so it will be more of a self-help book about the five women who mothered and validated me." In the meantime, Berry is getting pumped for her role as Storm in The X-Men, a movie version of the Marvel comic book. "I went on an exercise binge to play Dorothy Dandridge, but it's been nearly a year since I went to the gym," she says. "Now I'll go back, because if I'm going to play a superhero, I have to have super glutes."
An Affair to Remake
Signing on to The Thomas Crown Affair felt like a risky proposition to Pierce Brosnan. "You have to be rather bold to remake a Steve McQueen classic," says Brosnan, 47, who first saw the 1968 original when he was 15. "That was my introduction to the movies, and I left the theater wanting to be Steve McQueen. He was the ultimate in cool." But these days, so is Brosnan, who returns to his role as ultrasuave agent James Bond in his third 007 flick, The World Is Not Enough, due in November. "It's a great title," he says. "I've actually loved all our titles, especially Tomorrow Never Dies, which [was originally] Tomorrow Never Lies, but then there was a print error. Somehow it got changed around, and the studio said, 'Death! Destruction! We love it!' "
Eyes Wide Open
"My life so far has been pretty smashing," says Malcolm McDowell, 56, who costars with Colin Firth and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio in the drama My Life So Far. But the actor, who has appeared in some 63 films, still receives the most notice for his role in Stanley Kubrick's controversial 1971 movie, A Clockwork Orange. Recently, he says, "they had a screening of Clockwork at the Playboy Mansion. The funny thing is, Hugh [Hefner] and his friends had questions after the film, and somehow they got my number and faxed them. Of course, everyone always asks how many takes it took for the eyelid-lock scene"—in which his character's eyes are forced open to watch violent videos. A sly McDowell will only say, "I actually scratched my cornea during that scene. But I didn't care. I was working for a great man."
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!
