The diamond stud earrings Ben Affleck gave Gwyneth Paltrow while filming the upcoming romantic drama Bounce weren't the only evidence of his generosity. At the start of production in L.A., the first assistant director Michele Panelli-Venetis mentioned to Affleck her lifelong love of vintage Mustangs. He told her that he had one, a red 1966 model with a pony interior (worth at least $18,000) that he was thinking of selling. "We didn't have another discussion about it until the last day of filming," she recalls. "His assistant came up and said, 'Ben would like to see you in his trailer.' I walked in, and Ben handed me the keys to the Mustang along with this lovely letter. He just felt I'd appreciate the car more than he did. I couldn't believe it. I shook for two hours. He's on top of the world and doesn't mind sharing it."

Nepotism may be rampant in Hollywood, but the new Kevin Bacon film, My Dog Skip, due Jan. 12, takes it to a new level—or species. In the tearjerker coming-of-age drama about a boy and his dog in the 1940s, the titular star is a 3-year-old Jack Russell terrier named Enzo who is making his film debut. It's a role he was born to play. That's because his father is none other than Moose, the pesky Eddie on the NBC sitcom Frasier.

There's a lot that goes into making a new TV show a hit—including decorating. I hear Rob Lowe, who plays a communications director on NBC's The West Wing, had a feng shui expert renovate his studio trailer. Now everything in his personal dressing room on wheels adheres to the centuries-old Chinese principles of harmony and balance. The furniture and mirrors are positioned carefully, using the right colors to achieve good chi, or energy flow. It must be working. Not only is the show a critical and Nielsen favorite, but Lowe also just got nominated for a Golden Globe.

Oliver Stone's Any Given Sunday may be about football, but the real game during filming in Florida earlier this year was golf. Dennis Quaid, who plays an ailing quarterback, would rise at 4:30 a.m. to hit the links with James Woods, who plays a team doctor, and pro football Hall-of-Famers Lawrence Taylor and Jim Brown, who also have parts in the film. "My wallet got kind of thinned out," says Quaid, adding that the movie's star, Al Pacino, never joined them: "He doesn't come out in the daylight too much."

Fast takes:

Edward Norton looked cozy with his lady Salma Hayek when the actors recently dropped by Hollywood's Café des Artistes. Norton asked the restaurant manager to change the radio station from French to Brazilian—the better to impress Hayek, perhaps? The manager was more than happy to oblige....

Donald Sutherland spent the holidays hobbling around on a cane after breaking his knee on the set of Space Cowboys, a sci-fi flick directed by and starring Clint Eastwood. Playing an astronaut alongside Eastwood, Tommy Lee Jones and James Garner, Sutherland suffered the injury, which required surgery, after stepping into a hole. The culprit was a bulky spacesuit that obscured his vision.

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