We hear Niki Taylor is about to get her wish to go home. According to a source close to the model, she hopes to leave the private rehabilitation center in Atlanta where she has spent the last three weeks (following two months of intensive care at local Grady Memorial Hospital) within the next few days. Private nurses will attend to Taylor inside her gated property in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Taylor, 26, suffered severe liver damage, requiring at least four operations, when the car she was riding in crashed into a utility pole on April 29 in Atlanta.

Laura Dern is honing her nesting instincts now that she and her boyfriend, blues rocker Ben Harper, are expecting a baby in the fall. The actress, who met Harper last October at one of his gigs in New York City, has been camping out with family and friends, including Meg Ryan, while the musician is on the road. But Dern recently bought a house in Los Angeles that the couple will move into as soon as remodeling is completed in the next week or two. There are no wedding plans, but, says a rep for Dern, "Laura is in great shape, and she's really excited." Harper, who has two children from a previous marriage, can count Dern's mom, Diane Ladd, among his fans. "[The birth is] a beautiful, blessed, treasured event that I'm really looking forward to," Ladd tells me.

Will Smith sported the gloves of Muhammad Ali so seamlessly that the actor needed only one bit of artifice to play the Greatest in the just-wrapped biopic Ali. We hear makeup artists on the film, due in December, had to tape Smith's protruding ears to his head to more accurately resemble the champ. Otherwise he nailed Ali's every move and jab—as well as his poetic bombast. Sometimes Smith would even call up Ali's wife, Lonnie, and, much to her delight, chat in the brash young Ali's voice.

In Legally Blonde, Reese Witherspoon's Chihuahua Bruiser goes nuts when he sees a Taco Bell commercial with its famous Chihuahua pitchster Gidget. The scene gets a big laugh from the audience. But in truth there's no competition between the canines. Bruiser, whose real name is Moonie, and Gidget are owned by the same man, Paul Calabria of Castaic, Calif. He bought Moonie, 3, as a double for Gidget, 5, but Moonie never grew to Gidget's size.

Liv Tyler came all the way from New Zealand after finishing up work on the Lord of the Rings film trilogy to attend a fundraiser in New York City for former model Cyrinda Foxe, the ex-wife of Liv's father, Aerosmith's Steven Tyler. (Liv's mom is rock singer and ex-model Bebe Buell.) Well-wishers helped raise $20,000 for Foxe, who was diagnosed in May with brain cancer. Liv contributed a Rings press kit signed by the cast. Although Foxe aired some dirty laundry in her 1997 tell-all Dream On: Livin on the Edge with Steven Tyler & Aerosmith, the rocker came through for her. Tyler, who has paid some of Foxe's expenses, donated an electric guitar signed by Aerosmith, which went for $5,000.

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