People Top 5

Courteney Cox's 'Family Matter' Halts Cougar Town Filming

Production is temporarily suspended while the actress deals with the undisclosed issue

Jennifer Lopez: I Meant to Trip at AMAs | Jennifer Lopez

2 Jennifer Lopez: I Meant to Trip at AMAs

A-Rod Plants a Smooch On Kate Hudson at the AMAs | Kate Hudson

3 A-Rod Plants a Smooch On Kate Hudson at the AMAs

Jon & Kate's Divorce Could Be Finalized by Year's End | Jon Gosselin

4 Jon & Kate's Divorce Could Be Finalized by Year's End

5 Source: Kate and Jon Gosselin Finished Fighting Over the Kids

LAST UPDATE: Tuesday November 24, 2009 04:10AM EST

PEOPLE Top 5 are the most-viewed stories on the site over the past three days, updated every 60 minutes

December 03, 2001
Vol. 56
No. 23

Insider

By Tom Cunneff

Seeing Michael Jackson reunited with his five brothers on the singer's Nov. 13 TV concert, it was easy to tell how much lighter his skin has become over the years compared to his siblings'. Offscreen, the contrast is even greater. I hear that Jackson, who has vitiligo, a skin condition that causes the loss of pigmentation, had himself made digitally darker for the telecast with a visual-effects device called the Henry machine. It's an expensive and time-consuming process that is done frame by frame. With Jackson appearing in over half of the two-hour special, that's more than 100,000 frames. But he had plenty of time since the show was taped in September. CBS and Jackson's rep had no comment.

Actress Angelina Jolie, a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, just returned from another refugee mission, and for the first time husband Billy Bob Thornton joined her. The couple spent 10 days in Cambodia, where they started construction on two schools and helped initiate a landmine removal program. But I'm told the same number of people who went over also came back; in other words, they didn't adopt a baby as they've been contemplating.

L.A.-based TV producer Tom Werner (That '70s Show) has the love of his life back East: Katie Couric. He might be getting another very soon. Couric's steady of more than a year is heading a group that will submit a bid, some-where in the $300 million range, to buy the Boston Red Sox in December. Werner, a Harvard grad who grew up in New York City, is a die-hard baseball fan. He was majority owner of the San Diego Padres in the early 1990s. Alas, even if he has the winning bid, it won't mean a move to the East Coast for Werner, I'm told.

Poor Benjamin Bratt. First he and Julia Roberts broke up, and now he's taking handouts. While filming a scene in New York City for Piñero, a biopic about the troubled Puerto Rican poet-playwright Miguel Piñero, due Dec. 14, Bratt had a few minutes to spare while the crew was setting up in front of St. Vincent's Hospital. Looking unrecognizable in dirty, tattered clothing and a beard, Bratt sat down on the sidewalk outside the emergency room while muttering to himself to stay in character. A kind New Yorker stopped and handed him a quarter. Said a surprised Bratt: "Thank you."

Lara Flynn Boyle showed up at L.A.'s Viper Room recently to support her Practice costar Marla Sokoloff, who was performing with her band Smitten. Boyle's support, though, took an odd fashion turn backstage before the show. "This isn't working for me," Boyle announced, surveying Sokoloff's T-shirt. "You need to sex this up a bit." She then ripped the shirt so far past Sokoloff's acceptable cleavage range that the aspiring rocker had to use a safety pin to hold it together. Later she cheerfully apologized onstage for being so risqué and pointed out the culprit.