R&B star Usher croons tunes that make women swoon, but he admits he wasn't always so smooth when it came to the ladies. "I used to have this long Afro, and I wanted to prove how serious I was with a girl, so I cut off all my hair in front of her," says Usher, 24, who plays a cop in the Nov. 6 episode of the new Twilight Zone series, airing on UPN. "I was walking around with a bald head." Since then he has learned less drastic methods for keeping the sparks flying with his girlfriend, TLC's Rozonda "Chilli" Thomas. "We call each other up every night and we send each other little care packages too, like roses, Twizzlers, whatever it takes to keep a little fire in it," he says. "You normally do that stuff in the beginning, and here it is a year and some change later, and we still do it." Plus, he adds, "I get to keep my hair."
The Dog Days of Christmas
Getting into the Christmas spirit was no easy feat for the cast and crew of the holiday TV movie Home Alone 4, airing Nov. 3 on ABC. "We shot in Cape Town, South Africa, in August," says French Stewart, 38, who portrays the yule-time nemesis of the oft-abandoned Kevin McCallister (now played by Mike Weinberg). "We were trying to have it look like Chicago in the winter, so just keeping the sweat off you was the main thing. And it's a completely exotic place. Zebras running around, and on the side of the freeway you'll see a baboon going through somebody's car looking for candy." The former 3rd Rock from the Sun actor had one other gripe with the film: "By now this is just child neglect. But they couldn't call it Child Neglect 4. That doesn't sound as Christmassy, does it?"
A Model Role
If you want Rebecca Romijn-Stamos in your movie, don't ask her to play the shallow, gorgeous love interest. In the thriller Femme Fatale, costarring Antonio Banderas, the former model portrays a homicidal, bisexual jewel thief. "I was looking for anything that wasn't playing the perfect trophy wife, which to me is boring, boring, boring," says Romijn-Stamos, 30. "My character is unapologetically bad. It was incredible." She was less enthused about reprising her role as the blue-hued mutant Mystique in X-Men 2, due in May. "I'm stuck in all this horrible blue makeup for hours," she says of the full-body paint job required for the character. "This film will be huge, but I'm still a Smurf."
Dude Looks Like a Lady
From Matthew Perry's stints in rehab to Jennifer Aniston's marriage to what's-his-name, some Friends can't seem to avoid the gossip mill. So how has Matt LeBlanc managed to lie low? "Honestly, I've kept my nose clean and stayed out of the limelight," says LeBlanc, 35, who lives in L.A. with his fiancée, model Melissa McKnight, and her two children. "And my hobbies don't take me to bars where photos are taken." In the current comedy All the Queen's Men, LeBlanc plays a World War II secret agent who cross-dresses to go undercover. The actor found all the preening to be a drag. "Let me just say that leg shaving took me a long time, and I had to wear this device that lifted my cheekbones and gave me that eyebrow peak women naturally have." Even with all that, LeBlanc says he's still no babe as a woman. "I would say that I'm a 1," he says. "I'd come out in full drag, and the crew would say, 'Wow, Matt, you're really ugly.'"
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!
