Career Opportunities
Tom Hanks may pull in $20 million per picture, but the two-time Oscar winner says that sometimes he imagines a simpler life. "There are days when I see those guys whose job it is to load up their trucks and then deliver Coca-Cola and I think, 'Now there's a job,' " says Hanks, 46, who stars with Leonardo DiCaprio in Catch Me If You Can, a globe-spanning crime caper that opens Dec. 25. "You know when you start. You know when you stop. There's something nice and regular about that."

Food for Thought
If Julianne Moore's role as a 1950s housewife in Far from Heaven leads to an Oscar nod, she'll be ready. After all, the actress has already been nominated twice. "I'm careful not to eat before," says Moore, 41, who had preshow jitters when she was up for Best Supporting Actress for 1997's Boogie Nights and Best Actress for 1999's The End of the Affair. "About two hours into the telecast, I start to think, 'Please, I need something—a dinner roll, some fruit juice.' And then after my category is over, the next thought is, 'Please don't let me wind up on a worst-dressed list.' " With motherhood on her list of credits (she has son Caleb, 4, and 7-month-old daughter Liv Helen with director Bart Freundlich), Moore has plenty on her plate, and she wouldn't have it any other way. "People complain, 'It's so hard to juggle motherhood and career.' But it's worth it," she says. "Why do you want to be sitting around having an easy day?"

Hope Floats
E.T. better watch out: Morgan Freeman is on the prowl. In Dreamcatcher, an upcoming horror flick based on Stephen King's novel about a group of buddies with telepathic powers, Freeman plays a military man who tracks extraterrestrials. "We're dealing with aliens who are sort of like Alf. I'm an Alf hunter!" says Freeman, 65. When he is on his own time, however, he prefers close encounters of the naval kind. "You know, I could get rid of the cars, my horses and my ranch, but I need to keep my boat because it's life to me," says Freeman, who sails in the Caribbean every chance he gets. "She sits there tied to the dock whispering, 'Morgan, come sail with me.' When I'm on the ocean, I feel like I could survive almost any catastrophe the world has to offer—droughts, famine, the plague, locusts, earthquakes, even an asteroid. If the asteroid didn't hit you, you would just sail right past it."

Poster Boy
Jeremy Northam admits that taking on the role of legendary Rat Pack crooner Dean Martin in the CBS biopic Martin and Lewis (airing Nov. 24) was a bit of a stretch. "My life is much less wild and much more boring," says Northam, 40, who would rather spend his free time ambling around his Norfolk, England, cottage than hanging out in trendy nightclubs. Still, having played Emma's Mr. Knightly and a movie star in Gosford Park, hasn't the British actor become a heartthrob in his own right? "I don't know what I consider myself, but it is certainly not that," says Northam, who is single. "If I think of myself being a pinup, I think of someone pinning my picture to a dartboard and throwing arrows at me."

The Trouble with Larry
On his HBO series Curb Your Enthusiasm, Seinfeld co-creator Larry David, 55, stars as an obnoxious, socially inept TV writer/producer whose spouse (played by Cheryl Hines) manages to stifle her exasperation with his boorish behavior. How close is that to David's reality? "That's his dream wife," says David's real-life partner, Laurie, 44, of her fictional counterpart. "I am so on top of him all the time. We argue a lot more." One thing Curb Your Enthusiasm does get right, she says: Larry is just as annoying at home as he is on the show. "What you see is what you get," says Laurie. Adds Larry: "I've told people I have two wives: one Jewish, one Gentile; one real, one fake. Sometimes I like to juggle those combinations around."