DOWN AND DIRTY
Helena Bonham Carter has a string of art-house hits on her résumé, including the current film version of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, but the English actress isn't all about beaded gowns and iambic pentameter. "People have this rarefied vision of who I am," says Bonham Carter, 30. "Everyone seems to think I'm very ladylike. That I'm very cultured and intelligent." And the truth, forsooth? "I drink a lot of Diet Coke and belch. I've been known to use the F-word. I've told a few dirty jokes. I arm-wrestle." Bonham Carter says that her next role, playing "a snot-nosed whore" in Margaret's Museum, a drama due next year, was more to her liking. "The character is closer to the real me because I dress grungy," she says. "I could have worn my own clothes."

SOUVENIR HUNTER
Glenn Close is either a pack rat or a sentimentalist, or maybe both. "I have all my costumes from all my films down to the jeans from The Big Chill," she says, "because if I'm able to fit into them ever again, I'll have nirvana." Close saved the campy couture she wears as Cruella DeVil in her current box office smash, 101 Dalmatians, but isn't likely to slip back into the spiky 4½-inch heels in which she stalked those innocent pups. "I was in deep pain most of the time," says Close, 49. Perhaps her oddest bit of memorabilia is the knife she used in 1987's Fatal Attraction. "It's only a cardboard knife," she says. "In the close-ups, when I was near Michael Douglas's face, they wouldn't allow me to have a real knife. It's hanging near my kitchen pantry. People always say, 'Is that what I think it is?' From the start, they know not to mess with me."

VOCALLY CHALLENGED
Sylvester Stallone is a happy guy these days, and not just because he thinks he has a winner in his latest thriller, Daylight. Offscreen, he and fiancée Jennifer Flavin are feeling hopeful about the health of their 3-month-old daughter Sophia Rose, who underwent successful open-heart surgery on Nov. 12. "She is doing just great, she's very happy and healthy, but I still call home about 10 times a day," says Stallone, 50. "My family's getting so sick of me. They don't even say hello anymore. I just hear, 'She ate four ounces. Thanks. Click.' We've cut out all the formalities." The joys of fatherhood for Sly do not, however, extend to nappy changing. "I'm not a diapers guy," he says. "But I do sing lullabies, which always puts my daughter to sleep. My voice is just so horrible that she'd rather sleep than listen to it."

BUGS OVER RUGS
"Every actor would like a role like Samson, but I was never in that position because I was never in that body," says Dennis Hopper, 60, who plays a Philistine general in TNT's new biblical epic, Samson and Delilah, airing this month. "But I wear a skirt while riding a horse, which is always a lot of fun." Hopper missed American food during the six weeks he spent filming Samson in Morocco—"Couscous can become boring after a certain point"—but added to his already extensive rug collection while boning up on his bargaining skills. "To buy a rug is an event, and I bought 17 of them," he says. "It's like a 15-round fight where you break for tea, then return for another round. But I got some good deals." How does Hopper display his prized possessions? "Oh, I just pile 'em in corners."