The security around Manhattan's Times Square on New Year's Eve, billed as exceedingly tight, didn't prevent comic actor Kevin Meaney from talking his way through a number of security checkpoints and getting thisclose to ABC anchor Peter Jennings before a security officer threatened to arrest him for criminal trespassing. The ex-Saturday Night Live performer was playing at Caroline's Comedy Club that evening and, perhaps not showing very good judgment, decided to walk through Times Square hoping to get interviewed by Jennings. Though police stopped him a few times, he made it all the way into ABC's new studio simply by saying he was Kevin Meaney. He claims he even managed to get wired up with a microphone, which comedian Al Franken handed over when he got off the air. Meaney was finally stopped when a group of stone-faced producers realized that he was not scheduled to appear.
Lolita Davidovich (Play It to the Bone) is no fan of ABC's hit show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. When she was well into a long and difficult labor with her first baby—dad is director Ron Shelton (Tin Cup)—last November, her friends and family, tired of cooling their heels in the hospital waiting room, moved into her room, where they turned on the TV and were soon swept up in the Millionaire game show. According to Davidovich, her family—as well as the doctors and nurses—became transfixed. "Everybody's shouting answers and having a blast while I'm writhing in pain, hooked up to IVs in the back of the room, completely ignored and totally freaked out by the music of the show," she says. All went well though, as they welcomed their new daughter, Valentina, the next day. But Davidovich won't soon be hopping on the Millionaire bandwagon: "I won't ever watch it again."
A spokesman for the Actors Studio Seminars, a lecture series at Manhattan's New School that has featured such speakers as Tom Hanks and Kevin Spacey, says that Nicole Kidman has an open invitation to appear even though she has been scheduled twice and canceled both times. She bailed out of her first appearance at the last minute due to a bronchial infection. The actress rescheduled a week later but again had to cancel after Stanley Kubrick's death last year. An Actors Studio rep says Kidman had good excuses and would be welcomed back anytime.
Singer Barry Manilow had a unexpected experience on the set of his first feature film, Unconditional Love, in which he has a cameo as himself. As he prepared to do his first scene, director P.J. Hogan (My Best Friend's Wedding) stopped everything and announced, "Ladies and gentlemen, Barry Manilow was nominated for a Grammy this morning." The nomination, for best traditional pop vocal performance, is the crooner's first in 14 years (he has already taken home a Tony, a Grammy and a couple of Emmys).
Fast Takes: An ABC insider confirms that the reported relationship between ex-Clinton aide-turned-TV commentator George Stephanopoulos and actress Bebe Neuwirth (Chicago) exists and that the couple are "hot and heavy" (read: serious)....
Sean Connery doesn't act like a celeb on the golf course. Says one prominent member of the exclusive Bel-Air Country Club, where Connery often plays: "He prefers to carry his own bag rather than pay somebody to do it. Nobody else at the club does that."
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