GHOUL TALK
'Tis the season for haunting memories of Halloweens past, so we asked a few celebs to put aside their exorcise videos and tell us how they used to spook the neighbors—or how they'll be doing it this year.
GWYNETH PALTROW: My best Halloweens have been with Mary, my best friend since kindergarten. One year we were Hubba Bubba and Bubblicious. I was Bubblicious. Another year we were a two-headed monster in a gray sweat suit. I don't know what we're gonna dress up as this year, but we're definitely going to dress up, baby!
RICHARD KIND (Spin City): It rained every year in Bucks County, Pa., where I'm from, and I always had to wear a poncho. So no matter what I was dressed as—a cowboy, a football player, Superman—I always looked like Charlie Sheen in Platoon.
ASHLEY JUDD: My sister Wynonna and I had a clown suit and a cavewoman outfit, and we recycled the same uniforms over and over again. We couldn't afford anything else.
JOHNNY GALECKI (Roseanne): I've always loved playing dress-up, but it's difficult to trick-or-treat in L.A., where the homes have steel gates and security cameras. Where I live is like Fort Knox—there's no way anybody can get in the place.
GORDON CLAPP (NYPD Blue): I grew up in a small town in New Hampshire, and one year we put ski wax on people's windows. Somebody ratted on us, so we had to go to the police station. They didn't charge us with anything, but we had to remove all the stuff that we'd done. I think that's when I decided it was my destiny to play somebody like the chief of police.
KAITLIN CULLUM, 10 (Grace Under Fire): This year, I'm gonna be an alien with my friend Saxon, and we're gonna trick-or-treat around Malibu. My costume's going to be a white unitard with a white bike helmet and bug sunglasses that look like alien eyes. We're trying to get two other people to be Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny from The X-Files.
MAUREEN MCCORMICK: My daughter Natalie, who is 7, has always been a Disney character, but this year she totally surprised me when she said, "I want to be Marcia Brady." I said, "Honey, I don't think there's a Marcia Brady costume out there," and she said, "Oh, I can just wear bell-bottoms and part my hair down the middle."
THE GRAVITY GENE
Viewers are seeing more—and also less—of Today weatherman and sidewalk correspondent Al Roker now that he hosts Remember This?, MSNBC's new thrice-weekly trivia show. Less? "I've dropped 60 pounds since March," boasts Roker, 42. Asked to divulge his current weight, he pauses, then says, "Oh, what the heck. I was at 315 and now I'm down to 255. But I'm never going to be svelte: My family has a low center of gravity." Besides, he has an image to maintain. "The weatherperson," says Roker, "should generally be the goofiest-looking person on a newscast."
SLICE OF LIFE
Jane Seymour, now in her fifth season as Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman on CBS, has the prescription for stress relief on the job: She takes her 11-month-old twins, Kristopher and John, to work. "Everyone on the set is baby-crazy," says Seymour, 45. "When people get stressed out, they'll ask my permission to take a baby for a walk and come back and say, 'Thank you! I feel so much better now.' " But the twins also grasp the concept of sitting silently. "No one believes this, but when the crew says, 'Cameras rolling!' they are absolutely quiet," says Seymour. "One of them, though, heard the assistant director say, 'Cut!' and piped up and repeated it. So now, he's got three words: 'Dada,' 'baba' and 'cut!' "
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