Hearst's Waters World

By Stephen M. Silverman

04/28/1998 at 12:00 AM EDT

Newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst, one of the few people whose pardons by former President Clinton didn't cause an uproar, will serve as the date of movie director John Waters when he hosts the Independent Spirit Awards on March 24, reports Variety. Her husband, Bernard Shaw, will also be attending. "He will be the date of photographer Greg Corman," Hearst told columnist Army Archerd. "We've decided to confuse the media." Hearst, who has already appeared in such Waters productions as "Cry Baby" and "Cecil B. Demented," is set to work for the cult filmmaker again, says Archerd, who reports that she will play a blue-collar sex addict in Baltimore. She is also slated to appear in a segment of Howard Stern's "Son of a Beach," playing, Hearst says, "a crack whore whose son is a serial killer." On Monday a more sedate Hearst may be seen on the Travel Channel's "Secrets of San Simeon," on which she will take viewers on a tour of California's Hearst Castle, which was built by her grandfather, publisher William Randolph Hearst. In the '70s, Patricia Hearst was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army, which forced her into robbing a bank. That's why Clinton pardoned her.