February 16, 2004
UNDER WRAPS
Missy Elliott is a Grammy-winning artist, acclaimed producer and songwriter – even a budding reality-TV star – and although she dropped 70 lbs. recently, she isn't planning any Janet Jackson-type surprises. "I still don't have the kind of body to show it off the way lots of artists do," Elliott told us at a recent party at New York's Ace Gallery, kicking off MAC Cosmetics' Viva Glam V line. (Sales of the line, for which Elliott is a spokesperson along with Christina Aguilera, Linda Evangelista, Chloe Sevigny and Boy George, will benefit the company's AIDS fund.) "But if you got the body to do it, I guess it's cool," she added. "I don't pay attention to what (other artists) do, I just do me."

GOODBYE, MR. BIG
"Mr. Big" Chris Noth says he's sad to see Sex and the City come to an end, but it is as it should be. "I'm wistful and sad that it's over," he told us at the New York screening of his new movie, Bad Apple, premiering tonight on TNT. "But, you know, we're gypsies. We've got to move on."

CAUGHT IN THE ACT
Recently spotted:
• Mark Wahlberg, lunching at La Scala in Beverly Hills.

• Sting, dancing onstage with wife Trudie Styler during a private party at L.A. burlesque club Forty Deuce, as Antonio Banderas and Melanie Griffith cuddled on a nearby couch.

• Singer Vanessa Carlton and boyfriend Stephan Jenkins of Third Eye Blind, sipping Costa Rican liqueur Guaro during a performance by The Roots at L.A.'s Key Club.

• Former President Bill Clinton, speaking at a Columbia Law School-sponsored event honoring the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education (the landmark Supreme Court case that desegregated public schools). He received three standing ovations during his speech, which covered everything from race relations to Social Security. After being introduced by Columbia president Lee Bollinger, Clinton joked to the audience: "It's nice to be around a president without a term limit."

Reported by: OMORONKE IDOWU REEVES, LARRY WORTH, AMY GURVITZ, KWALA MANDEL and BETH PERRY

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