March 9, 2004
A MOB FOR THE SOPRANOS
A few days before Sunday's debut of The Sopranos, Robert Iler (A.J.) celebrated his 19th birthday at a lavish HBO party at New York's Radio City Music Hall. Waiters passed out Italian specialties, including marinated mozzarella, shrimp scampi, mini cannolis and espresso with shots of Sambuca. Iler's brown hair was spiked and his left earlobe sported a large diamond stud. And where was the sexy girlfriend every young TV star should have? "I'm just very happy to be single," Iler tells Daily Insider. "I don't know if I'd want to date a celebrity girl. A lot of crap comes with that, or so I've heard." Meanwhile, Iler's TV sister, Jamie-Lynn DiScala (Meadow), says the premiere party brought her a different worry: "It all of a sudden hit me that we're only gonna have one more season. Tonight is the first time I'm able to face the reality of it."

YOU'RE FIRED!
Kirstie Alley is so addicted to NBC's The Apprentice that she went straight to the top with a recent complaint. "I called Donald Trump. I don't know him," admits Alley, 53, "but I said, 'Donald, why in the heck don't you kick Omarosa off right now! She's a stone cold bitch.' She has that big smile around Donald, and behind his back, she's evil." Turns out the Donald agreed, firing Omarosa in the most recent episode. But he didn't tip his hand to Alley. "He was very diplomatic," says the actress, who plays the matriarch of a crime family in the CBS movie Family Sins, airing March 14. "And then he said, 'You have great hair.' The conversation was over right there."

A MORALITY TALE
Paul Bettany may play a priest with a dark secret in the new medieval thriller The Reckoning, but offscreen, the husband of Oscar winner Jennifer Connelly is more a glib comedian than a tortured artist. Asked by Daily Insider what it was like to work with costar Willem Dafoe, Bettany deadpans in his thick British accent, "It was very difficult... . No, he's lovely. You can see from the choices that he's made that he's sort of fearless with his career and it's something to really be admired by a young-ish actor like me." How about any lighthearted moments while filming in southern Spain? "There weren't any. It's all about morality and that's not very funny." Pause. "I had a ball." And as for Bettany's own morality? "(I'm very moral) but not in a Forrest Gump, Victorian way."

Written and reported by: MICHELLE YORK, DIANE HERBST, ANNE MARIE CRUZ, KC BAKER and MEGAN HICKERSON.

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