Grey's Anatomy star Katherine Heigl celebrates her 31st birthday today. She's been seen regularly in big-screen fare such as Knocked Up and The Ugly Truth, and she'll appear in Killers (with Ashton Kutcher) and Life As We Know It (co-starring Josh Duhamel) next year. Tom Hanks' son, Colin Hanks, turns 32 today. He'll be seen opposite Patrick Wilson in Barry Munday. Character actor Garret Dillahunt, who can be seen later this month in The Road, is 45, and former Star Trek: The Next Generation star Denise Crosby turns 52.
You only get a hint of Emily Procter’s North Carolina accent when she plays Calleigh Duquesne on the hit show CSI: Miami (listen it for tonight on CBS), but her Southern charm becomes much more pronounced when you get her talking about disembodied limbs, her alma mater and her fledgling interior decorating business off the set of her hit TV show. Our Brian Truitt found that out recently when he talked with the spunky 41-year-old actress for an item on my Who’s News page this past weekend. Read below for more of their conversation.
Photos courtesy of CBS
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Miley Cyrus, aka Disney’s identity-changing Hannah Montana, is one step closer to 18 today. The pop star will no doubt be throwing a Party in the U.S.A. as she celebrates turning 17. Fellow Disney star Lucas Grabeel, of the High School Musical movies, is 25. Robin Roberts, cancer survivor and anchor for ABC's Good Morning America, is 49. And musician Bruce Hornsby, who is currently touring the country like he has for decades, turns 55.
With network shows going on hiatus till the new year, the holiday season is a ripe time to watch series that you haven’t caught up on yet or have missed entirely. Our Brian Truitt thinks the one show you should be watching if you’re not already is Supernatural, the CW horror drama starring Jared Padalecki (pictured, on left) and Jensen Ackles as a pair of demon-hunting brothers currently trying to stop Lucifer and the Apocalypse in the show’s fifth season. If you want to check out the DVDs over your holiday break, Brian says the past four seasons are as witty, emotional and well-written as this year, which has taken the show’s mythology to a whole new level. Yesterday, Brian talked with Supernatural creator Eric Kripke, and while we’ll have more from the interview online and on my Who’s News page around when the show returns Jan. 21, the two talked a little about the biblical goings-on that has made this season of Supernatural a must-see.
Photo courtesy of the CW
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Read my Who's News column this week and you will find out what kind of car it is that Simon Baker's Patrick Jane drives on CBS' The Mentalist. Hint: It had a previous life in the 2008 movie Speed Racer. No, I'm not going to give it away here. Click to the column where a reader's curiosity is satisfied.
Once there, you'll also read:
• For the second time about NCIS' Cote de Pablo (we featured her two years ago as well). I get questions about all the NCIS cast members, but this year there seems to be an explosion of interest in de Pablo and her castmate, Pauley Perrette, who plays the overly tattooed brilliant scientist. (Perrette, too, has been featured before.)
• The anti-Jon & Kate. Meet a happier couple raising sextuplets, Jenny and Bryan Masche. They are on the WE channel and those are their kids, left. I love Jenny's quote: "Our biggest thing is you cannot quit real life." Right. Particularly if you are on a reality show!
• Oprah's BFF Gayle King. Gayle is editor-at-large of O Magazine and has been doing publicity for the magazine's fifth compilation of the year's best articles. This year the book is called Dream Big.
• Emily Procter and Matt Bomer, two sexy young crime show actors. I wrote about White Collar's Bomer earlier in the week; Brian Truitt, who interviewed CSI: Miami's Procter, will give us more from that interview in Monday's blog.
Don't forget you can leave me your questions on newsmakers and celebrities right here.
Today's talk about Oprah Winfrey's decision to wrap up her syndicated talk show in 2011 is bringing back memories of a conversation I had with her 11 years ago on that very topic. We were in her elegant but modest office at Harpo Studios in Chicago, steps away from where her shows are taped, and though she was game to talk about anything, it was her coming movie Beloved most on her mind. She confessed that when she went to Philadelphia to shoot that movie in 1997 — she produced and starred as a haunted former slave — she had decided to quit the talk show. She was tired of talk, she told me, and wanted to focus on films. But midway through the three-month shoot she had an epiphany. After an agonizing scene with her co-star Danny Glover, she said, "I thought, 'How dare
I think that I could be tired? Who am I to even say the words 'I am
tired'? I thought, 'You come from a people with no voice, no money, no
power, no vision, no vehicle for themselves and their children. You've
been given this.' " So she decided to continue and it was that fall of 1998 that she abandoned the sensational and announced her new TV mission — helping people improve their lives.
In that same interview, she said something I remember often: "Everything is about imagery. We're people who respond
to imagery. You need to see something different so you can feel
something different." Oprah is more of a national institution now than she was that summer she decided that she was meant to use her voice and vision on television. She has spent all of her adult life on TV. And while I understand that — as she said — "it feels right in my bones and it feels right in my spirit," to wrap it up after 25 years, the woman now has her own network. I think it's a pretty safe bet that she'll be back.
Photo courtesy of Harpo
Small-screen funnyman Joel McHale celebrates his 38th birthday today. He pulls double duty on a weekly basis, starring on NBC's freshman sitcom Community and hosting the E! network's The Soup. Bo Derek, who may forever be remembered as the beach babe with cornrows in the 1979 movie 10, turns 53. Sean Young, of Blade Runner and No Way Out fame, is 50. Stargate Universe's Ming-Na is 46, AFI singer Davey Havok turns 34, and former New York Jet sack machine Mark Gastineau is 53 today.
The Twilight sequel New Moon finally arrives in theaters at midnight tonight, which is apropos considering all the vampires and werewolves running around. Of course, a few monsters won’t keep the Twilight faithful who adore the romance in Stephenie Meyer’s book series from storming cineplexes this weekend. Our Brian Truitt (who wrote our recent vampires cover story featuring an interview with star Robert Pattinson) went to a packed screening last night for the sequel, and came back suitably impressed. Read below for his review, and check out a clip from New Moon featuring Pattinson.
Photos courtesy of Summit Entertainment
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Interview veteran Larry King, who recently suffered an awkward moment with former Miss California Carrie Prejean on his live CNN show last week, celebrates his 76th birthday today. (Watch a video of the trainwreck below.) Oscar winner Jodie Foster, who voiced Maggie Simpson in an episode of The Simpsons earlier this year, is 47. Her next project is one she's directing, The Beaver, starring Mel Gibson and Star Trek's Anton Yelchin. Screen sweetheart Meg Ryan, who stars in the holiday comedy Serious Moonlight with Timothy Hutton and Kristen Bell, turns 48. And media mogul Ted Turner is 71.
Owen Wilson celebrates his 41st birthday today. The actor has bounced back from a suicide attempt two years ago to star in the recent comedies Marley & Me (with Jennifer Aniston) and Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (opposite Ben Stiller). You can hear him these days as a voice in Wes Anderson's animated Fantastic Mr. Fox, in theaters now. New York fashionista Chloe Sevigny, now starring on HBO’s Big Love, turns 35; while Peta Wilson, best known for her TV role as Nikita in the show La Femme Nikita, is 39.
