West Words

A waitress is suing the restaurant where she works, claiming she was penalised for turning down a date with actor Owen Wilson.
Wedding Crashers and Night At the Museum star Wilson, 41, invited Monica Mateo out for a coffee after meeting her at Cafe Habana in New York.
When she said no, she alleges her working hours were slashed.
In her federal suit in Manhattan she said manager Leslie Meenan was furious with her and said: “You know what coffee means in Hollywood, right? Don't screw this up. Owen's a good customer.”

Tennis great Chris Evert has admitted she misses her estranged husband, Greg Norman, a month after they announced their separation.
The golf legend's first wife also has him on her mind – she is chasing him for allegedly underpaying her in their divorce settlement.
Evert, 54, whose 18 Grand Slam wins include three Wimbledon titles, made her confession at the gala of her annual fund-raising tournament in Boca Raton, Florida.
Asked if she was happy she replied: “I'm happy with this event.”
After a short pause she added: “Greg is missed. I miss him. He was always a big part of this.”

The Tudors star Jonathan Rhys Meyers will take on Kevin Bacon in a new film, Whole Lotta Sole.
The comedy, being shot in Belfast next year, sees Rhys Meyers, 32, playing a thief who tries to rob a fish market.
In the process he takes Bacon, 51, hostage, and has to keep out of the way of both police and a local gangster.
The film was co-written by Terry George, who wrote the screenplays for In the Name of the Father and Hotel Rwanda.
Director Jay Russell told Entertainment Tonight: “This is a great comedy project, not like Terry's usual political fare.

Director Danny Boyle is to make a film of the true story of a mountaineer who amputated his own arm when he was trapped by a boulder for several days.
Aron Ralston, now 34, was pinned by the falling boulder on a solo canyon trip in Utah in 2003.
He had not told anyone of his plans and, assuming he would die, carved his name and date of birth on the sandstone canyon wall and videoed a farewell message to his family.
After five days, his forearm already dead, he used a blunt penknife to amputate it, then rappelled down a 65-foot cliff and walked until he was found by Dutch tourists who called for help.
The film, called 127 Hours, is due to start production the the New Year.

Actress Katie Holmes has been criticised for still bottle-feeding daughter Suri – at three-and-a-half.
Superstar Tom Cruise's wife was photographed giving the tot a bottle on the Long Island, New York set of her new film, The Romantics.
Paediatrician Jennifer Shu told Us magazine: “She should have been weaned off the bottle by the time she was one year old.
“By the time kids are nine months old they have the physical development and mouth coordination necessary to be able to drink out of a sippy cup or a cup with a straw. That development comes pretty early.”

Oscar-winning actor Morgan Freeman has settled a lawsuit over a car crash last year.
The 72-year-old Million Dollar Baby and Driving Miss Daisy star was sued by Demaris Meyer, his passenger in the rollover accident in the Mississippi Delta, who claimed he had been drinking before the crash and was negligent.
Meyer, who lives in Memphis, Tennessee, sought compensation for medical expenses, pain and suffering, lost wages, disability and property damage.
The suit claimed Freeman had been drinking at the Bayou Bend Golf and Country Club and at a fiend's house, but did not claim he was drunk.

Actress Mischa Barton is not letting the cancellation of her television series get her down.
The 23-year-old St Trinian's Star is looking for new material after the fashion drama The Beautiful Life was pulled after just two episodes.
“I'm just figuring out what my next move with be and really looking at a lot of different projects and figuring out what I want to do,” she told Us magazine.”
While she was disappointed that the show was cancelled, Barton, who made her name on The O.C., is not giving up on television to concentrate on films.

Actress Sandra Bullock has revealed she decided not to have children of her own for the sake of her stepdaughter.
Her husband, biking expert Jesse James is locked in a bitter custody dispute with his ex-wife, porn star Janine Lindemulder, over their five-year-old daughter, Sunny.
Lindemulder claims Speed and Miss Congeniality star Bullock, 45, is preventing her from seeing Sunny – and says she wants custody of the little girl because she can't have children.
But in a letter Bullock wrote to a judge before Lindemulder was sentenced on tax evasion charges she said: “I am aware that Janine has claimed many times that my desire to have Sunny was because I could not have children of my own.

Johnny Depp is in talks to co-star with Angelina Jolie in The Tourist, in the latest shake-up to affect the thriller.
The Pirates of the Caribbean star would be the third leading man, following the departure of Tom Cruise and then Sam Worthington.
Jolie herself was a replacement for Charlize Theron, who left the project last month.
The film has also lost two directors, Bharat Nalluri and Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, and Alfonso Cuaron is in early talks about taking the job.
The film is a remake of the 2005 French film Anthony Zimmer, about a woman Interpol agent who lures an American tourist to France into becoming bait for a wanted criminal who happens to be her former lover.

Pop royalty Lisa Marie Presley is selling her ranch-style house in the exclusive guarded community of Hidden Hills, west of Los Angeles.
She is asking $8.995 million for the 8,000 square foot, five-bedroom house.
It stands on more than three acres of land with orchards and also has three separate guest houses, stables, and a pool and spa with a waterfall.
Presley, 41, who has year-old twin daughters, Harper and Finley, with fourth husband Michael Lockwood, bought the house in December 1993 for $2.6 million, shortly after she inherited her father, Elvis Presley's, fortune
Her first husband, musician Danny Keough, father of her two eldest children, Danielle, 20, and Riley, 17, is believed to live in one of the guest properties.
 

Footage of La Toya Jackson cut from Sacha Baron Cohen's film Bruno in the wake of Michael Jackson's death will be included on the DVD.
In the scene an unwitting La Toya, 53, went through an excruciating interview with Cohen, believing him to be the flamboyant Austrian fashionista.
At a hilltop house in Los Angeles she was forced to perch awkwardly on a semi-naked Latino labourer who is on all fours on the floor, and to use chopsticks to eat sushi from the stomach of another nearly naked man who was wheeled into the room on a hospital trolley.
Cohen also joked about Michael Jackson's high-pitched voice and trademark white glove.

A group of would-be security guards were tricked into handing over cash thinking it would lead to a job at the Playboy Mansion.
Conmen advertised the work at Hugh Hefner's annual Halloween blowout, and told about 30 people they had to hand over $225 upfront to pay for their uniforms and security passes.
They were told to meet at a fast-food restaurant in Victorville, California, to receive their passes and be ferried to the mansion in the Los Angeles suburb of Holmby Hills.
When nobody turned up to collect them they realised they had been conned and called police.
One unemployed victim, identified only as Alex, admitted he let visions of mixing with bunnies and celebrities cloud his judgement when he handed over his cash.

Katie Holmes, who has had only one picture released since marrying Tom Cruise three years ago, is revving up her film career.
She is replacing Liv Tyler in the comedy The Romantics, and is also an executive producer. It is her first producing credit.
The Batman Begins babe, who was last seen in Mad Money, joins Anna Paquin playing a bride marrying an ex-boyfriend of Holmes' character, played by Josh Duhamel.
Other cast members are Elijah Wood, Malin Akerman, Adam Brody and Jeremy Strong, college friends who get back together for the wedding.
Filming starts this week in New York City.

Actor Kiefer Sutherland ran up a $500 bar bill in a session starting at seven in the morning.
The 24 star and members of his show's crew dropped into a bar call The Spot in San Pedro, California, after finishing an overnight shoot, and he bought drinks all round.
A bar employee told celebrity site TMZ Sutherland, 43, knocked back whisky and Coke at the bar and treated about 30 people.
When he left the bar at one o'clock – leaving a $200 tip – Sutherland, who spent 48 days in jail after his second drunk driving conviction two years ago, had a designated driver.
 

Transformers hunk Shia La Beouf is taking his new role as a money man so seriously he has made himself a small fortune.
La Beouf, 23, admits he knew nothing about Wall Street when he accepted the part of a hedge fund trader in Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps, directed by Oliver Stone.
So he used his own money to learn the ropes – and has multiplied his initial investment by nearly 15 times.
He explained: “When this film offer came and only four days before I met Oliver, I knew I didn't know a derivative bond from a shareholder and had to learn quickly.
“I walked into Charles Schwab, a brokerage house, cold, in Encino. I knew nobody there. They didn't know me.

The girlfriend of actor and director Mel Gibson has given birth to a health baby girl.
Russian musician Oksana Grigorieva was due to deliver next month, but the baby arrived on Friday and mother and daughter are already back home.
This is the eighth child, and second daughter, for Braveheart star Gibson, 53, and the second for Grigorieva, 39.
Gibson's wife of 29 years, Robyn, filed for divorce in April, shortly before he went public with his new love, but court papers revealed they actually separated three years ago, about the time of his drunk-driving arrest and infamous anti-Semitic tirade against the arresting officer.
Grigorieva has a son, Alexander, with former James Bond actor Timothy Dalton.

Singer Melanie Brown has bought a five-bedroom house in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles for about $3.15 million.
The former Scary Spice, 34, told estate agent Charmaine DeGrate, who handled the sale, she and her husband of two years, Stephen Belafonte, plan to expand their family.
Brown has two daughters, Phoenix Chi, 10, whose father is her first husband, dancer Jimmy Gulzar, and two-year-old Angel, whose father is actor Eddie Murphy.
Film producer Belafonte, 34, has a five-year-old daughter, Giselle, with ex-girlfriend Nicole Contreras.
Their new country French-style house is 8,000 square feet standing on more than half an acre of land, with a separate 1,352 building as a media centre.

Sylvester Stallone has lifted the lid on the long-awaited scene which unites him with fellow action stars Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Stallone, 61, is directing The Expendables, with a who's who cast of muscle-men, including Jason Statham, Jet Li, Mickey Rourke, Dolph Lundgren and Steve Austin.
He is also starring, playing a mean mercenary.
Now he has revealed that Schwarzenegger, 62, plays his old rival and that Willis' character has to I was choose between the two hard men for a particularly dangerous mission.
Stallone told Entertainment Weekly: “I was just looking at the dailies, saying, 'Jesus, this is amazing!'

Veteran rocker Roger Daltrey provided a shoulder to cry on when he met an American couple whose son had been diagnosed with cancer.
The co-founder of The Who spent an hour talking to Joe and Joan Vrola, from New Jersey, about their 22-year-old son, Joey.
They had no idea that Daltrey, 65, who was taking a break at the Ritz Carlton in Palm Beach, Florida, founded the Teenage Cancer Trust and were amazed at how caring he was, with Joan weeping in his arms as they spoke.
“This was probably the most therapeutic conversation we had with anyone since our son was diagnosed three years ago,” Joe Vrola told columnist Jose Lambiet.

Dallas star Larry Hagman is selling his mountaintop California ranch for $11 million.
Hagman, 78, and his wife of 55 years, Maj, have lived at the 43-acre estate in Ojai, north of Los Angeles, since it was custom built for them in 1992.
The 18,000 square foot main house has nine bedrooms and 14 bathrooms, and an open floor plan with sliding glass walls on three sides, giving views over the Pacific Ocean, mountains and valleys.
There are also two guest houses, a separate office and a heliport.
A retractable roof covers the 40-foot indoor pool and there is also an indoor grotto-style spa and an outdoor pool.
The house is designed for indoor and outdoor living to take advantage of the climate, and has solar power.