Court clears magazine to show Douglas wedding shots
A London court overturned a ban on celebrity magazine Hello! publishing unauthorized wedding pictures of Hollywood stars Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones.

The London Appeal Court lifted the ban imposed by the High Court earlier this week but gave no immediate reasons for its decision.

Douglas, 56, and 31-year-old Zeta Jones sold the exclusive rights to pictures of their November 18 wedding to rival magazine OK! in a $1.41 million deal.

But rival Hello! hit the streets carrying its own ‘exclusive’ shots of the wedding and distributed 16,000 copies before the High Court ban blocked further sales of its 760,000 copies.

Douglas, Zeta Jones and OK! argued in the Appeal Court that Hello! should not be allowed to show unauthorized photos of the wedding that it bought from a picture agency.

But fans will now be able to feast their eyes on the rival picture spreads when Hello! and OK! will hit the newsstands simultaneously.

Douglas, whose credits include steamy box office hits like Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct, and Zeta Jones, raven-haired star of action hits Entrapment and Mask of Zorro, tied the knot in New York on Nov 18th.

Charlie’s Angels sign up to be Charles’ helpers
Two of the stars of the hit Hollywood movie Charlie’s Angels said they had agreed to Front a charity run by heir to the British throne Prince Charles, after being charmed by him at dinner. Actresses Lucy Liu and Drew Barrymore, in London for the royal premiere of their film, said they would be acting as ambassadors for the Prince’s Trust.

The charity, of which Charles is a patron, helps create career opportunities for young, disadvantaged people. At the film premiere in London’s Leicester Square, Liu said the Prince of Wales had asked her to help the charity during a fund-raising dinner at St James’s Palace, his London residence. “I would love to,” she said. “I think I will.”

Her co-star, Barrymore added, “I would be honoured. I want to work hard for it.” She said having dinner with Prince Charles had been “a dream”. “He was a real gentleman and charming and a great listener as well as a great conversationalist.” Cameron Diaz, the third star of Charlie’s Angels, a big screen remake of the popular 1970s television series, was unable to attend the premiere because of filming commitments.

Jessica Lange hailed for London stage triumph
Hollywood star Jessica Lange was hailed by British theater critics for her harrowing portrayal of the drug-addicted mother in Eugene O’Neill’s great classic Long Day’s Journey Into Night.

Lange is the latest big screen star to tread the boards in London’s theaterland where Nicole Kidman, Kathleen Turner, Macaulay Culkin and Kevin Spacey have all garnered rave reviews recently.

Some critics have complained that Shaftesbury Avenue — London’s answer to Broadway’s Great White Way — is being overrun by star-struck managers looking for big names.

After Lange’s performance in the harrowing and thinly disguised autobiography of O’Neill’s dysfunctional family, the Daily Telegraph sharply disagreed. “If all the imports are as good as Ms Lange, then by all means let’s stuff Shaftesbury Avenue with Tinseltown’s finest,” critic Charles Spencer concluded.


The Times hailed the play as ‘a dramatic feast’. The Evening Standard said ‘this haunting journey is a voyage of discovery’. The Guardian said Lange gave ‘a magnificently unsentimental performance’. The Daily Mail concluded: ‘She is marvelous’.

But what on earth attracts Hollywood stars to desert their luxurious trailers for poky little dressing rooms and grueling plays that run for almost four hours?
For dual Oscar winner Lange, it is the risk that attracts? “I figure, if I can’t take big chances, then why am I doing this?” she told the Times before her second London theater foray — in 1997 she played Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams.

“I don’t want to act just for the sake of being in a film this year, or something like that. You might call it brave or you might call it foolish or stupid, but it’s just the way I am.”

“I like London and I like doing theater in London. I could have done this in New York, but I thought, no, I’d rather do it in London”, said the 51-year-old actress who won Oscars for her roles in Tootsie and Blue Sky.

But what about transferring to Broadway next? She is cautious: “Yeah. Possibly, possibly. I just want to get through this and see how we do.”
And she will be missing one big celebration back home— the launch in San Francisco of her partner Sam Shepard’s latest play The Late Henry Moss with Nick Nolte, Sean Penn and Woody Harrelson heading a star-studded cast.