People news 7/12/03

Cruise beat disability thanks to Scientology

NEW YORK -- Tom Cruise said he learned to overcome his learning disability through Scientology.

"When I was about 7, I had been labeled dyslexic," he told People magazine for its July 21 issue. "I'd try to concentrate on what I was reading, then I'd get to the end of the page and have very little memory of anything I'd read. I would go blank, feel anxious, nervous, bored, frustrated, dumb."

After "Top Gun" came out in 1986, Cruise became a Scientologist and discovered the "Study Technology" the religion's founder, L. Ron Hubbard, developed in the 1960s.

"I realized I could absolutely learn anything that I wanted to learn," Cruise said.

Injury affects schedule for The White Stripes

LONDON -- The White Stripes have canceled two weekend dates in Scotland and Ireland because guitarist Jack White has broken a finger, a British representative said Friday.

White was injured Wednesday in an auto accident in his hometown of Detroit, said Colleen Maloneys of Beggars, a London firm representing the duo.

The White Stripes had been booked at two festivals this weekend: the T in the Park festival in Kinross, Scotland, and the Witnness festival in Naas, Ireland.

Actor files lawsuit claiming 'Angels' link

LOS ANGELES -- Robert Wagner is suing Sony Pictures Entertainment for half the profits from the "Charlie's Angels" movies, saying he played a role in the development deal for the 1970s TV show that inspired them.

In the Superior Court lawsuit filed Tuesday, Wagner says that he and his wife, Natalie Wood (who died in 1981), made a deal with Spelling-Goldberg Productions in 1973 to develop five television shows. One eventually became "Charlie's Angels."

The production company later was bought by Sony-owned Columbia Pictures, the studio behind the 2000 film "Charlie's Angels" and this year's sequel, "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle."

The action-adventure films, starring Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu, have grossed $125 million and $67 million at the box office, respectively.

Former adult film star says raid 'saved' her life

NEW YORK -- In her new memoir, Traci Lords recalls that her centerfold in Penthouse at age 15 was overshadowed and how an FBI raid that ended her career in adult films "saved my life."

Lords, 34, says she used a fake ID to pose for the magazine -- in the same 1984 issue with nude photos of Vanessa L. Williams, who was forced to resign her title as Miss America.

"The ID said I was 22 or 23 and of course I had a made-up name and a fake ID and the whole thing, but I look like a kid," Lords told AP Radio in an interview Thursday.

Lords, who made dozens of adult films while a teenager, remembers subsequently being happy about an FBI raid on her apartment.

"I'm really glad that they did what they did," she said.

"... ultimately, they saved my life so I'm really glad that that happened because I have no doubt in my mind that I would have ultimately ended up OD'd dead someplace and I would've been another statistic."

The actress instead got mainstream film and TV roles, most notably on Fox's "Melrose Place."

Cruise beat disability thanks to Scientology

NEW YORK -- Tom Cruise said he learned to overcome his learning disability through Scientology.

"When I was about 7, I had been labeled dyslexic," he told People magazine for its July 21 issue. "I'd try to concentrate on what I was reading, then I'd get to the end of the page and have very little memory of anything I'd read. I would go blank, feel anxious, nervous, bored, frustrated, dumb."

After "Top Gun" came out in 1986, Cruise became a Scientologist and discovered the "Study Technology" the religion's founder, L. Ron Hubbard, developed in the 1960s.

"I realized I could absolutely learn anything that I wanted to learn," Cruise said.

Now the 41-year-old actor is a founding board member of the Hollywood Education and Literacy Project, a nonprofit group that uses Hubbard's teaching techniques in a secular setting.

"I don't want people to go through what I went through," Cruise said. "I want kids to have the ability to read, to write, to understand what people are saying to them, to be able to solve life's problems."

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LOS ANGELES -- Following in the tradition of "The Osbournes," husband-and-wife pop singers Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson are letting MTV cameras record their first year of marriage.

The series "Newlyweds" is scheduled to premiere at 10:30 p.m. EDT Aug. 19, the cable channel announced Thursday.

Among the unscripted moments, Simpson burps and Lachey insists he has to watch a college basketball game.

"A lot of people are going to be able to see we're just normal people, normal newlyweds living a new kind of life together," said Lachey, a member of the boy band 98 Degrees.

Lachey, 29, and Simpson, 23, married in October.

"One of the first things that really attracted me to her years ago was she's such a free spirit and sometimes I tend to be overly analytical and somewhat anal," he said.

But Simpson said those traits come in handy around the house.

"Nick is a complete neat freak, he's the woman of the relationship, and I am a total disaster," she said. "He's very good at ironing clothes and doing laundry and cleaning toilets, stuff that he won't let me hire a housekeeper to do."

Simpson's songs include "I Wanna Love You Forever." She also wrote the book "I Do: Achieving Your Dream Wedding," which came out last month. Lachey's band is taking a break from recording and touring, but he said 98 Degrees hasn't broken up.

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LOS ANGELES -- Bruce McGill recalls that some of John Belushi's funniest moments in the 1978 college fraternity comedy "Animal House" didn't amuse the late comic at all.

In one scene, Belushi smashes a guitar. But it didn't break on the first take.

"He went ballistic," said McGill, who played D-Day. "He was furious because he hated to look inept physically. He thought of himself as a physical guy."

Another scene of the fraternity members bringing a horse into the dean's office also didn't go as planned for Belushi, but director John Landis loved it.

"He actually slipped for real on the wet grass and was furious that he had slipped," said James Widdoes, who played Hoover. "Landis yelled, 'Keep going! Keep going!' and that's when he got up and did three little hops."

"My biggest laugh in the movie is when he slips. It killed me," McGill said. "John was a force of nature."

Producer Ivan Reitman and actors Tim Matheson (Otter), Stephen Furst (Flounder), Martha Smith (Babs) and Mark Metcalf (Neidermeyer) recently reunited to promote "Go Inside: Animal House," a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the movie. The TNN special airs in August.

The remaining cast members have stayed in touch during the last 25 years, and Matheson, McGill and Widdoes still get together to play golf.

"The experience was one of tremendous fun and fraternity," Matheson said. "It was really an exceptional experience."

McGill adds, "Let's not overlook the great feeling of being in a bona fide class hit. You know, they aren't all."

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NEW YORK (AP) -- Danny Glover will return to the International Black Panther Film Festival as its honorary chairman.

The festival, now in its third year, is scheduled for July 31-Aug. 4 in Harlem. Among the films being shown is 2000's "Lumumba," a political thriller about Patrice Lumumba, the Congo's first elected prime minister who was slain in 1961 during the tumultuous months after Congolese independence from Belgium.

"The festival emphasizes films that convey the spirit of resistance that the youthful Black Panthers and the Young Lords symbolized," said Kathleen Cleaver, who founded the festival in 1999 with fellow Black Panther member Jamal Joseph.

Glover, 55, was the festival's honorary chairman in 2001. He's starred in the "Lethal Weapon" movies, "The Color Purple" and "Beloved," and is now on Broadway in a revival of "Master Harold ... and the boys."

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On the Net:

http://www.pantherfilmfest.com