People talk 10B

Harrison remembered

Associated Press

LOS ANGELES -- A small crowd gathered Friday at the Beatles' star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame to mark the first anniversary of George Harrison's death.

Flowers decorated the sidewalk star and a violin soloist played "Something" and "Here Comes the Sun."

Harrison died of cancer on Nov. 29, 2001, at age 58.

Longtime peace activist Jerry Rubin said the memorial was marked by sadness as well as "a celebration of George's life and his ongoing promotion of peace and love throughout the planet."

Rubin said the memorial marked "the beginning of something called Ten Days of Peace for John and George."

Former Beatle John Lennon was shot to death by a deranged fan in New York City on Dec. 8, 1980. That anniversary will be marked next month with a memorial at Lennon's Walk of Fame star.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Rosie O'Donnell's girlfriend has given birth to a baby girl.

Kelli Carpenter, the comedian and former talk show host's longtime partner, gave birth to Vivienne Rose O'Donnell Friday at an undisclosed New York hospital, O'Donnell spokeswoman Cindi Berger said Saturday.

"Mothers and baby are just great," Berger said.

The baby weighed 6 pounds, 6 ounces and is 19 inches long, Berger said.

Carpenter and O'Donnell named the baby Vivienne after the main character in the book "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood," and Rose after O'Donnell's mother, Roseanne, Berger said.

O'Donnell has adopted three children -- Parker, 7, Chelsea, 5, and Blake, 3. This is 35-year-old Carpenter's first child. Berger would not say whether O'Donnell was formally adopting Vivienne Rose.

O'Donnell ended her syndicated talk show in May, and four months later left Rosie magazine, saying the publishers had stripped her of editorial control. Publishers Gruner + Jahr and O'Donnell are suing each other over the magazine's demise.

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NEW YORK (AP) -- Actor Federico Castellucio had a successful career as a painter before landing a role in the hit TV series "The Sopranos." It shows when he talks about how he became interested in joining the show.

"I saw the pilot (in 1999) and I was blown away. It had all the elements of something great, like a well-composed painting," Castellucio told Newsweek magazine in an interview posted Friday on its Web site.

Castellucio's "modern renaissance" style paintings have been exhibited in galleries around the world, but it has been playing henchman Fiorio Giunta that has made his face recognized on the streets.

"It's harder to get from point A to point B because you're talking to people -- strangers on the street -- you wouldn't usually be talking to," Castellucio said.

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LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Actor Michael Caine says even after 48 years in the entertainment business, with more than 130 films and television shows, poverty remains his greatest fear.

In a recent talk to members of the Screen Actors Guild, Caine said a childhood horror of returning to his poor roots drove him to make some less-than-inspired career choices. Among them, he said, were roles in "Jaws: The Revenge" and "On Deadly Ground."

"I never thought I was going to get another (movie), so I always took 'em," said Caine, 69. "If you come from a very poor family, everybody around you is poor. It's the old cliche, he's a young boy, he's got to buy his mother a house. I bought everybody a bloody house."

Caine's latest movie, "The Quiet American," is based on the 1955 Graham Greene novel about a CIA operative in Vietnam. It debuts this month.

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COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) -- Collectors are getting nostalgic as Strom Thurmond, the oldest and longest-serving U.S. senator, prepares to retire in January.

A bazaar of Thurmond-mania is on sale on the Internet -- from calendars to matchbooks to postcards -- all bearing Thurmond's likeness or signature. The senator's Washington office is reporting a steep increase in requests for autographed photos.

The market for all things Thurmond may rise further as he celebrates his 100th birthday Dec. 5 and ends his 48-year career as a senator, but experts warn against thinking the latest bric-a-brac has anything more than sentimental value.

Rare and valuable Thurmond items were rare and valuable years ago, said Brian Krapf, the Savannah lawyer who heads the Dixie Chapter of American Political Items Collectors.

"I was asked the same thing when Richard Nixon died," he said. "Demand doesn't increase."

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NEW YORK (AP) -- Robert De Niro will show his new comedy, "Analyze That," to 1,500 troops at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla., two days before the movie opens in theaters.

Before Wednesday's screening, De Niro will join Gen. Tommy Franks, head of the U.S. Central Command, in meeting with troops involved in the war on terror in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

"Analyze That" is the first in a series of screenings for military personnel planned through the Tribeca Film Institute, which De Niro co-founded with his business partner, Jane Rosenthal.

De Niro reprises his role as mob boss Paul Vitti from the 1999 hit "Analyze This." Billy Crystal also is back as Paul's neurotic therapist, Ben Sobel. The movie comes out Friday in theaters nationwide.

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On the Net:

http://www.tribecafilm.com

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NEW YORK (AP) -- When Courteney Cox Arquette went back to being just Courteney Cox, people wondered whether something was wrong with her marriage to actor David Arquette.

But the "Friends" co-star says she started going by her maiden name in some situations out of respect for her father, Richard Cox, who died of cancer last year.

"When I was a kid, I wanted to change my name so badly because I didn't like it. Now that my dad's gone, I don't want to lose it," the 38-year-old actress tells InStyle magazine for its December issue.

"It's not an issue for David. I am an Arquette, but I'm also a Cox. My Social Security card says Courteney Cox Arquette. And when we have children they will not be Cox-Arquettes, they will be Arquettes."

Cox met Arquette, 31, on the 1996 movie "Scream," but they didn't start dating until the following year, when they made "Scream 2." They married in June 1999.

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LONDON (AP) -- The Duchess of York visited her father Friday in the hospital where he was taken over the weekend after he collapsed.

Maj. Ronald Ferguson, 71, who has prostate cancer, is receiving treatment at Basingstoke General Hospital in Hampshire, west of London. Details of his condition were not released.

Ferguson, former polo manager for Prince Charles, was first diagnosed with cancer six years ago. He received successful treatment, but the disease returned last year.

The duchess, the former Sarah Ferguson, is divorced from Prince Andrew, second son of Queen Elizabeth II. They have two daughters.

The duchess' mother, Susan Barrantes, was divorced from Ferguson in 1974. She was killed in a 1998 car crash in Argentina, where she had lived with her second husband, Argentine polo player Hector Barrantes.

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NEW YORK (AP) -- Dermot Mulroney is not a "mullethead," but he plays one in "About Schmidt."

In the dark comedy, written and directed by Alexander Payne ("Election"), Mulroney co-stars as Randall Hertzel, a waterbed salesman who's balding but wears the hair he has left in a long, stringy mullet, which he usually pulls back in a ponytail.

"I've still got a full head of it somehow," the 39-year-old actor tells W magazine for its December issue. He takes off his baseball cap and yanks on his brown hair to prove it's real.

"I just gave it up to the mullet," Mulroney says of his on-screen transformation. "Every day I had to shave my pate, then attach a balding wig and then the extensions."

"About Schmidt," starring Jack Nicholson, Hope Davis and Kathy Bates, opens in New York and Los Angeles on Dec. 13, and in other cities in the following weeks.

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