[IMG:L]Perhaps we should have known better than to ask Hollywood for advice. Anyone with problems to fix is too busy working them out to talk about it. Everyone else has given up on New Year’s resolutions long ago.
The adorably sarcastic Christina Ricci brought the point home most succinctly. “I actually don’t have any resolutions because I don’t believe in them,” she said. “If you’re going to do it, you would have done it already.”
The fine example of Denzel Washington is so strong that he doesn’t wait until New Year’s to resolve thing. “I haven’t thought of anything that I wouldn’t keep anyway,” Washington said.
[IMG:R]On the other hand, Jason Bateman feels he’s already resolved all his faults. “I have nothing left to fix,” Bateman said. “I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, I don’t eat carbs. Sugar I could probably cut out but my life is just incredibly grey right now, grey meaning normal, flat, vanilla. But it’s fantastic.”
For a hard partying town like Hollywood, you’d think New Year’s would be the biggest of them all. Actually, most of the stars we asked are keeping it quiet this year. Some will be working through the holidays, like Donald Trump.
[IMG:L]”I’ll be in Palm Beach, Florida at the Mar-a-Lago Club, thinking about The Apprentice,” Trump said. “And other things, too, by the way.”
His Celebrity Apprentice contenstant Gene Simons will still be in production on a new season of Family Jewels. “Our show’s someplace in Mexico shooting some stuff right through New Year’s.” Both Simmons and Trump say they do not make New Year’s resolutions. They’re pretty successful, so maybe they’re onto something.
[IMG:R]Other stars will focus on spirituality. Hulk Hogan always told kids to say their prayers. Now he’s living up to his word. “I’m just hoping and praying to be with my family and just keep a low profile,” said Hogan. “The drinking and the bell whistling, and all the crazy stuff, you reach a point where at 54 years old, [you’ve] done that a bunch of times. I’d rather just be with my family on New Year’s Eve.”
Hogan is turning to prayer for his New Year’s resolution too. “Just pray for the final result of everybody being happy and just everybody being back on track in my family.”
Marilu Henner plans to gather as much of the family as possible. “Right now I’m planning to be in New York with some of my family members because 29 of us are going there for the holidays in New York,” she said. “It’s a small group, actually. Usually we’re 38.”
[IMG:L]A self help author, resolutions are a daily business for Henner. “I write about resolutions and I think just to continue doing more of the same and take all the good things I’ve learned from The Apprentice and put them into action.” Nice plug. The Donald would be proud.
ER star Gloria Reuben will also take a spiritual reprieve. “I just know that it’s going to be a very quiet spiritual [New Year’s], that’s for sure,” she said. “Do some yoga and meditate right as midnight’s coming would be ideal. I often, as we all do, reflect on changes I would like to see with myself, with my life, with the world. So I’ll certainly make a little list of my goals for next year.”
It’s not all heavy for Reuben though. She’s gotten a taste for traveling in her latest endeavors. “I can say that I will do my best efforts to come back to Tulum as often as possible.”
Boxing legacy Laila Ali will be in the kitchen with her loved ones. “I’d like to just stay home because it’s really crazy out in the streets,” she said. “I just stay home with friends and family, and cook, and just relax, have a good time, get ready to bring in the new year. I’m pretty boring. I don’t do much.”
Perhaps the best way to spend New Year’s Eve is working the Times Square ball drop ceremony. All the hosts of this year’s New Year’s Eve shows call their gig the highlight of all past New Year’s celebrations.
[IMG:R]”I’ve been doing it since I was about 23, for about 10 years,” said NBC’s Carson Daly. “Before that, I was hanging out with friends and beer and watching MTV or watching Dick Clark when I was a kid.”
Back in his MTV days, Daly saw some wild New Years. “I remember one year, I think it was the millennium, I was on the air live for six straight hours or maybe eight hours in the final top 100 video countdown that went from seven o’clock at night ’til one o’clock in the morning or something like that. At midnight, we would always do a special performances. Billy Joe, I had never seen somebody so intoxicated. He could not get through I think ‘Time of Your Life’ and we were all just having such a good time. He ran downstairs in Times Square in his punk rock shorts. I think it was Kurt Loder was doing the news outside, just after midnight. He started to climb the scaffolding. That was a great memory. There’s been a lot of them. Marilyn Manson also tried to jump through the glass in the middle of a song, like literally threw his body into the glass.”
After his job is done at around 12:37AM on January 1 this year, Daly joked about his afterparty plans. “Well, I like to help clean up. I like to grab a broom and start sweeping some of the confetti. I’m not the type to cook a meal and not help in the kitchen after.” Seriously, there will be a celebration of gratitude. “Our first thought, literally, is our crew. The people, this intense week of work in Times Square, if you’ve seen images of it, it’s just a media circus there. A lot of our staff, a lot of them fly in, spend the week with us and work tirelessly, and we immediately think about where are we going to take all these guys once they’ve wrapped their cameras and producers and everybody and go have some champagne with our friends and family. That’s what we’re going to do this year.”
[IMG:L]Ryan Seacrest recently joined Dick Clarks’ New Years Rockin’ Eve. Now he is a part of the tradition that guided his own New Year’s celebrations before. “I used to look forward to that night,” said Seacrest. “It was the biggest party of the year. No matter where you were, if you were at home or you were out at a party somewhere, it just made you feel that you were a part of that event in Times Square. I think that’s what he did so brilliantly for so many years. He still does it. He makes us feel like we are there, like we are connected to the million people in Times Square.”
Fox’s Cat Deeley is hosting the New Year’s Eve show for the second year in a row. Before she was truly a world traveler. “I think the last time I celebrated New Year’s Eve before the job I was actually in South Africa,” recalled Deeley . “So I was in the middle of the jungle actually and it was very, very surreal because we were kind of dancing to piano music and drinking Champagne and having a wonderful time, but whilst in the middle of the jungle so I had this weird dichotomy going on. It was absolutely fabulous. I always tend to celebrate New Year somewhere different because then it very much is a new beginning, new start and you look back over the previous year and you hopefully look back with fondness and then look forward to the year that’s on the way.”
[IMG:R]However, Deeley too, does not do the resolution thing. “I never make them because I always break them. So I absolutely don’t have any resolutions at all. I think I need to start being a bit more of a girl really. I’m not very good at doing manicures and pedicures and sitting still in make up and all that kind of stuff, so I think maybe I need to start being a bit more girly. Apart from that, nothing.”
Spike Feresten will be getting paid for being on the streets of Times Square for the first time in his life, cohosting Fox’s show with Deeley. Perhaps his bosses should have known that he’d be doing that anyway. “I first moved to New York from Massachusetts and have been to the Times Square New Year’s,” said Feresten. “I would say this will be about my 15th Times Square New Year. The first one I went to was in 1988 and I rode my bike and got as close as I could and kind of locked my bike up and walked in and had a drink with everybody and celebrated. So it’s a really exciting thing for me this year to be coming so many years later and be standing in the center of it all with a microphone and a camera on me and a live television circuit to have a little fun.”
