Liv Tyler pregnant with first child
Actress Liv Tyler is expecting her first child with rocker husband Royston Langdon, frontman of the band Spacehog, The Associated Press reports. According to People magazine, Tyler, 26, who recently starred as the Elven princess Arwen in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, is due this winter. She and Langdon have been married since March 2003.
More baby news…
Supermodel Claudia Schiffer is expecting her second child with husband Matthew Vaughn, a British film producer, Reuters reports. Schiffer‘s spokeswoman said the model is four months pregnant. The couple, who live in Suffolk, England, have a son, Caspar, born in January of last year.
Affleck bluffs his way to jackpot
Cha-ching! Ben Affleck won $356,400 at a poker tournament, outlasting a field of 90 players to capture the Commerce Casino’s California State Poker Championship, AP reports. At the final table, Affleck beat poker pro Stan Goldstein, who finished second, and knocked out Chuck Pacheco, president and co-founder of Castle Rock Entertainment, who finished third. Fellow actor Tobey Maguire went out on the first day of the three-day tournament that ended Sunday. The win in the $10,000 buy-in event earned Affleck the opportunity to take a $25,000 seat in the World Poker Tour Championship to be held next April in Las Vegas, AP reports.
Clinton’s book looks to be hot seller
Hundreds of Bill Clinton’s fans stood in line Tuesday at a Manhattan bookstore waiting for a chance to see the former president, who was scheduled to sign copies of his new memoir My Life, AP reports. The Rockefeller Center Barnes & Noble planned to give out more than 1,000 wristbands that would allow customers to purchase several copies, only one to be autographed by Clinton, before the book hits the stands Tuesday at midnight. “Bill Clinton is a rock star,” Lynne Roberts, 37, told AP, who set up camp Monday night, nearly 15 hours before the signing was to begin. “He is our cultural icon and we miss him now more than ever, given everything that’s going on in the world.” With advance orders already topping 2 million, Clinton’s book, which details his life from his Arkansas childhood through his presidency, appears guaranteed to justify his reported $10 million advance and outsell the memoirs of his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who received $8 million.
Anti-camcordering rewards program unveiled
Theater employees who report moviegoers illegally recording films to police will be rewarded up to $500 under the Anti-Camcording Rewards Program unveiled Monday by the Motion Picture Assn. of America (MPAA) and the National Association of Theater Owners (NATO), Reuters reports. The program is being funded by the MPAA, which represents the major studios, in a bid to thwart movie piracy. According to the organization, films are typically camcordered during the first few days of their U.S. release, then distributed in digital form worldwide on file-sharing networks and other online outlets. The dollar amount awarded will be decoded by the MPAA and is based on several factors, including whether the suspect was apprehended and the timing of the piracy in relation to the movie’s release.
Rating for Fahrenheit 9/11 expected today
The MPAA’s Rating Appeals Board is expected to render its final verdict today on the rating for filmmaker Michael Moore‘s anti-Bush documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, which opens Wednesday in New York and nationwide Friday. The MPAA gave the film an R rating earlier this month “for violence, disturbing images and language,” but Lions Gate president Tom Ortenberg is appealing the decision on the basis the documentary will contribute to the national political debate and should be available to the widest audience possible. The biggest sticking point in the ratings debate appears to be the use of the word “motherf***er” several times by an American soldier in Iraq, as well as some graphic footage of Iraqi civilian casualties. Distributor Lions Gate has said the R would cost the pic as much as 20 percent of its audience, but according to the latest tracking research by Nielsen NRG, people over age 25, especially men, are the most interested in seeing the film.
Court rejects Jenny Jones appeal
The Supreme Court rejected an appeal Monday from the family of a guest murdered days after he admitted a secret crush on another man during the taping of The Jenny Jones Show, the AP reports. Scott Amedure’s family initially won a $29.3 million award against distributor Warner Brothers and The Jenny Jones Show, but that decision was thrown out last year by a Michigan appeals court. The family then appealed to the Supreme Court, claiming the Michigan judges were biased and should have disqualified themselves from the case. In 1995, Amedure appeared on the show, which is taped in Chicago, and revealed his secret crush on guest Jonathan Schmitz. Schmitz killed Amedure three days after the taping and is now serving a 25- to 50-year prison sentence for second-degree murder.
HBO boards reality bandwagon with Family Bonds
HBO has ordered 10 episodes of the reality series Family Bonds, which follows the real-life adventures of one of the country’s top bounty hunters, Tom Evangelista, who runs a bail bond/bounty office with his family in Queens, N.Y., Variety reports. The series’ producer-director Steven Cantor describes the project as “the Sopranos without all the heaviness and murder.” Each half-hour episode will follow Evangelista and his family as they track criminals while personal drama ensues as his son tries to join the business just as his daughter wants out. Family Bonds, the first series to come out of the pay cabler’s documentary/family arm, will have little of the traditional documentary earmarks such as voiceovers, narration or talking heads. The show is slated to premiere this fall on HBO.
Guylaine Cadorette contributed to this report.
