You know a party is truly A-list when Renee Zellweger is the literally the first guest to arrive. Not just the first celebrity guest, but the first person, period.
Renee made the trek up the winding roads above Sunset Boulveard in Pacific Palisades, arriving at an ultra-cool private estate. How cool? They had a ’60s photo of Frank Sinatra and Jackie Gleason dining at Jilly’s hanging in the bathroom. High up in the Santa Monica mountains, Renee surprised the party-givers by arriving early at 6:59 p.m., accompanied by a girlfriend and her publicist.
Of course, when the party is to honor the launch of the book In the Face of Jinn, the first novel by Cheryl Howard Crew, the wife of Oscar-winning director and uber-producer Ron Howard, it’s not exactly a shocker that it lured the upper echelons of the Hollywood gliterrati.
Indeed, the fete was hosted by: Renee (who co-stars with Russell Crowe in Ron’s upcoming Depression-era film Cinderella Man), Star Wars guru George Lucas, Henry Winkler (who played Arthur Fonzerelli to Ron’s Richie Cunningham on Happy Days), Ron’s longtime Imagine Entertainment producing partner Brian Grazer and his author wife Gigi, studio chief Ron Meyer, super-agent Bryan Lourd and producers Lili and Richard Zanuck.
The guest list was also pretty star-studded: Ellen DeGeneres and her girlfriend Portia De Rossi, Jason Bateman, Lara Flynn Boyle, Gabrielle Union, Chris Kattan, Jackie Collins, Elizabeth Berkley, Debi Mazar, Michael Keaton, Rebecca DeMornay, Ricardo Chivaro and Alanna Stewart.
While the redheaded Cheryl spent the bulk of her night signing copies of her new book, Ron entertained guests at the elite event, which was dominated by an Indian theme to match the plot of Cheryl’s book, with Indian cuisine, waitresses in belly-baring Indian garb and a continuous flow of sitar music. Ron said he always knew his wife had a novel in her.
“She’s been writing more or less since she left college,” the director told me. “She had a degree in psychology and began writing, and she was a writing fellow at AFI, in the first class of writing fellows there. So she had a burgeoning screenwriting career but really just stopped it when we had our twins and we moved back east. She’s been working on it very hard all these years, developing her talent. She has a great sense of people and characters and great instincts about stories–she’s been my secret weapon for years, and so it’s not surprising to me that she’s getting these great reviews, or that people find the story as exciting and compelling as it is.”
Most of the guests milled about on the grounds of the estate enjoying its fabulous views–and the slightly surreal sights on display in the party, like watching the Fonz (Winkler) talking to Richie (Howard) and Laverne (Penny Marshall) in the corner. Renee hung out inside the lavish house, where she spent most of her time talking to De Rossi and DeGeneres, who were both dressed casually and strolled around the party holding hands most of the evening. At one point, Renee–who has an established taste for rock musicians–was spotted appreciatively checking out Benji Madden of the band Good Charlotte, who was there with Christine Peters‘ daughter Caliegh Peters (Benji’s twin brother Joel dates Hilary Duff).
This party also raised the bar on the goodie bag at the exit: as guests left, they could stop into a little kiosk and take home a pair of Delman shoes–Indian inspired sandals that fit the night’s theme. Gabrielle, Elizabeth, Penny, Maeve Quinlan and Debi Mazar all took home a handpicked pair of Delmans.
Although everyone also left with a signed copy of Cheryl’s book, Ron was unable to walk away with the movie rights to his wife’s tome. “She won’t option it to Imagine!” Ron told me. “This is a little thing between Brian and I–she won’t option it to us.” I asked if she was waiting for more offers to come in with a better negotiating position. “No, she doesn’t want anyone to feel, if it gets produced as a movie, any reductive sense that nepotism had anything to do with it. But it seems like a great movie to me.”
