Joe Pantoliano and Giancarlo Esposito greet each other at the premiere of 'Canvas' at The French Institute in NYC. (photo: Anthony Behar/FilmMagic.com)

Family Recipe

'Sopranos' fans might expect Jamie-Lynn Sigler to cook up a mean macaroni and gravy, but the 26-year-old actress inherited her kitchen chops from her Cuban mom. "Ropa vieja is really my specialty," she tells the NY Daily News. "It's a brisket made with like tomatoes and onions. ... I serve it over white rice. I make plátanos fritos (fried plantains) and the best Cuban espresso, where there is so much sugar your spoon stands up." (photo: Alexandra Wyman/WireImage.com)

[NY Daily News]

Along for the Ride

Sometimes, as a documentary filmmaker, you have to roll with the punches, which is exactly what 'Run Granny Run' director Marlo Poras did when 94-year-old Doris Haddock tossed her hat in the ring for a U.S. Senate seat. He'd already been trailing Haddock to shoot her swing-state drive to register women and minority voters, and the film took a whole new direction when she joined the race on the last possible day. "I was thrown into the fire and just kept on following her," Poras says. The doc debuts on HBO on October 18th.

[AP via The Reading Eagle]

['Run Granny Run' on HBO]

Part-Time Pretty Boy

Idris Elba, who played Stringer Bell on 'The Wire,' has been anointed a sex symbol after pulling honors as one of People magazine's Most Beautiful People — but only if you catch him on a good day. "If you see me every day, you see I'm a scruffy guy," he told AllHipHip.com. "Obviously in films and photo shoots; I'm scrubbed and clean up nice, but it's not who I am every day." (photo: Johnny Nunez/WireImage.com)

[AllHipHop.com]

Bryce Dallas Howard and Kirsten Dunst arrive at the party for Glamour's Reel Moments in Los Angeles. (photo: Gregg DeGuire/WireImage.com)

Special Treatment

A struggling actress in LA becomes an executive producer of a ground-breaking series on HBO. No, it's not a sequel to 'The Comeback.' It's the real story of Noa Tishby, a successful Israeli actress and singer trying to cross over to Hollywood. When she saw the Israeli version of 'In Treatment' on a visit home, she got the number of the show's creator Haggai Levi and phoned him, assuring him she wasn't trying to land a part.

"It was the most brilliant concept for a TV show I'd heard in my life," explains Tishby. "It was a nightly soap, with no flashbacks, background stories or guest stars. Everything happens in the therapy room, which creates an intense environment. It's one of the most voyeuristic things I'd ever seen. Anyone who's ever been to therapy — that's the way it really is. I just knew it should be seen in America." HBO agreed and the series, starring Gabriel Byrne and Dianne Wiest will bow in 2008. (photo: Mark Sullivan/WireImage.com)

[Jewish Journal]

Another Smother Mother

It's not everyday that being known as a diva actually helps land a film role, but Rebecca DeMornay's rep was part of what interested Bruce Sweeney in having her play the lead character in his new film 'American Venus.' DeMornay didn't act the prima donna on set, says Sweeney, who lured DeMornay by promising her: "This is your movie. It's all you."

Perhaps playing the overbearing matriarch of the Yost surfing clan on 'John from Cincinnatti' was just the warm-up DeMornay needed to play the "smother mother" of an ice skater in Sweeney's film. As Sweeney reports: "I took the film down to L.A. and showed her and she said: 'Bruce, I loved the movie, but do you know what I really love? Me! My performance!"' (photo: Michael Loccisano/FilmMagic.com)

[AP via CTV.ca]

Roll Out the Charmin

Larry David has been offered the Charmin treatment by New York's Port Authority. On last week's 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' David complained that the recycled toilet paper Cheryl makes him use is as rough as what they proffer in Port Authority. But the Port Authority claims David's reference is out of date. "We invite him back since there are now even attendants to keep the bathrooms safe and clean and who can give him an environmentally friendly and comfortable roll," PA spokes man Steve Sigmund told The NY Post. (photo: Eric Charbonneau/WireImage.com)

[NY Post]

Michelle Monaghan, Ben Affleck, Casey Affleck and Amy Ryan arrive at the premiere of 'Gone Baby Gone' in Los Angeles. (photo: Lester Cohen/Variety via WireImage.com)

Just a Minor Hiccup?

Evan Handler's not holding his breath. Or breathing into a paper bag, or drinking water upside down from a glass — if you believe his recent denial of a Page Six story reporting he's been battling a 2-year case of the hiccups. According to the story, Handler's hiccups shut down shooting on the 'Sex and the City' movie and Handler said: "It's been going on now for the past two years. Sometimes it goes on for two, three days straight. So, it was happening a little while filming, yes. But I can get it under control. I go to a quiet corner and redirect my breathing and center myself." But the actor denied anything other than a minor case on TV's 'Extra.' "My hiccup thing is a scam! I had some hiccups the other day, but pretty much everything else in that article was invented." (photo: Jim Spellman/WireImage.com)

[The Celebrity Truth]

Suburban Sprawl

Lorraine Bracco is moving from Jersey to Long Island. The actress has signed on to play Nora, the mother of a female detective (Alison Elliott) struggling to manage her job and family in 'Long Island Confidential,' a new pilot for Lifetime. (photo: Steve Granitz/WireImage.com)

[Variety]

Prize Fighter

According to 'Empire Falls' author Richard Russo, winning the Pulitzer Prize for his novel changed life in one interminable way: "I got caller ID." But, while writing his next book — another blue-collar study titled 'Bridge of Sighs' — the award that carries so much weight in the literary community felt just as heavy hanging over his head: "Whenever you're blessed and fortunate enough to win something like that, you don't want your next book to be crappy," he says. "And you don't want it to be a slight effort. You want the next one to be ambitious." (photo: Dale Woltman/FilmMagic.com)

[Home News Tribune]

Jennifer Hudson arrives at Lincoln Center for New Line Pictures' 40th Anniversary gala. (photo: Marcel Thomas/FilmMagic.com)

Meet the Parents

Cheryl Hines has a new husband to bicker with. Hines is playing William H. Macy's wife in the film 'Bart Got a Room,' about a high school nerd living with his squabbling parents in a Florida retirement community. Steven Kaplan plays their son, Bart, who is on a quest to find a date to his senior prom. (photo: Jeff Kravitz/Variety via FilmMagic.com)

[Reuters]

Double Featured

Ray McKinnon ('Deadwood' 's Reverend Smith) is more than a triple threat. He wrote, directed and stars — twice — in the comedy 'Randy and the Mob,' playing identical twins Randy and Cecil Pearson. McKinnon describes the film as a mixture of 'Flight of the Conchords' and 'Napolean Dynamite.'

The film is in limited release in theaters in the south (McKinnon and his wife left Los Angeles for Arkansas). In a unique distribution effort, McKinnon is building word-of-mouth support by traveling around to attend screenings and blogging about it on the film's website. As a recent post reads of a screening in Memphis: "an attentive, smart, somewhat older group of folks who dug the doo-doo out of the film... We talked for over an hour... Some didn't want to go (home) and neither did I." (photo: Kevin Parry/WireImage.com)

[CommercialAppeal.com]

[randyandthemob.net]

Golden Anniversary

George Carlin is celebrating 50 years entertaining the masses (well, technically 51, but an even number looks better on the cover of his new DVD set). So, what has America's most cantankerous comic learned about said "masses" over the course of his illustrious career? "Well, I am a pessimist as far as the world is concerned," he told the L.A. Times. "I have absolutely low prospects for the human race; I have very low prospects for this country. For myself, though, very high prospects. I'm a personal optimist." (photo: Kevin Mazur/WireImage.com)

[L.A. Times]

Evan Handler and Cynthia Nixon at the annual 'Light the Night' walk. More than 7,000 walkers pay tribute at the South Street Seaport and walk across the Brooklyn Bridge to help the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society raise more that $2.2 million for cancer research. (photo: Duffy-Marie Arnoult/WireImage.com)

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

Ashley Jensen admits that going from being an extra ('Extras') to a series regular ('Ugly Betty') has gone to her head — but not in the way you'd think. "I used to think all American women had amazing hair but I've discovered the actresses nearly all wear a little weave at the back of their heads to make it look like they've got thick, voluminous hair. So everyone I watched on 'Ally McBeal,' it wasn't their hair at all. I've got one now and false eyelashes."

And in case all that Hollywood hair is making her cocky, there's always someone to take her down a peg in LA. "I saw Ben Stiller walking his dog and I shouted 'Ben!' — he just looked at me and I said: 'It's me from 'Extras.'' He didn't recognize me because he only ever saw me as a Bosnian woman in a witchy wig and a bullet hole in my head." (photo: Ferdaus Shamim/WireImage.com)

[Metro.co.uk]

It's Not Easy Having Green

In HBO's upcoming series '12 Miles of Bad Road,' Lily Tomlin plays Amelia Shakespeare, the matriarch of a ridiculously wealthy Dallas family. She and her sister dabble in real estate, selling $20-$30 million homes, but their real money comes from cattle and oil. Written by Linda Bloodworth-Thomason of 'Designing Women,' you can expect some skewering of how the other .5% lives, but Tomlin may surprise you by making you feel for her character. Explaining what she views as the purpose of comedy to a reporter, Tomlin said: "To me, it's to unite, to create empathy. Empathy for other people who are very different from you, or you think are different — and then you see they're not so different." (photo: Arun Nevader/WireImage.com)

[Houston Chronicle]

Bad Boy

Dubliner Aidan Gillen (Mayor Carcetti on 'The Wire') has a theory about why a lot of actors from across-the-pond are nabbing American roles: "Because we're cheaper?" When a reporter suggested the possibility that many Hollywood stars aren't interested in portraying unsavory characters (the type that Gillen excels at), the actor (who is currently rehearsing Mamet's 'Glengarry Glen Ross' in London) was bemused: "I can't understand that. I suppose there are actors who are worried about their public image. But I've never had any trouble playing unpleasant characters. It is only a part. Which is why you do it because you are interested in exploring something you never could or would be." (photo: Brad Barket/WireImage.com)

[Guardian Unlimited]