Halle Berry and Plastic Surgery, No
March 16, 2007
Halle Berry has avoided plastic surgery though she’s not saying she won’t have it someday.
“No, I haven’t,” the 40-year-old Oscar winner (for 2001’s Monster’s Ball) tells Reader’s Digest for its April issue, when asked if she’s gone under the knife. “But that’s one thing I’ll never say never about, because I don’t know.”
Still, she says, there are other priorities: “I hope I will evolve as a person who realizes it’s really not about my physical appearance and not be drawn to that seductive knife.”
This is not the first time Berry has discussed the issue of appearance. At a London press conference in 2004, she said: “Being thought of as a beautiful woman has spared me nothing in life. No heartache, no trouble. Love has been difficult. Beauty is essentially meaningless and it is always transitory.”
Indeed, the actress tells Reader’s Digest that she lived in a shelter when she first moved to New York City at the age of 21 and learned to make her own way. “A girl had to do what a girl had to do,” she says. “You can do that when you’re 21 and ambitious.”
But it wasn’t easy, says Berry, who reveals that she once didn’t speak to her mother for a year-and-a-halt after her mom refused to send money when Berry was nearly broke. “It was devastating because she had never said no to me for anything,” says Berry. “I became totally self-sufficient. I vowed never to ask my mother or anybody for anything, ever. And I didn’t.”
Today, she says it was one of the most valuable lessons her mother taught her. “I’m actually grateful she did that, because it taught me how to take care of myself and that I could live through any situation, even if it meant going to a shelter for a small stint, or living within my means, which were meager,” says Berry. “I became a person who knows that I will always make my own way.”
But there is one thing Berry hasn’t yet attained that she still hopes for – a child. “I hope that happens,” she says. “It’s late; I’ve waited a little too long. But I want to have children. Absolutely.”
Tori Spelling Has a Kid
March 16, 2007
Tori Spelling and husband Dean McDermott welcomed their first child together, a son, on Tuesday.
Liam Aaron McDermott, who was born in a Los Angeles hospital, weighed 6 pounds, 6 ounces, according to the couple’s rep.
Spelling’s mother Candy Spelling was at the hospital. The baby arrived just as the new mother is reconciling with her own mom after a long estrangement.
“Words can’t describe the joy and elation I feel at this truly happy event,” Candy says. “I am looking forward to doting on my new little grandson and all the memorable fun that comes with it.”
A rep for the couple adds: “They’re all really happy and everybody’s resting now. Tori and the baby are healthy.”
The baby’s middle name of Aaron is a tribute to Spelling’s late father, legendary TV producer Aaron Spelling, who died in June.
John Mayer and Jessica Simpson, Getting Cozy
March 16, 2007
Less than two years ago Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey were celebrating their third wedding anniversary in Italy, but the no-longer-newlywed Simpson recently went back to the country – this time to Rome with her singer squeeze John Mayer.
“She’s really happy,” says longtime Simpson friend and New York City colorist Rita Hazan, who touched up the singer’s brunette locks before her departure.
While in Rome, Mayer and Simpson booked a top floor suite at the Hotel de Russie – the same hotel where some of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’s guests stayed during the couple’s November nuptials.
On March 8, the lovebirds lunched at Dal Bolognese restaurant. “He was smiling very much and she was giggling a lot,” says a source at the eatery. “They held hands for much of the time and had eyes only for themselves.”
The couple, who left the restaurant hand-in-hand, attracted some attention but didn’t seemed phased, says the source. “When they walked out there were three or four paparazzi waiting for them,” says the source. “They didn’t seem to mind having their pictures taken.”
Next stop, Via Condotti, Rome’s most exclusive shopping street, where Mayer, 29, and Simpson, 26, strolled among the crowd. They stopped to shop at Fendi, Gucci, Valentino and even La Perla’s luxury underwear shop.
Between all the shopping and eating out, Mayer, found time to post panoramic photo montages of his visit on his blog.
“Sometimes you try to shoot subjects way too expansive for any camera lens,” wrote Mayer, who took a series of eight photos to try to capture the grandeur of Rome’s Colosseum. “Some people call this trip a ‘Roman Holiday.’ But I call it a very expensive way to get new desktop pictures for my Mac.”
The couple left Rome Tuesday, according to a source who says, “They’re back in L.A. now. They had a fantastic trip.”
Tory Burch and Lance Armstrong a Match?
March 16, 2007
Cycling star Lance Armstrong has been getting cozy with a new woman – N.Y.C. fashion designer Tory Burch.
The seven-time Tour de France champ has been quietly dating Burch for months, according to sources.
“They are very much a couple,” says R. Couri Hay, a friend of the designer’s.
Reps would not comment on the relationship but Burch – whom Armstrong contacted, says a friend, after reading her profile in Vanity Fair – has already visited him in Texas several times.
Most recently, the couple cozied up at Houston’s Hotel Derek on March 6, where they drank margaritas before heading off to a reception in Burch’s honor. (Also in town at the time was Armstrong’s ex-fiancée Sheryl Crow, who bears a striking resemblance to Burch. The longtime couple called it quits in February 2006.)
Another source says of Armstrong and Burch: “I can’t say whether it’s long-term, but they’re having a great time.”
Jada Smith On Marriage
March 16, 2007
When it comes to her rules for leading a successful family life, Jada Pinkett Smith has learned to keep quiet about any bumps in the road with husband Will Smith, and to be open-mined and candid with her kids.
“I don’t talk to anyone about my problems with my husband,” the Reign Over Me actress, 35, tells Redbook for its April issue.
Not that there is a lack of communication between the two of them. “The ritual Will and I have is to talk about everything,” says Pinkett Smith.
She just doesn’t care to share their secrets with others. “You can’t expect people to understand your relationship,” she says. “My girlfriends always say, ‘You never complain or talk about your marriage.’ But it’s just not what I do.”
By contrast, when it comes to her children – 6-year-old Willow, 8-year-old Jaden, and 14-year-old Trey, who is Will’s son from a previous marriage – “They share everything with me.”
That’s because, she says, “I treat my children like little people, not like kids. I don’t dictate what they should and should not do … that’s why we have that trust.”
Angelina Jolie’s New Child
March 16, 2007
The formal introduction of Pax Thien Jolie to his new mother didn’t exactly go smoothly: The 3-year-old Vietnamese boy started crying when Angelina Jolie knelt down to speak to him at Thursday morning’s welcoming ceremony at Tam Binh Orphanage in Ho Chi Minh, according to the orphanage director, Mr. Nguyen Van Trung.
Jolie wasn’t fazed. “She told me she understands – that it’s normal for all young children to be scared,” Trung recalled Thursday.
Jolie took the boy (whose given name before he was adopted was Pham Quang) aside in a separate room from the ceremony for him to recover his composure. “Later he was okay, very cheerful and happy,” Trung said. “He even played with his new brother Maddox.”
The star completed adoption procedures in Ho Chi Minh City on Thursday morning after picking her new son up from the orphanage – the same one that she and Brad Pitt visited during a trip to the former Saigon last November. This time, Jolie came without Pitt. She adopted the boy as a single parent because Vietnam’s adoption regulations don’t allow unmarried couples to co-adopt. But Jolie didn’t come alone to the orphanage – she brought along son Maddox to meet his new brother.
The boy’s main caretaker at the orphanage, Ms. Bui Thi Thanh Tuyen, said there was a reason that Pax – usually known as an exceptionally cheerful child – was caught off guard Thursday: He wasn’t actually told by the staff that he was being adopted that day.
“We did not say anything to him, afraid we might put pressure on him and more frightened,” Tuyen said. “We just told him that we are taking him out. You are going to play outside – play with a mother and father.”
Still, the orphanage staff prepared him as best they could: They packed a small box with two sets of clothes for him to take, and his favorite toys, especially a small plastic piano. They also taught him a few phrases of English: “How are you?” and “What’s your name?”
Tuyen said she’ll miss the boy but adds that any day a child is adopted is a special day at the orphanage. “We are glad that he’s adopted. He’s very clever and I hope he has a good life,” Tuyen said. “We just hope he will return to visit us one day.”
