Celebrity Interviews -- Newsday.com

October 10, 2008

Fast chat: Jonathan Demme

Jonathan Demme has long had one of the most interesting careers in the film business. An Oscar-winning director ("The Silence of the Lambs"), the 64-year-old Demme has also enjoyed success as a concert filmmaker ("Stop Making Sense"), documentarian ("Cousin Bobby") and low-budget indie god ("Melvin and Howard").

October 5, 2008

A fast chat with Guy Ritchie

Probably better known as Madonna's husband than as a director of high-style, high-attitude, comic-book-type thrillers ("Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels"), Guy Ritchie recently took the Toronto Film Festival by storm: "Rocknrolla," his latest Brit gangster saga starring Gerard Butler, Thandie Newton and Tom Wilkinson, seemed to be everything the crowd wanted, and more. After an evening of bellowing, "Yes! I love Madonna," at paparazzi curious about his reportedly troubled marriage, Ritchie took a few minutes to sit with Newsday contributor John Anderson in Toronto and actually talk about his film, which opens Wednesday.

September 16, 2008

Keira Knightley, an 18th century Lady Di

Best known as the willowy Elizabeth Swann in the "Pirates of the Caribbean" films, Keira Knightley takes on a different role as the real-life 18th century aristocrat Georgiana Cavendish in "The Duchess." In an interview last week at the Waldorf- Astoria, Knightley, 23, discussed her role in this historical costume drama, which opens Friday.

September 14, 2008

Fast chat: Ed Harris

Four-time Oscar-nominated actor Ed Harris is also a much-lauded director - for "Pollock," his 2000 biopic about abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock, and the only film Harris directed - until now. "Appaloosa," Harris' retro-Western (if such a thing is possible), is based on the Robert B. Parker novel, and stars Viggo Mortensen, Jeremy Irons, Renée Zellweger and Harris. The movie, which opens at area theaters Friday, premiered earlier this month at the Toronto International Film Festival, which is where Newsday contributor John Anderson caught up with him.

August 24, 2008

Fast chat with Kim Kardashian

Well-known for being well-known, the beautiful and bodacious Kim Kardashian - scion of the late attorney Robert Kardashian, one of the defense counsels in the O.J. Simpson murder trial - has gone in one short year from L.A. socialite, co-owner of the boutiques Dash and Smooch in suburban Calabasas, and star of a leaked sex tape to star of one of E!'s most popular shows, "Keeping Up With the Kardashians." The reality series chronicles the daily lives of the "Brady Bunch"-like full, half- and step-siblings under parents Bruce Jenner, the former Olympics star, and Kris Kardashian, who divorced Robert in 1989.

August 17, 2008

Fast Chat with Javier Bardem

The setting is Barcelona, and two friends - respectable Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and free-spirited Cristina ( Scarlett Johansson) - are sitting in a restaurant when a suave gent approaches the table, tells them they're beautiful and asks both if they'd consider going away with him for the weekend.

August 10, 2008

Fast chat with William Katt

Hofstra University on Sunday concludes a three-day run of "Rachel and Julio" at the John Cranford Adams Playhouse. The comic love story, set over three decades, stars two of the Hempstead university's most successful alums, Lainie Kazan and Robert Davi.

July 27, 2008

Fast Chat with Brooke Hogan

Her parents are in the middle of a tawdry divorce, her brother is in jail and she's cut off contact with her mom because of her mother's teenage boyfriend. It would seem that with all the drama engulfing Brooke Hogan these days, the last place she'd want to be is in front of the cameras.

June 15, 2008

Fast Chat: Terri Garr

Teri Garr had a solid career in the 1970s and '80s playing ditsy blondes, housewives and the girlfriend of the leading man. Along the way she was Oscar-nominated (supporting actress for "Tootsie"), and appeared in a slew of high-profile pictures, including "Young Frankenstein," "One From the Heart," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and "The Black Stallion."

June 8, 2008

Fast chat with John Leguizamo

John Leguizamo's been busy. This year alone he's appeared in the crime drama "The Take," the indie black comedy "The Babysitters," and Friday he hits the big screen in M. Night Shyamalan's psychological creepfest "The Happening." Later this year he'll play a detective alongside Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in "Righteous Kill," a washed-up boxer dad in "Where God Left His Shoes" and a member of a dysfunctional Latino family in the holiday heartwarmer " Humboldt Park."

June 1, 2008

FAST CHAT: Julianne Moore

Julianne Moore is wearing little to no makeup and killer platform boots. And her laugh - she laughs a lot - is infectious. The whole casually sexy vibe is a far cry from Barbara Baekeland, the eccentric, socialite wife of a Bakelite plastics heir whose tragic life unfurls in Moore's latest feature film, "Savage Grace," which opened Wednesday.

May 11, 2008

Fast chat: Peter Gallagher

Peter Gallagher loves the old alley behind the Broadway theater where he's co-starring with Morgan Freeman and Frances McDormand in Clifford Odets' "The Country Girl." Some 30 years ago he was just starting out, appearing on this very stage in his first lead role, Danny Zuko, in "Grease." Several theaters open into the alley, and he recalls meeting legends such as Henry Fonda back there. Or Maureen Stapleton, performing then in "The Gin Game," with whom he'd kick back a few after their shows let out.

April 13, 2008

Fast Chat: Uma Thurman on "The Life Before Her Eyes"

Uma Thurman has always been a standout. Her name, the whole 6-foot-tall thing, those arresting, angular features, all guaranteed she'd get noticed. And she was - first by agents at age 15, then by director Terry Gilliam, who cast her as Venus, her first splashy film role, in "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen." Other films followed, some acclaimed ("Les Liaisons Dangereuses"), some not ("Mad Dog and Glory"). Then came Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction" - she played a sexy mob wife doing that dance with John Travolta, and earned herself an Oscar nomination. Since then she's done her share of action flicks ("Batman & Robin," "The Avengers," "Kill Bill Vols. I and II").

April 27, 2008

Fast chat: Colin Firth

Thirteen years have passed since Colin Firth became, as Jane Austen might put it, "universally acknowledged" as the definitive Mr. Darcy in the lionized BBC TV miniseries of Austen's "Pride and Prejudice."

April 20, 2008

Fast Chat: Linda Lavin

'Massapequa? That sounds like a wonderful old Indian name. What does it mean in English?" a character asks Linda Lavin partway through "The New Century," a new comedy at Lincoln Center. Comes Lavin's deadpan reply: "It means 'Don't touch my hair.'" Lavin's 'do is blond in the story from Paul Rudnick ("In & Out"), which finds her as an affluent Long Island matron with three radically gay children. Lavin's segment, "Pride and Joy," is the first of three pieces that intertwine in a final act. Lavin sat down with Newsday's Robert Kahn to talk about the ways wealthy Jewish women dress, geographic panaceas and the advantages of running a mom-and-pop business.

March 30, 2008

Fast Chat: David Schwimmer

SCHWIMMMAHHH.

March 23, 2008

Fast Chat: Sam Rockwell

Another film, another whack-job character role for Sam Rockwell. In "Snow Angels," which opened recently, the gifted, 39-year-old character actor plays a suicidal, born-again Christian trying to reconnect with his estranged wife. So what else is new? Rockwell has made a career of indelible, often bizarre screen portrayals, from game show host/CIA hit man Chuck Barris in "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind," to two-headed galactic president Zaphod Beeblebrox in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."

March 16, 2008

Fast Chat: James Earl Jones

When James Earl Jones takes the stage as Big Daddy in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," the Broadhurst Theatre fairly trembles. For all the fussin' and flitterin' of Maggie (Anika Noni Rose), Mae (Lisa Arrindell Anderson), Big Mama ( Phylicia Rashad), Gooper ( Giancarlo Esposito) and the liquored-up Brick (Terrence Howard), it's the old lion Big Daddy who's large and in charge.

March 9, 2008

Fast chat with Patricia Clarkson

The next time anyone mentions the alleged lack of roles for actresses of a certain age, say this name like a mantra: Patricia Clarkson.

February 3, 2008

Fast Chat: Natasha Bedingfield

Natasha Bedingfield may not be universally known, but her song is.

August 5, 2007

Fast Chat: Frank Oz

Filmmaker and onetime Muppet-master Frank Oz wants everyone to know that his new comedy, "Death at a Funeral," is rated R. So was "The Score" (2001), his most recent film other than the PG-13 misfire "The Stepford Wives" (2004), so it's odd that he tells you this twice. But, hey, this is Cookie Monster! Miss Piggy! Grover! Bert! YODA!! He helped get you, me and our kids through childhood - and someday their kids, too. If he wants us to tell people about the rating, well, what can we say but, "Rated R this new film is."