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The THREE GRACES
MICHELLE PFEIFFER, JODIE FOSTER, and MEG RYAN, actresses.
Commands at least $10 million per picture thanks to ...
Pfeiffer: The Fabulous Baker Boys, Dangerous Minds, Batman Returns.
Foster: The Accused, The Silence of the Lambs, Contact.
Ryan: When Harry Met Sally ..., Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail.
Is routinely called ...
Pfeiffer: The most beautiful woman in Hollywood.
Foster: The smartest woman in Hollywood.
Ryan: The most lovable woman in Hollywood.
Has cornered the market on ...
Pfeiffer: Melancholic beauty.
Foster: Searing intellect.
Ryan: Boundless spunk.
Became the solid citizen she is by ...
Pfeiffer: Working at a supermarket checkout counter.
Foster: Graduating magna cum laude from Yale.
Ryan: Spending two years on As the World Turns.
Dreams about...
Pfeiffer: Starring in a Georgia O'Keeffe biopic.
Foster: Appearing on Jeopardy.
Ryan: Starring in a Sylvia Plath biopic.
Go figure:
Pfeiffer: Bowls regularly.
Foster: Says she was initially passed over for The Accused because she didn't look "rape-able" enough.
Ryan: Her six-year-old son, Jack, hates movies.
Maintains sanity by ...
Pfeiffer: Revealing nothing personal.
Foster: Revealing nothing personal.
Ryan: Revealing nothing personal.
Photographed by Herb Ritts at Smashbox Studios in Culver City, California, on January 25, 1999.
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The POWDER KEG
NICK NOLTE, actor.
Thirty-nine films, which have taken him from excitable, yella-haired slab of all American manhood (North Dallas Forty, 48 Hrs.) to creased, burdened old hand (The Prince of Tides and two of last year's best films, The Thin Red Line and Affliction, which has earned him an Oscar nomination). Born in Omaha in 1941, he blew four different college football scholarships by dropping out of each school. Received a suspended jail sentence in 1962 —for selling counterfeit draft cards.
Nolte, the Bad-Boy Years: A Snapshot
Katharine Hepburn, on the set of Grace Quigley, 1985: "I hear you've been dead drunk in every gutter in town, and that has to stop."
Nolte: "I can't stop. I've got a few more gutters to go."
Photographed by Annie Leibovitz at Nolte's ranch in Malibu on January 23, 1999.
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The PRESENCE
QUEEN LATIFAH; actress, rapper, writer, self-anointed royal.
After growing up in Newark and working at Burger King, she spoke for a nation when she said of acting, "It's not as hard as being a cashier." Proved her point by seamlessly moving from a thriving rap career—five albums (one gold), four Grammy nominations—to a string of rollicking films that began with her sassy-gal performance in Spike Lee's Jungle Fever(1991) and reached another level last year when she played the smarty-pants jazz singer in Living Out Loud.
In Arabic, latifah means "sensitive" (which she is) and "delicate" (which she isn't). The Queen still shares a house in Wayne, New Jersey, with her mother, Rita Bray Owens.
Upcoming: a nurse in The Bone Collector, starring Denzel Washington.
Lyrics from Latifah's signature song, "U.N.I.T.Y." (1993): "Instincts lead me to another flow Every time I hear a brother call a girl a bitch or a ho. Trying to make a sister feel low, You know all of that's got to go." Photographed (with the Boys Choir of Harlem) by Bruce Weber in New York City on December 16, 1998.
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The EVERYMAN
TOM HANKS, actor, writer, director, space buff.
Thirty films, two Oscars for best actor (and a new nomination for his work in Saving Private Ryan). The most compulsively likable man in showbiz—no, in America, period. And the most bankable. To wit:
Splash (1984): $62 million.
Big (1988): $115 million.
A League of Their Own (1992): $107 million.
Philadelphia (1993): $201 million.
Sleepless in Seattle (1993): $228 million.
Forrest Gump (1994): $679 million.
Apollo 13 (1995): $334 million.
Toy Story (1995): $354 million.
Saving Private Ryan (1998): $439 million (and counting).
You've Got Mail (1998): $146 million (and counting).
Upcoming: Toy Story 2; The Green Mile (based on a Stephen King novel); Martin Scorsese's Dino, in which, going against type and ethnicity, he plays Dean Martin; and Robert Zemeckis's Cast Away.
Photographed by Annie Leibovitz at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in New York City.
The LIFE OF THE PARTY
BETTE MIDLER, singer, comedienne, actress.
Twenty-two films and two best-actress nominations, for her work in The Rose (1979) and For the Boys (1991). Catalyst for the mid-80s revivification of Disney with her knockout performances in Down and Out in Beverly Hills, Ruthless People, and Outrageous Fortune. More recently, a vengeful ex-wife in The First Wives Club (1996). Eagerly awaited as Jacqueline Susann in Andrew Bergman's upcoming Susann biopic. Isn't She Great. Twenty albums, including last year's Bathhouse Betty, a backward nod to her formative years entertaining gentlemen who were clad only in towels. Voted the world's "Coolest Straight Person" by The Advocate, 1998.
"I'm more divine than I ever was. And I'll tell you why: Because I know the meaning of divine. The key to happiness is not to be so self-involved." Photographed (as Jacqueline Susann) by Firooz Zahedi in Los Angeles on February 1, 1999.
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The SWAN
GWYNETH PALTROW, actress, love interest.
The official Muse of Miramax (which has produced 5 of her 18 films) and Hollywood's unofficial First Girlfriend (Brad, then Ben). Daughter of actress Blythe Danner and television producer and film director Bruce Paltrow. Appeared as a teenage drifter in Flesh and Bone (1993), then played Brad Pitt's lovely, decapitated wife in Seven (1995); other roles have included the delightfully self-absorbed matchmaker in Emma (1996), the haughty Estella in Great Expectations (1998), Michael Douglas's unfaithful wife in A Perfect Murder (1998), the de facto Juliet in Shakespeare In Love (1998)—for which she has earned her first Academy Award nomination—and a savvy American in Anthony Minghella's upcoming The Talented Mr. Ripley, co-starring Matt Damon and Cate Blanchett. Prefers "small movies," which may explain why she passed on Titanic. There are not a lot of people who can relate when you say, "I've broken up with my boyfriend, and it's been on the cover of People twice."'
Photographed by Annie Leibovitz at the Beverly Hills Hotel on January 25, 1999.
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The ALL-ROUNDER
NORMAN LLOYD, actor, director, producer.
Twenty-eight films. Perhaps the only living actor to be directed by Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Charlie Chaplin, and Martin Scorsese. A steady career in film was his for the taking—he'd been in Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945), Jean Renoir's The Southerner (1945), and Chaplin's Limelight (1952)—when Lloyd veered into TV production and direction, for Alfred Hitchcock Presents from 1957 to 1965 and later for PBS's Hollywood Television Theatre (including the scandalous presentation of Steambath, which portrayed God as a Puerto Rican locker-room attendant). "Why do I do it? Because of The Fire. Oliver Wendell Holmes, speaking at a Civil War memorial, said, 'Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire.'"
Photographed by Art Streiber in the Statue of Liberty— from whose torch Lloyd memorably plunged to his death in Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur (1942)— on December 15, 1998.
The KNIGHT-ERRANT
SIR IAN MCKELLEN, actor, activist, flavor of the month.
Only in Hollywood could a man constantly referred to as the World's Greatest Living Shakespearean Actor be considered an overnight sensation. He's appeared in more than 100 plays and 24 films, but thanks to his Oscar-nominated role as the randy Frankenstein director James Whale in Gods and Monsters, McKellen, 59, is suddenly a "hot property." Case in point: his upcoming Mission: Impossible 2. He attended Cambridge with fellow actors Derek Jacobi and Corin Redgrave. His performance in the Royal Shakespeare Company's 1976 production of Macbeth is considered a masterpiece of stage acting. In 1991—three years after coming out— he became Britain's first openly gay knight. Only since then has he been able to cry onstage. His most piquant film role was in Michael Caton-Jones's Scandal (1989), playing British politician John Profumo, whom McKellen describes as a "raving heterosexual." "Saying a gay man can't convincingly make love to a woman on the screen—of course he can. It's called acting."
Photographed by David Hockney in Bridlington, England, on February 2, 1999.
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The LIONESS
CATHERINE DENEUVE, actress, bombshell for the ages, face of a nation.
Eighty-eight films, and not one in which she looks even half bad. Played the bored bourgeois wife in Luis Buñuel's ode to Parisian call girlsBelle de Jour (1967); one frigid psychotic in Roman Polanski's Repulsion (1965),a role Polanski gave her "because I needed an angelic girl who could kill a man with a razor"; and the colonial-plantation owner in Indochine (1992), for which she received an Oscar nomination.
For no good reason, made only three Hollywood films, including Tony Scott's memorable The Hunger (1983) —memorable in that she played a lesbian vampire.
Has two adult children with two European film legends: director Roger Vadim, whom she began dating when she was 17 years old, and Marcello Mastroianni. Once dated John Travolta. Admits, if you ask nicely, that she is a natural brunette.
On looking like Catherine Deneuve: "I get tired of being asked about it, of course. I hope that people think I am more than that. I think I am."
Photographed by Ellen von Unwerth at the Millenium Hilton hotel in New York City on February 5, 1999.
The IDOL
JEAN-PAUL BELMONDO, actor, producer, heartthrob.
The French were the first to idolize Charles Bronson, so the Gallic cult of Belmondo makes sense. And, anyway, aesthetics quickly fall by the wayside once you pop Godard's Breathless (1959) into the VCR and see Belmondo in all his amoral, unrepentant he-manliness. His performance drew favorable comparisons to Bogart and Brando—comparisons which Belmondo, being Belmondo, did nothing to discourage.
Officially, his studly reputation was sealed with three roles: the secret agent in That Man from Rio (1963), the Marxist thief in Louis Malle's Le Voleur (1967), and the roguish tobacco farmer in Truffaut's Mississippi Mermaid (1969). At 66, he's made 73 films, and still insists on doing his own stunts—dangling from choppers, jumping off speeding motorcycles, and wrestling tigers.
Unofficially, his studly reputation was sealed with his torrid romance with Ursula Andress— not to mention affairs with Brigitte Bardot and Laura Antonelli. They, like all of his French fans, are part of "le Belmondisme." "Everyone knows that an ugly guy with a good line gets the chicks."
Photographed by Peter Lindbergh at the Theatre des Varietes in Paris on January 27, 1999.
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The LIONESS
NICOLE KIDMAN, actress, First Wife of Hollywood.
Twenty-two films and one notable Broadway engagement: The Blue (pant, pant!) Room, in which she plays five roles and—as the British tabloids liked to say—gets her kit off. Cor blimey!
Specialties
Babe with a Ph.D.: Days of Thunder (1990), Batman Forever (1995), The Peacemaker (1997). Existentially Tortured Blueblood: Billy Bathgate (1991), Far and Away (1992), The Portrait of a Lady (1996). Lustful Psycho: Malice (1993) and, most memorably, To Die For (1995). For all we know, she'll get to combine all three roles in Stanley Kubrick's long-aborning, mystery-shrouded Eyes Wide Shut, in which she and her husband, Tom Cruise, play sexually adventurous psychoanalysts.
Photographed by Annie Leibovitz at Manhattan's Booth Theatre on January 18, 1999.
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The OLD DEVILS
SEAN CONNERY and MICHAEL CAINE, actors, mates, eminences grises.
Credits:
Connery: 66 films, including Marnie (1964), The Hill (1965), The Man Who Would Be King (1975), The Untouchables (1987), which earned him an Oscar, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), The Russia House (1990), Rising Sun (1993), and the upcoming thriller Entrapment, co-starring Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Caine: 90 films, including Sleuth (1972), Dressed to Kill (1980), Educating Rita (1983), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), which earned him an Oscar, Little Voice (1998), and The Cider House Rules, later this year.
Star-making role:
Connery: Oversexed spy in seven James Bond films, including From Russia with Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964), and Diamonds Are Forever (1971).
Caine: Oversexed cad in Alfie (1966).
Boldest move:
Connery: Dropping the Bond thing.
Caine: Keeping his Cockney accent.
On aging:
Connery: "These days, I like my orange juice shaken, not stirred."
Caine: "I'm not middle-aged anymore. I don't know many people who are 120."
Most bizarre connection:
Connery: Was a Mr. Universe contestant (Scotland, 1953).
Caine: Married to a former Miss World contestant, Shakira Caine (Guyana, 1967).
Photographed by Michael O'Neill at the Parker Meridien hotel in New York City on November 22, 1998.
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The NEXT BIG ONE
CATE BLANCHETT, actress.
Shopworn adjective used by every film critic on earth: luminous. Has been imprisoned as a P.O.W. in Paradise Road (1997), as a Protestant in Elizabeth (1998)—a role which won her a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination—and, metaphorically, as a compulsive gambler in Oscar and Lucinda (1997). Stars she's beaten out for roles: Sharon Stone, Meg Ryan, Winona Ryder (for Oscar and Lucinda), and Kate Winslet (for Elizabeth). Co-stars she's made out with: Ralph Fiennes, in Oscar and Lucinda, Joe Fiennes, in Elizabeth. ("Very good gene pool, those boys.") Telltale sign that she's as smart as they say she is: Still lives in her native Australia with her husband, screenwriter Andrew Upton. "I'm the Next Big One?," Blanchett asks. "Yeah, the next one for about five minutes." Upcoming: Pushing Tin, alongside John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton, and a bit part in Anthony Minghella's The Talented Mr. Ripley.
Photographed by Annie Leibovitz in Palm Springs on December 5, 1998.
The MINI-MOGULS
ERIC FELLNER and TIM BEVAN, producers.
If only producers were always rewarded for passing over jaded A-list stars in order to hire obscure Indian directors and Australian actresses. After pinning their faith on Shekhar Kapur and Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth, the charismatic co-chairmen of white-hot Working Title Films officially became the toasts of Hollywood—a refreshing development, since they live and work in London. Fellner, 39, and Bevan, 41, have lately compiled the best resume this side of the Weinsteins, having earned more than $1 billion and 21 Oscar nominations —7 for Elizabeth—thanks to their impossibly sharp business acumen (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Bean) and their uncanny knack for giving Americans what they need (Dead Man Walking, Fargo) rather than what they want. Next up: the romantic comedy Notting Hill, starring Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant. Working Title was an indie before it was bought by PolyGram, which was then acquired by Seagram's Edgar Bronfman Jr. Now Bronfman is reportedly urging the partners to sign with Universal, a division of Seagram's. Several other studios are courting them as well. Bevan is said to be the Don Simpson to Fellner's Jerry Bruckheimer. "I'm extremely decisive," Bevan explains, "and he's extremely charming."
Photographed by Lorenzo Agius at the Museum of the Moving Image in London on January 29, 1999.
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The CURVEBALL
DONALD SUTHERLAND, actor.
Ninety films. His terrific performance as Steve Prefontaine's track coach in Robert Towne's Without Limits would never have seemed to be in the cards back in the 60s, when Sutherland's lankiness and bug eyes consigned him to horror films. (His fourth movie, Die! Die! My Darling!, was also Tallulah Bankhead's last.) But since M*A*S*H (1970), in which he originated the role of Hawkeye Pierce, he has emerged as the best actor of the Beatty-Hoffman-Redford generation not to have been nominated for an Academy Award. Notable omissions: Klute (1971), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), and Ordinary People (1980). Four of Sutherland's five children are named after directors: Kiefer, for Warren Kiefer, director of Sutherland's first film, Castle of the Living Dead (1964); Roeg, for Nicolas Roeg, who directed Sutherland opposite Julie Christie in Don't Look Now (1973); Rossif, for French documentarian Frederic Rossif; and Angus Redford, for Robert Redford, who directed Ordinary People. Good thing he didn't have a child after doing Six Degrees of Separation (1993), whose director was Fred Schepisi. Photographed (as Paul Gauguin) by Herb Ritts at Smashbox Studios in Culver City, California, on December 4, 1998.
The BOYFRIEND
RUPERT EVERETT, actor, author, ambassador to Straight America.
Twenty-five films, including Another Country (1984), as a schoolboy turned spy; The Madness of King George (1994), as an effete Prince of Wales; My Best Friend's Wedding (1997), as the Bacharach-singing gay confidant; and Shakespeare in Love (1998), as a professionally competitive Christopher Marlowe. My Best Friend's Wedding was re-shot after test-screening audiences revolted against the idea of Roberts's ending up with an anonymous straight guy. (Julia ended up with Rupert instead.) Was kicked out of acting school for insubordination. Once sent a pubic hair to a critical theatergoer. Has cheerfully discussed his past experiences as a "rent boy." Upcoming: A Midsummer Night's Dream, in which he'll play Oberon opposite Michelle Pfeiffer and Kevin Kline, and The Next Best Thing, a romantic comedy he wrote for himself and his friend Madonna. First line of his semi-autobiographical novel, Hello Darling, Are You Working?: "By the time he was eight he knew he would never be a Great Actress."
Photographed by Helmut Newton in Miami Beach, Florida, on January 21, 1999.
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The MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD MOD
MIKE MYERS, actor, comedian, writer, groovester.
Ten films, more than a few of which have included an absurd characterization of a British person. Which makes sense, since Myers is Canadian. For example:
Wayne's World 2 (1993): Features stoned British roadie, forever droning on about Ozzy Osbourne.
So I Married an Axe Murderer (1993): Contains pivotal scene involving drunk bagpiper ("A piper is down!"); employs haggis as a plot device; includes gratuitous swipes at the shape of Scottish heads.
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997): The culmination of Myers's Anglo-fascination; "shagadelic enters the American lexicon.
Next up: Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.
"Britain is interesting from a dental standpoint. They won the war, but they lost their teeth."
Photographed by David LaChapell in Los Angeles on February 7, 1999.
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The All-Star
MERYL STREEP, actress.
She's earned every superlative except this one: the Ty Cobb-of Hollywood. In the Oscar-nomination race, Streep has the highest batting average in history among heavy hitters—.393—with 11 in 28 films, including last year's One True Thing. (By contrast, Katharine Hepburn's average is a middling .255, Bette Davis's meager .111.) Streep, 49, has won two Hollywood batting crowns outright—in 1979 (Kramer vs. Kramer) and 1982 (Sophie's Choice).
Has famously mastered at least six foreign accents —Polish, British, Danish, Australian, Italian, Irish—but spends much of her time at home in Connecticut, where she lives with her husband, sculptor Donald Gummer, and their four children.
Upcoming: a music teacher in Wes Craven's 50 Violins, pinch-hitting for the film's original star, Madonna, who replaced Streep in Evita.
"Whoever is playing her lover is in love with her, and whoever is playing the villain is a little scared of her, and whoever is playing the best friend is her best friend. She shifts her soul slightly, and I don't know that there's ever been anyone who ever worked in films who's ever done it quite that way."—Mike Nichols, who directed Streep in Silkwood (1983), Heartburn (1986), and Postcards from the Edge (1990).
Photographed by Herb Ritts as she prepared for the Golden Globes in Los Angeles on January 24, 1999
The HEAVYWEIGHTS
PAUL SCHRADER and MARTIN SCORSESE, directors, writers.
So let's get this straight: they collaborated on three of the most extraordinary films of the modern era (Taxi Driver, 1976; Raging Bull, 1980; and The Last Temptation of Christ, 1988) and won absolutely nothing—no Oscars, no Golden Globes. Then again ...
This was always an odd pairing—the street-smart Italian from New York City (Scorsese, 56) and the elusive Dutch Protestant from rural Michigan (Schrader, 52).
Besides, each has fared O.K. on his own (particularly given their affection for unhappy endings, frequently involving death). Scorsese, arguably the finest director of his generation, has received three Oscar nominations for best director (Raging Bull, 1980; The Last Temptation of Christ, 1988; and Goodfellas, 1990) and two for best screenplay. Schrader has written 20 films and directed 12, including Cat People (1982), Patty Hearst (1988), and Affliction (1998), which was nominated for an Oscar.
Upcoming: their fourth collaboration, Bringing Out the Dead, starring Nicolas Cage as an addled, angry Manhattan paramedic. Scorsese after Taxi Driver didn't win any major awards: "Apparently, the picture made itself somehow; it didn't have a script or a director."
Photographed by Michael O'Neill in Scorsese's private screening room in New York City on January 30, 1999.
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The INDIE VIXEN
CHRISTINA RICCI, actress.
Twenty-two films in Hollywood; 19 years on earth.
The subversive moppet of The Addams Family (1991) and Addams Family Values (1993) has morphed into the moody moll of indie-world—part Russ Meyer ultra-vixen, part Foxes-era Jodie Foster. Her C.V. for 1997-98 says it all: Ang Lee's The Ice Storm, Don Roos's The Opposite of Sex, Terry Gilliam's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Vincent Gallo's Buffalo '66, and John Waters's Pecker.
Upcoming: Katrina to Johnny Depp's Ichabod Crane in Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow, and 200 Cigarettes, co-starring Ricci's best friend, Gaby Hoffmann. "I think the main reason a lot of child stars don't make it is that it's hard to see someone as cute and then to all of a sudden see them as having more depth. I guess I was just lucky that, when I was little, nobody thought I was that cute."
Photographed by Annie Leibovitz at the Saharan Motor Hotel in West Hollywood on September 25, 1998.
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The GOOD FAMILY
THE WAGNERS
Clockwise from top: Robert Wagner, Jill St. John, Natasha Gregson Wagner, Courtney Wagner, and Katie Wagner.
Robert, 69, has made 50 films and starred in Hart to Hart, the 80s detective drama that paired him with Stefanie Powers. He has lately made a cottage industry out of playing, in essence, Robert Wagner— in last year's Wild Things, in the two Austin Powers movies, and in the "anti-dentite" episode of Seinfeld. One of Hollywood's most prolific Lotharios, he romanced Debbie Reynolds, Barbara Stanwyck, and Tina Sinatra before settling down with Natalie Wood in 1972. He married St. John nine years after Wood's drowning death.
St. John, 58, has appeared in 23 films, most notably the Bond classic Diamonds Are Forever. Natasha, 28, has starred in James Toback's Two Girls and a Guy. Katie, 34, is a freelance television reporter. Courtney, 25, is an artist.
Photographed by Sam Jones at the Wagner-family home in Los Angeles on November 27, 1998.
The FACE
LORETTA YOUNG, actress.
That she made nearly 100 films in just 25 years is impressive. That she worked with Frank Capra (Platinum Blonde, 1931), John Ford (Four Men and a Prayer, 1938), and Orson Welles (The Stranger, 1946) is extraordinary. That she co-starred with Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., William Holden, Tyrone Power and James Cagney is a total mindblower.
She won one Oscar in 1948 for her portrayal of the braided Minnesota lass in The Farmer's Daughter, beating out Rosalind Russell (Mourning Becomes Electro). Five years later, she became the queen of Eisenhower-era matrons in The Loretta Young Show, which eight ferociously chipper years.
In 1994, Young's "adopted" daughter, Judy Lewis, announced that Young and Gable were her biological parents —a claim that Young, who had co-starred in The Call of the Wild (1935) with the then married actor, has neither confirmed nor denied. Young on Young: "Not an actress, mind you. A movie star."
Photographed by Firooz Zahedi at Young's house in Palm Springs on January 28, 1999.
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The FAMIGLIA
JOHN, AIDA, and NICK TURTURRO, actors.
The New York—reared Turturro brood is the best thing to happen to ethnicized urban grit since Sidney Lumet. John, the eldest at 42, has been in 40 movies, including 6 of Spike Lee's (most memorably as the raging pizza-parlor prince in Do the Right Thing) and 3 of the Coen brothers' (most memorably in the title role in Barton Fink). He was nominated for a Golden Globe in 1994 for his portrayal of Herbie Stempel in Quiz Show, and lives in Brooklyn with his wife, actress Katherine Borowitz.
Forever yelling out of tenement windows, 36-year-old cousin Aida has appeared in 28 films. Most of them, including Barry Levinson's Sleepers (1996), Woody Allen's Celebrity (1998), and Martin Scorsese's upcoming Bringing Out the Dead, have been set in New York.
Nick, 37, best known as Detective James Martinez on NYPD Blue, has appeared in 11 films, including 2 Lee movies with his big brother—Mo' Better Blues (1990) and Jungle Fever (1991)—and the red-sauce sleeper Federal Hill (1994).
Aida has acted in John's two directorial efforts, with Nick in the autobiographical Mac (1997), and in Illuminata (1998). The three appeared together in Sam Henry Kass's The Search for One-Eyed Jimmy (1996). "My response to that is, like, Fuck you, man, and fuck you again." —John on the typecasting of Italian-Americans.
Photographed by Michael O'Neill at the Cucci civic center in Jersey City, New Jersey, on December 29, 1998.
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The RASCAL
JEAN RENO, actor.
Finally: a star that mallgoers and Francophile cineasts can agree on. He was the acid-throwing roughneck in La Femme Nikita (1990), the hit man with a heart of gold in The Professional (1994), a well-turned-out spy in Mission: Impossible (1996), and one of Robert De Niro's partners in Ronin (1998), which Reno says he enjoyed because the script called for "no words." Less joyful, he says, was Godzilla (1998), whose script called for no plot.
In France, Reno is the biggest movie sex symbol since Gérard Depardieu (which tells you something about the French). Nevertheless, his good friend (and five-time collaborator) Luc Besson, the director, refused to cast Reno in the title role of the upcoming Joan of Arc, adding, "Not even if you shave."
"The problem with France is that 80 percent of the films I do are standard, intimate, romantic things, and I don't like that. It's always from the director's point of view—you know, his dick."
Photographed by Michael O'Neill at La Goulue in New York City on September 21, 1998.
The SVENGALI
ED LIMATO, agent of agents.
Loves his clients with such ferocious intensity that he has been known to cry when they don't heed his advice, which is virtually always sound. (Memo to fledgling agents: Try emotion.) Was recently named co-president of ICM, where he has worked since 1988, fearlessly representing an A-list that includes Dustin Hoffman, Richard Gere, Michelle Pfeiffer, Denzel Washington, Winona Ryder, Mel Gibson, Liam Neeson, and Dennis Quaid.
A former disc jockey from New York, Limato, 62, started the old-fashioned way: muling letters and muffin baskets in ICM's mailroom, ascending the ranks, and defecting to the William Morris Agency, where he worked in the 80s. Legendary status was assured when he talked a struggling Richard Gere out of turning down Pretty Woman. Every year, he throws one of the biggest pre-Oscar parties in town.
"As an agent, it's easy. You are who you represent."
Photographed (with assistants Evan Tripoli and Jim Osborne) by Firooz Zahedi at Limato's home in Beverly Hills on January 15, 1999.
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The ODD COUPLE
GARRY SHANDLING and WARREN BEATTY, actor, writer close pals.
Defined himself by playing ...
Shandling: Undersexed antihero of HBO's The Larry Sanders Show—in other words, himself.
Beatty: Oversexed rascals in Splendor in the Grass (1961), Shampoo (1975), Heaven Can Wait (1978), and Reds (1981), which won him an Oscar for best director.
Uses Hollywood to ...
Shandling: Deconstruct Hollywood (The Larry Sanders Show).
Beatty: Deconstruct politics (Reds, Bulworth, 1998).
Solved his Woman Problem thanks to ...
Shandling: Daily Zen meditation.
Beatty: Annette Bening.
Helped out his chum by . . .
Shandling: Appearing with Beatty in Love Affair (1996) and the upcoming comedy Town and Country.
Beatty: Appearing in the last episode of Larry Sanders.
Personal credo ...
Shandling: "My friends tell me that I have an intimacy issue—but I don't think they know me."
Beatty "If you have something to hide, then hide it."
Photographed by Michael O'Neill at Solo Studio in Los Angeles on January 25, 1999.
The PLAYER
DON CHEADLE, actor.
Fourteen films. Has stolen every movie he's been in since his debut as Mouse, the psychopath in Devil in a Blue Dress (1995). Then came Buck, the stereo-salesman-cowboy-porn-star in Boogie Nights (1997); Sylvester, the moral pillar of Rosewood (1997); L.D., the Rolaids-popping drug lord in Bulworth (1998); Snoopy, the diamond-dealing hard ass in Out of Sight (1998); and one swingin' Sammy Davis Jr. in HBO's The Rat Pack (1998), whose story Cheadle, 34, would like to turn into a TV mini series.
Lives in Venice Beach with actress Bridgid Coulter and their two daughters.
Up next: starring, next month, in HBO's adaptation of the Ernest J. Gaines novel A Lesson Before Dying. "I'm glad that people try to write roles that anyone can do, but I also don't ever want to end up in movies where the fact that I'm a black man is a non-issue. In America, it's always an issue."
Photographed by Herb Ritts at Elysian Park in Los Angeles on December 5, 1998.
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The NYMPH
DREW BARRYMORE, actress, ball of fire.
Thirty films.
Drew's Cycle of Life
Early 80s: Chaste, green-eyed cherub (E.T.).
Late 80s: Talented but unemployable druggie washout.
Early 90s: Occasionally employable teen sexpot (Poison Ivy, Guncrazy, The Amy Fisher Story).
Mid-90s: Highly employable female lead (Boys on the Side, Batman Forever, Everyone Says I Love You).
Late 90s: Chaste, green-eyed cherub (Ever After, The Wedding Singer, the upcoming Never Been Kissed).
Places where Drew has appeared nude or semi-nude: the cover of Interview, 1992, the cover of Playboy, 1995; onstage at New York's Blue Angel nightclub, 1995; Late Show with David Letterman, 1995.
Young bucks whom Drew has dated: actors Stephen Dorff (in third grade), Corey Feldman, Jamie Walters, Luke Wilson, and Jeremy Davies, and Hole guitarist Eric Erlandvon.
Young buck whom Drew has wisely declined to date: Lyle Menendez.
Drew's famous relations: John Barrymore, grandfather; Lionel and Ethel Barrymore, great-uncle and great-aunt, Steven Spielberg, godfather; Frances Bean Cobain, goddaughter.
Drew on being Drew: "I know certain actors are totally fucked up on drugs, and yet it gets covered up. Why the fuck wasn't I excused for exhaustion' or 'the flu'?"
Photographed by Annie Leibovitz at Rancho de los Fresnos in Thousand Oaks, California, on January 21, 1999.
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The JESTER
ROBERTO BENIGNI, actor, comedian, director, writer.
His angelic, rubber-faced performance in last year's "Holocaust comedy," Life Is Beautiful, richly deserved the Oscar nomination it received. But Hollywood's true Benigni fans—which is to say the three or four who paid to see Johnny Stecchino (1991)—have been on the bandwagon since 1986, thanks to his role as the yammering jailbreaker in Jim Jarmusch's minor classic, Down by Law.
You've got to love a critically acclaimed European film star who refers to himself as an Italian Donald Duck. The unfailingly cheerful moppet has appeared in 20 films, directed 6, and been the most beloved man in Italy for more than a decade (particularly by his wife, actress Nicoletta Braschi, who has appeared in most of his films). Disney and Warner Bros, have tried to hire him as a writer.
Benigni idolizes Charlie Chaplin so intensely that he wore Chaplin's prison-camp number (7397) from The Great Dictator (1940) in Life Is Beautiful. "When you are able to make people laugh, the sky opens—it is like gold."
Photographed by Thierry Bouet in Rome on July 24, 1998.
The LOVER
JOSEPH FIENNES, actor, smolderer.
Only five films, but two of them, Elizabeth and Shakespeare in Love, happen to have been among last year's best, and afforded him the chance to make passionate on-screen love to Cate Blanchett and Gwyneth Paltrow.
Upcoming: The Very Thought of You, a romantic comedy with Monica Potter and Rufus Sewell, and Forever Mine, Paul Schrader's latest, co-starring Gretchen Mol.
A few years ago, arriving in Hollywood as "Ralph's brother," he met a studio executive who said, "Love your work, Joe." When Joe asked what he had seen him in, the executive replied, "Nothing."
"In Romeo and Juliet, you don't go for Romeo, a turgid turd yawning on about love. You go for Mercutio, the one with the cock jokes."
Photographed by Herb Ritts in London on June 25, 1998.
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The MAVERICKS
JON VOIGHT and ANGELINA JOLIE, actors, father and daughter.
Voight: 60 years old, 30 films, three Academy Award nominations, one Oscar, for playing a disabled Vietnam vet in Hal Ashby's Coming Home. From his cowpoke breakthrough in Midnight Cowboy (1969) and onward through Deliverance (1972), Conrack (1974), and Coming Home (1978), he was the embodiment of boyish sensitivity scarred by life's harsh realities. He has since resurfaced as one of filmdom's most reliable weirdos/menaces with Mission: Impossible (1996); U-Turn, The Rainmaker, Rosewood, and Anaconda (1997); and The General and Enemy of the State (1998).
Jolie: 23 years old, 14 films, plus a pouty, half-naked promenade through the streets of New York City in the Rolling Stones' risible video for "Anybody Seen My Baby," in which she plays an ecdysiast pursued by Mick Jagger. Two-time Golden Globe Award winner, for the TV movies George Wallace (1997, in which she played the Alabama governor's second wife) and Gia (1998, in which she played the heroin-addicted model Gia Carangi).
Angelina, an avowed bad girl, wears death tattoos and rubber clothes, and likes to play with knives. Some of this seems to have rubbed off on her old man.
Photographed by Herb Rifts at Club Ed in Lancaster, California, on December 12, 1998.
The ORIGINALS
KIRK DOUGLAS, actor, and RAY STARK, producer.
They've been playfully yanking each other's chains since the early 1950s, when Stark, who was then a top agent, signed Douglas as a client. (Stark also represented Marilyn Monroe and Richard Burton.)
Possessed of the most famous chin in Hollywood, Douglas, 82, has made 74 films— frequently involving angry men with little patience—and earned three Oscar nominations, for his roles in Champion (1949), The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), and Lust for Life (1956). He also won a lifetime-achievement Oscar in 1995. He worked with Burt Lancaster six times, and they called each other "Koik" and "Boit."
Stark, 83, has personally produced 26 films, and his companies have produced more than 250. He has earned two Oscar nominations for films about bullheaded, unpredictable women, Funny Girl (1968) and The Goodbye Girl (1977). He has made four films with Barbra Streisand and eight with Neil Simon, including The Sunshine Boys (1975).
Stark and Douglas are such good friends that when Stark's son, Peter, died from a fall in 1970, Douglas read the eulogy. But perhaps the best indication of their mutual affection is the fact that they've never collaborated on a film.
Photographed by Michael O'Neill in Stark's house in Los Angeles on January 26, 1999.
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The DARLING
RENEE ZELLWEGER, actress, the new Jean Arthur.
Memorable roles: frowsy schoolteacher who falls for brutish pulp novelist in The Whole Wide World (1996); Tom Cruise's lovably doofy girl Friday in Jerry Maguire (1996), the film which christened her gum-snapping celebrity; an existentially tortured Hasidic wife—that's right, Hasidic —in A Price Above Rubies (1998); an uptight journalist in the terminally weepy One True Thing (1998).
Just look at her: is it any wonder that she used to be a cheerleader, that she's often mistaken for the earnest folksinger Jewel, or that she has turned down roles because she couldn't bring her beloved Labrador, Dylan, onto the set?
"If Arnold Schwarzenegger can keep his name, I can darn well keep mine."
Photographed by Bruce Weber in the penthouse of the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles on November 18, 1998.
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The LIGHT TOUCH
STANLEY DONEN, director, producer, choreographer.
Twenty-seven films.
Hollywood's finest confectioner of mid-century delights. Loosed Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra on Manhattan in On the Town (1949); sent Kelly a-splashin' down the street in Singin' in the Rain (1952); betrothed Jane Powell to Howard Keel in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954); whirled Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn through Paris in Funny Face (1957); let Hepburn fall rapturously in love with Cary Grant in Charade (1963).
Last year, upon receiving his Oscar for lifetime achievement, the then 73-year-old Donen gave the most charming acceptance speech in history, breaking into a soft-shoe and singing "Cheek to Cheek."
"If we remade Singin' in the Rain today, when Gene Kelly sings in the rain I think he'd be looking around to make sure he wasn't going to get mugged."
Photographed by Michael O'Neill at Drive in Studio in New York City on July 16, 1998.
The ICEMEN
JERRY BRUCKHEIMER'S PICKUP HOCKEY LEAGUE
Since 1993, it's been the hottest game in town every Sunday—thanks to Bruckheimer, who, having produced Top Gun, The Rock, and Armageddon, knows a few things about action.
The players: (1) film editor Carl McKay, (2) promoter Rick Munro, (3) actor Scott Wolf, (4) actor Cuba Gooding Jr., (5) producer Max Schwartz, (6) actor Greg Collins, (7) manager Alan lezman, (8) producer Tag Mendillo, (9) actor Chad Lowe, (10) producer Ken Olandt, (11) producer Andrew Form, (12) actor Chris Nelson, (13) writer Jason Elen, (14) producer Michael Rotenberg, (15) actor Joe Kelly, (16) actor Billy Devlin, (17) Priority Records president Bryan Turner, (18) sports agent Pat Brisson, (19) actor Alan Thicke, (20) director Rick Rosenthal, (21) producer Peter Winther, (22) actor Kiefer Sutherland, (23) actor Erik Lindsay, (24) Jerry Bruckheimer, (25) writer Michael Platt, (26) actor Michael Rosenbaum, (27) producer Barry Josephson, (28) location scout Matthew Chamberlin, (29) Sony Pictures Classics co-president Tom Bernard, (30) photographer Frank Masi.
Occasional ringers: Tom Cruise, Wayne Gretzky, Denis Leary, Mike Myers.
Photographed by Sam Jones at the Iceoplex hockey rink in Los Angeles on January 17, 1999.
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The PROFESSIONAL
ERNEST LEHMAN, writer, producer, director.
Lehman, perhaps the greatest screenwriter in history, has earned four best screenplay Oscar nominations. His films include Sabrina (1954), Sweet Smell of Success (1957), North by Northwest (1959), West Side Story (1961), The Sound of Music (1965), and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966).
Two reasons why screenwriters confuse Lehman with a god: Persuaded Alfred Hitchcock that Cary Grant should be chased by a crop-dusting plane (rather than a tornado) in North by Northwest. Persuaded Billy Wilder to keep Bogart and Hepburn out of bed in Sabrina.
While he worked with Hitchcock, the two spent much of their time discussing dinner, other people's films, the morning headlines, the stock market, the president, Lew Wasserman, the Middle East; at other times, they sat in stony silence.
Letter to the editor of Newsweek, May 17, 1954, and Newsweek's response: "Pride of authorship, innate immodesty, and the usual desire for recognition lead me to understandable disappointment at your failure to make any reference whatsoever to the screenplay of 'Executive Suite' in your five-page tribute to the picture. —Ernest Lehman"
"With deep remorse, and determination to give recognition where recognition is due, Newsweek wishes to credit Ernest Lehman with the authorship of the screenplay adapted from Cameron Hawley's best seller 'Executive Suite.'"
Photographed by Art Streiber in Ventura County, California—not far from where North by Northwest's crop-duster scene was filmed—on August 12, 1998.
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The GRANDE DAME
OLIVIA DE HAVILLAND, actress.
Fifty films; five Academy Award nominations; two Oscars.
Began her movie career as Errol Flynn's kewpie in 30s swashbucklers such as Captain Blood (1935) and The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). Then, in 1939, came her breakthrough role, as Miss Melanie in Gone with the Wind. At 82, she has outlived all the film's other leading actors by more than 30 years.
Has feuded publicly with her sister, actress Joan Fontaine, and headed off Bette Davis's feud with another Joan, Crawford, by replacing the latter in Robert Aldrich's sicko classic, Hush ... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964).
Her greatest film triumphs, in the 40s melodramas To Each His Own (1946) and The Heiress (1949), were hard-earned. In the early 40s, she fought with the Warner Bros. suits over the kinds of roles she was getting. She was suspended for six months. When her seven-year contract was up, they wouldn't release her, saying that she still owed them six months' worth of work. She sued, and the landmark ruling that she won—limiting actor-studio contracts to seven years—is still referred to as the De Havilland Decision.
Photographed by Annie Leibovitz at de Havilland's Paris home on February 14, 1998.
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The PRINCE
LEONARDO DICAPRIO, actor, phenomenon.
Sixteen films. The 140-pound slip of a human being at the white-hot center of modern celebrity—and, for that matter, Woody Allen's Celebrity (1998).
Other notable roles: Johnny Depp's retarded brother in What's Eating Gilbert Grape? (1994) which earned him an Academy Award nomination; poetic jock in The Basketball Diaries (1995); MTV-style lover in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (1996)—a role he wouldn't have taken "if I'd had to jump around in tights"; doomed hero in a little nautical picture called Titanic (1997).
Upcoming: The Beach, based on the novel by Alex Garland.
Estimated number of Leo Web sites: 500. N
umber of Leo biographies which have made the New York Times best-seller list: 5.
Number of Leo books in print: 11.
DiCaprio's legendary capacity for night-crawling developed early—when he was five, he was kicked off the set of Romper Room for excessive romping.
Photographed by Annie Leibovitz at the Derby in Los Angeles on April 17, 1998.