Celebrity Tidbits

[DudeAsInCool]

January 28, 2007 -- ONE of the biggest disappointments in director Steven Spielberg's life was Alfred Hitchcock's repeated refusal to meet him - but it turns out the Master of Suspense had a bizarre excuse. In his memoir, "Things I've Said, But Proba bly Shouldn't Have," due in May from Wiley, actor Bruce Dern writes that he tried and tried to convince the director of "Psycho" and "The Birds" to say hello to Spielberg, who had just triumphed with "Jaws." "I said, 'You're his idol. He just to sit at your feet for five minutes and chat with you' . . . He said, 'Isn't that the boy who made the fish movie? . . . I could never sit down and talk to him . . . because I look at him and feel like such a whore,' " Dern relates. Completely puzzled, Dern, who appeared in two Hitchcock flicks, finally pinned the director down: "I said, 'Why do you feel Spielberg makes you a whore?' Hitch said, 'Because I'm the voice of the 'Jaws' ride [at Universal Studios]. They paid me a mil lion dollars. And I took it and I did it. I'm such a whore. I can't sit down and talk to the boy who did the fish movie . . . I couldn't even touch his hand."

Source: NYPost - Page 6

[DudeAsInCool]

While last year's Newsweek Oscar director roundtable featured George Clooney's shocking reminder about the heavy-handed skeleton lurking in his sitcom-acting closet, this year's thespian-centric discussion contains the equally surprising admission that fans of Babel's Brad Pitt have the exotic dancing profession to thank (or to blame) for his career:

PITT:... Yeah, my job was to drive [strippers] to bachelor parties and things. I'd pick them up, and at the gig I'd collect the money, play the bad Prince tapes and catch the girls' clothes. It was not a wholesome atmosphere, and it got very depressing. After two months I went in to quit, and the guy said, "Listen, I've got this one last gig tonight." So I did it, and this girl--I'd never met her before--was in an acting class taught by a man named Roy London [a famous acting coach]. I went and checked it out, and it really set me on the path to where I am now.

A stripper changed the course of your career.

PITT: [Nods] Strippers changed my life.

We'll see that in the National Enquirer next week.

PITT: [Looks toward the ceiling] I just want one week off. Just one.

Defamer