• Tyra Banks took the stand to testify against accused stalker Brady Green yesterday and explained how she's had to hire a bodyguard and driver as a result of the incident. She also said she's no longer jogging outside and has been forced to hire a personal trainer, but we're pretty sure she had one of those long before Green came along. [NYDN, NYP]
• After 13 years of marriage, Sean Penn has filed for legal separation from wife Robin, news that may not come as a huge surprise given his long list of rumored paramours, including Petra Nemcova, Helena Christensen, Ines Misan, Naomi Campbell and Natalie Portman. [P6, People, Extra]
• Liev Schreiber and Naomi Watts' son, Sasha, was admitted to the hospital on Tuesday night for respiratory issues. [People]
• Madonna supposedly wants a summer house in the Hamptons. But she can't find a place willing to put up with her horse-related demands. [P6]
• Meanwhile, baby Mercy's 24-year-old father is demanding full custody of his daughter, since Madonna lacks "good morals." [NYP]

Apparently, Hugh Jackman would prefer his career uncapsized, as Variety notes he has pulled out of Steven Soderbergh's upcoming 3-D musical, Cleo (citing scoffed-at "scheduling conflicts"). So who in Hollywood can replace him?

We'd be lying if we said we weren't excited for Cleo, Steven Soderbergh's upcoming 3-D Cleopatra musical/possible practical joke starring Hugh Jackman and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Now, Soderbergh has revealed insane new details.

It's long been rumored that Steven Soderbergh keeps a checklist in his wallet — a tattered index card on which he's scrawled dreams nurtured since before his sex, lies and videotape breakthrough nearly 20 years ago: "win an Oscar," "make a four-hour Socialist biopic," "work with a porn star," and alllll the way at the bottom, "shoot a completely fucked-up 3-D musical version of Cleopatra." Finally, with Catherine Zeta-Jones and Hugh Jackman in talks to star, he might be that much closer to crossing off that last Impossible Dream.Variety reports that Soderbergh will follow his current film The Girlfriend Experience with Cleo, a $30 million project with music provided by Guided By Voices and a script by GBV's bassist James Greer. No one seems to know how or even if this news squares with the Liberace biopic Soderbergh is plotting with Michael Douglas and Matt Damon, but we admit we're a little less intrigued by Cleo knowing that Jackman would not, in fact, play the Egyptian queen. And surely, in a sleek, dark loft somewhere in Australia, a sleepless Baz Luhrmann is wondering why he didn't think of this first.

♦ Howard Stern and Beth Ostrosky are getting married tonight. Mark Consuelos, the husband of Kelly Ripa, is presiding over the ceremony. So if you have no plans and you'd like to see this bizarre menagerie of people for yourself, please show up at Le Cirque on East 58th Street. [P6]
♦ Despite rumors, Elisabeth Hasselbeck says she has no plans to leave the View for Fox News. [E!, People]
♦ Madonna and Alex Rodriguez may have had dinner together, although both of their reps deny it. [P6]
♦ Mark Ronson and Amy Winehouse are working together on a new song. Hopefully it'll turn out better than their last attempt at a collaboration, which "ended in tears." [Mirror]

Barbara Walters doesn't look 79, does she? Must be all that Oil of Olay that keeps her so youthful. Happy birthday, Babs! Others celebrating today: Will Smith is 40. Designer Thakoon Panichgul is turning 34. Our very own Secretary of Defense, Bob Gates, is 65. Heather Locklear is turning 47. Actress Aida Turturro is 46. Catherine Zeta-Jones is 39. Filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar is 57. Tate Donovan is turning 45. Cheryl Tiegs is 61. And Hugh Hefner's girlfriend, Bridget Marquardt, might as well move into a retirement home: she's 35 today.

Setting aside the redundant video that uncannily resembles stock news footage shot sometime during the Nixon Adminstration, there's plenty to not get about HuffPo contributor John Farr's recent overview of "smart, classy" actresses' decline in Hollywood. It's not like we can even necessarily argue with his taste for Joan Allen, to whom he ascribes the sense of sophistication, glamour and taste evident in icons like Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, Vivian Leigh and Greta Garbo:

At this point we’re far more informed than we’d like to be when it comes to all the freaky diet methods celebrities use to shed pounds and pull off that whole homeless glam look Colin Farrell’s currently sporting. But while A-listers tend to either keep mum on the subject (like Katie Holmes and Renee Zellweger) or blab endlessly about being “obsessed with potato chips!” and eating “fried food every day!” (Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angelina Jolie), the press-hungry lesser-knowns have yet to learn the rules. In the upcoming issue of TV Guide, ten small-screen stars commit major overshares about how their body obsession is weighing on their mindgrapes. Find out who dropped major pounds just because TMZ published pictures of her “very, very soft” stomach, who only vacuums in heels to tone her calves, and which former “fat baby” admits to working out for over an hour every day, after the jump.

Among those sniveling, rodent-like, British sorts who follow the weight fluctuations of actresses who look inarguably healthy, Catherine Zeta-Jones's current "condition" is approaching near-scandal levels of alarm. For example, the Daily Mail today cites a not-harrowing new collection of photos supposedly suggesting Zeta-Jones has suffered a perilous loss of curvature and, well, stone:

[Photo Credit: Bauer-Griffin]

For every swan dress there is a fire engine red body-hugger worn by the likes of Catherine Zeta-Jones, or one of those golden sparkle-y things that just melts all over Halle Berry's body. To prove we're not just big meanies when it comes to discussing Oscar outfits of yesterday, we've put together our Top Ten picks for the most exclamatory, drop-dead dresses ever worn on an Oscar red carpet, and even redeemed one member of the Worst Club by placing her at the shiny top of our Best-Dressed cake.

For the 2000 wedding of Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas, British tabloid OK! had an exclusive contract with the Douglas-Jones enterprise to run dewy styled photos of the proceedings. Rival exclamatory publication Hello! scammed and ran their own photos, resulting in years of litigation between the two tabs. This week, the dispute reached Britain's highest court — a panel of "Law Lords" in the House of Lords. OK! claims business interference, Hello! claims the journalistic right to "spoil" its rival's scoop. Concerning a particularly unflattering Hello! shot of Douglas feeding her wedding cake, Zeta-Jones says, "I don't usually like my husband shoving a spoon down my throat to be photographed." Notice the key phrase "to be photographed" — Douglas can shove a spoon down her throat all he wants, long as it goes undocumented. So amusing that the highest British court has to waste its time with such frivolous celebrity tomfoolery. Silly foreigners! Oh, wait.

PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our readers. Send yours to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put "sighting" or "PrivacyWatch" in the subject line) and let everyone know about the time you saw Kiefer Sutherland lingering for an uncomfortably long time in the deli meats section of your local market.

In Brazil to promote her new movie The Legend of Zorro, Catherine Zeta-Jones laid down the law when it comes to the daily barrage of lustful, pansexual mummy-fetishists beating a path directly for the contents of eternally youthful husband Michael Douglas' pants:

· With an eye towards cleaning up at next year's holiday box office, Fox signs Ben Stiller for A Night at the Museum, in which Stiller will star as a security guard who "unwittingly unleashes a curse that brings to life the bugs and animals on display." Excuse us. Stiller will star as a twitchy, neurotic, and impotent-rage-prone security guard who "unwittingly unleashes a curse that brings to life the bugs and animals on display." [Variety]
· Despite CBS's killer hurricane and NBC's live debate on The West Wing/two-hour L&O:SVU counterprogramming Hail Marys, America still preferred to watch the creepy, gay-seeming pharmacist contemplate date-raping Marcia Cross on Desperate Housewives. [THR]
· Michael Douglas mercifully chooses a role which will probably not require any further restorative plastic surgery, signing up to play "an eccentric and manic-depressive father who becomes obsessed with his belief that there's buried treasure in the San Fernando Valley" in the Alexander Payne-produced King of California. [Variety]
· Now that an Everybody Loves Raymond spinoff looks like a longshot, Brad Garrett realizes that he might need someone to find him a job, hires William Morris to hunt down the appropriate sitcom second-banana roles and CBS MOWs. [THR]
· It's William Morris Signing Day! Catherine Zeta-Jones returns to the welcoming arms of longtime WMA agent George Freeman, whom she jilted for CAA two years ago. [Variety]

· The WGA West elects Patric Verrone president and installs his entire Writers United slate, giving him "a mandate to follow through on the efforts...to organize animation, cable and the reality TV sector." Translation: There will be many more people to hold up picket signs for the strike in 2007. [Variety]
· Fox will donate 10% of the box office proceeds from the opening weekend of Roll Bounce to Katrina victims, and will screen the movie free before opening night at 80 shelters in the gulf coast, assuring that the refugees' basic human need for period rollerskating movies will not go unmet. [THR]
· Harrison Ford will take some time off between helicopter rescues to star in the Civil War drama Manhunt as the leader of search for Lincoln's assassin. For reasons that aren't entirely clear, Ford will play the character of Col. Everton Conger with a poorly practiced Russian accent. [Variety]
· My Name is Earl has a big debut for NBC, temporarily keeping the trap door underneath president Kevin Reilly's desk from opening and dropping him into a pile of the moldering bones of other failed executives. God help us all if Earl's success brings a new wave of even more incredibly annoying advertising. [THR]
· Hollywood Out of Ideas, Germans and CZJ Edition: Catherine Zeta-Jones signs on to star in Mostly Martha, the American remake of the German romantic dramedy Bella Martha. She will play a chef, whom we assume will have her icy heart melted by something or other as she learns the true value of love. [Variety]

Us Weekly editor Bonnie Fuller has a suggestion for residents of her hometown Toronto to get them over SARS-related depression: "I think that if the city of Toronto could organize various celebrities to take part in an 'I Love Toronto' campaign, that would be great." We agree. In fact, we'd like to nominate the following celebrities to ship to SARS-infested Toronto: David Gest, Liza Minelli, Catherine Zeta Jones, The Strokes, Barbra Streisand, Melanie Griffith, Geraldo Rivera, Britney Spears, all available Osbournes, Catherine Zeta Jones, Mickey Rourke, Christina Aguilera, Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta Jones, Katie Couric, Tom Cruise, Nicholas Cage, Lisa Marie Presley, Catherine Zeta Jones, Michael Jackson (fish; barrel), P.Diddy, Michael Moore, Catherine Zeta Jones... Alright that's enough; if we list everyone, we'll be here all day. But don't forget Catherine Zeta Jones.
Stars to save us from SARS? [Canada.com]

Possible causes of death:
1. Pics of Catherine Zeta-Jones pregnant, naked and smoking. (Cannot read file, as file has been removed under threat of litigation.)
2. Anna Wintour spotted in the Pentium processor.
3. Naked pics of Paris Hilton (Overheating.)
[Ed. noteIf you emailed me anything important recently, please resend to tips@gawker.com]

The Smoking Gun reports that Catherine Zeta Jones is threatening Clear Channel Worldwide with litigation after several of their websites posted the infamous pictures of her pregnant, topless, and smoking, alleging that some of the sites still have the pics up. It should probably be noted that despite Mrs. Jones' reminder that she and her "cabana boy" spouse Michael Douglas won their lawsuit against Hello! it wasn't on the basis of a privacy violation. They had an exclusive contract with another publication for publication of their wedding photos, and Hello! ruined the exclusivity aspect. UPDATE: from a reader: "There is a magazine (Spanish language called Vanidades) that has a whole spread on the infamous pregnant-smoking picture...April edition.
Catherine Zeta Jones [TSG]

From a reader: "[This] has to be the corollary of your new word: Zellweger (v.) letting some random stranger have the luxury of paying for your overpriced restaurant meal. 'Man, I hit it big last night, I met this hot chick. Trouble was, she Zeta Jonesed this huge carbo dinner at Babbo, then she Zellwegered me.'"