After the Friday morning jet crash that killed four people and left musicians Travis Barker and DJ AM badly burned and hospitalized, some good news: though both men are still in critical condition, the medical director of the Georgia burn center where they are being treated says they are expected to make full recoveries.
It will probably be a fun weekend for Lydia Hearst: the heiress turns 24 today. Others blowing out candles today: Jimmy Fallon is 34. Soledad O'Brien of CNN is 42. Richie Akiva is 32, although the invite to his birthday party said it was his 30th. James Lipton is 82. Former HarperCollins chief Jane Friedman is 63. Defense attorney Barry Scheck is turning 59. And model Victoria Silvstedt is 34. On Saturday: Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein (pictured here with Lydia, a first we imagine) will be 54. Financier Joseph Perella will be 67. Sophia Loren will turn 74. Ad exec Scott Goodson will celebrate his 45th. Interior designer Geoffrey Bradfield will be 62. And Jossip's David Hauslaib will turn 25. On Sunday: Jane Rosenthal will be 52. Stephen King will be 61. Bill Murray will celebrate his 58th. Jerry Bruckheimer will be 63. Book publisher Geoff Kloske will turn 39. Natural History museum president Ellen Futter will be 59. Nicole Richie will be 27. Cheryl Hines will turn 43. Luke Wilson will be 37. And filmmaker Ethan Coen will be celebrating his 51st.
Petra Nemcova (left) taking a stroll through the Village after lunch at Da Silvano ... Sarah Jessica Parker leaving her townhouse in the West Village ... Jeremy Piven taking a walk downtown with a mystery blonde ... Whitney Port eating a salad with friends ... Uma Thurman walking down the front steps of her West Village townhouse ... Nicole Richie leaving Starbucks with baby Harlow, and later leaving her hotel en route to a dinner with Mary-Kate Olsen ... Halle Berry and Gabriel Aubry going shopping at Calvin Klein ... Keira Knightley heading inside for a taping of the Charlie Rose Show ... Helena Christensen and Sofia Coppola arriving at Bryant Park for the Marc Jacobs show ... and Jennifer Lopez and Victoria Beckham posing together for photos outside Marc's show before going to dinner.
♦ At Marc Jacobs, there were lots of celebs like Helena Christensen, Elijah Wood, Nicole Richie, Stephanie Seymour, Kelly Osbourne, Sofia Coppola, Winona Ryder, and Jennifer Lopez, and the elaborate, adventurous, world travel-inspired clothes got high marks—but all of the above was entirely eclipsed by the presence of Posh Spice's new gamine haircut. [WWD, Telegraph, Hello]
Click to viewIt's shaping up as a cruel summer for drunk, high or otherwise messed up celebrities trying to stay on the straight and narrow. Comedian Andy Dick was arrested this week for groping a 17-year-old's breasts while in possession of marijuana and Valium, in something of a reprise of his bust last year for doing blow in a nightclub. Actress and teen rehab veteran Drew Barrymore is now reported to have boozed her way to a breakup with actor Justin Long. Heather Locklear fled "depression and anxiety" rehab in Arizona after barely two weeks. Even a Rolling Stone, Ronnie Wood, surrendered himself to rehab again after leaving his wife for a 19-year-old cocktail waitress — and two bottles of vodka per day. Maybe all that summer daylight is pushing everyone over the edge! In any case, it's tough to keep track of who's where on the customary arc of high-profile substance abuse: embarrassment, criminality, rock-bottom desperation, rehabilitation and then either another trip around the circle or a break into the freedom of sobriety. That's why we've compiled a guide to once and future inebriated celebrities: 20 actors, singers, models and socialites who hog way more than their fair share of space in the gossip pages — and here on Gawker. We'll update and expand this list over time as a sort of encyclopedia of shame; your comments and tips are encouraged. (The arrows, by the way, indicate trends in drunkenness, so an upward arrow means getting drunker, downward means getting more sober.)
This probably won't come as a surprise to anyone who witnessed her seemingly hating every minute she spent pregnant, but new mom Jessica Alba has joined that elite niche of stars who lost all their baby weight at insanely rapid speeds. But the methods some celebrities have confessed to using when it comes to accelerating the path towards reclaiming their old figures don’t sound entirely sane. From suffering through cabbage soup diets to dropping $50,000 on gym equipment in an effort to slim down at paces up to 14 days after giving birth, the likes of Jennifer Lopez, Gwyneth Paltrow, Nicole Richie and others have some highly unique and scary track records. Which stars drunk themselves into wine-induced oblivion and trusted online blood tests to reach their goals, after the jump.
Once again, some noble crusader has invaded Photobucket and dug up some scurrilous photos of young celebrities at play. In today's batch, one of the Olsen twins (we suspect Mary-Kate) is partying with some friends, most of whom are dressed in flannel, including famous rich person's daughter Nicole Richie and her man friend, rocker Joel Madden. The kids are pictured in some sort of wood-paneled mansion, playing with a piñata and smoking cigarettes. It's unclear when these were taken or whose birthday (it's a birthday, right?) they were celebrating, but Nicole Richie seems to be making a point of showing that she's not drinking in one of the photos. So perhaps it was while she was pregnant. Do your own sleuthing around the big brown mansion in a photo gallery, after the jump.
No blog, talking head or alcoholic British songbird can compete with PETA when it comes to snark. For decades, the animal lovers have verbally beheaded countless starlets for their fur and snakeskin accessories, but only recently have their targets bitten back. After seeing a recent photo of plumper-than-usual Jessica Simpson sporting one of those so-last-season message t-shirts reading "Real Girls Eat Meat," we wondered how many of her peers have boldly set themselves up for one of PETA's trademark white powder massacres. Having called Nicole Richie "an incredible shrinking woman with the heart to match," advising Ashley Olsen that "wearing fur does add 20 pounds, but if [she] wants to fill out her frame, we suggest using a fork instead," and telling Lindsay Lohan "there's no road to recovery for the foxes who are anally electrocuted so that you can look skanky," has PETA inspired any other starlets to publicly react just as vehemently? We take a look at the ongoing battles after the jump.
PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by the loyal readers of Defamer. As a few emailers have noted, it took us a few weeks to collect this installment — if you want to see this feature run more frequently, be sure to send in your tips early and often! Submit yours to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put "sighting" or "PrivacyWatch" in the subject line so we don't lose them) and tell everyone about the time you saw "Hey Now" Hank Kingsley (aka Jeffrey Tambor) buying travel-sized saline solution and a "single fleet enema" at Gelson's.
When it comes to the art of stealing boyfriends, no one does it better than Lindsay Lohan. As Star reports in their current issue, the blood-sucking barer of flesh successfully seduced her former slim fast buddy Nicole Richie’s fiance this weekend. And her timing is suspiciously awful, considering new mom Richie is said to be sorely missing her party girl past. As a source tells Star:
Will Nicole Richie (shocker!) ultimately wind up just like that other tabloid favorite who got knocked up a wee early and eventually morphed into a ripped pantyhose-wearing, bathtub-hopping gurney-strapped party girl? As MSNBC reports, Richie is finding herself torn between the So! Wonderful! life of motherhood and domestic bliss all those parenting magazines assure us is pure happiness, and her former profession as a full-time mischief causer:
It's tough to remember (or believe) that once upon a time, Nicole Richie was merely Paris Hilton's chubby, recently-rehabbed, dread-locked sidekick. She made a name for herself by starting fights in clubs and providing a crude antidote to the far more glamorous Paris during the first season of The Simple Life. Fast-forward five years later (just like in Lost!); Richie has managed to outshine Hilton's star status not by doing anything in the way of "work," but instead by transforming into a style icon with a fiance and baby to boot. And lately, Paris seems to be doing everything in her power to copy her former lesser half's life, from her choices in fashion and boyfriends to her recent and sudden slim-down.
Not a day goes by without a dozen blind items stirring up rumors about the newest Hollywood heroin addict or closeted anchor with sex swings in his office, but there is one very rare kind of bold face name-less rumor that catches our eye. And it has to do with "celebrity dads," "piercings," and "nether regions." As the NY Post Just Asks this morning:
