Celebrity News

Palin’s still trying to stir political pot

Sarah Palin fans, take heart. Your per son of choice has no intention of going quietly. As we speak, she is gearing up. E-mails are currently going out to the favored faithful to help form a coalition. She is primed, ready and now forming a national organization called “Stand Up for Our Nation.” Exactly what it’s standing for is unclear. If not a chicken in every pot, maybe a heater in every igloo. A monogrammed puck for every hockey mom. Possibly, it’ll start, “Give me your poor, your tired governors . . . ” All that’s known so far is, it’s a Palinization of the political system. Her people will categorize it only as “to promote issues she’s passionate about” — other than how to do away with her unmarried daughter’s babymaker, Levi Johnston.

IN honor of Columbus Day, I reprise an Al Pacino memory of his days in Italy: “At 20, I lived in Sicily by selling the only asset I had — my body. An older woman traded food and housing in return for sex. I woke mornings not really loving myself.” Well, he’s getting plenty of love now as he plays the role of Dr. Jack Kevorkian in a film currently shooting on the streets of New York.

JUDE Law‘s “Hamlet” brings up other movie stars doing Shakespeare. Michelle Pfeiffer: “As Titania in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ my costume was like a moth’s wing — breathtaking but minimal. My whole performance was about keeping my ass covered.” Ahhh, to flash or not to flash, that is the question . . . Artist Hunt Slonem, in a wheelchair, didn’t let a busted ankle stop his getting the 2009 Stars of Design Award. He fell in his own studio, toppling a two-ton sculpture . . . All who know beautiful Joanna Simon, who made Walter Cronkite happy in his late years, rejoice she’s the real estate broker who has his apartment listing. His family tried locking her and her belongings out of the place altogether. Their snarky reasoning? “Walter was good to her when he was alive.”

STUNNING, talented Julia Stiles, who, with Bill Pullman, opened in last night’s revival of David Mamet’s two-person play “Oleanna,” how did she handle the nerves?

“Surprising how jittery I became. You have to calm your breathing down. Calm your mind. Pilates helps the relaxation. Before I go on, I do warm-ups that connect my breath to my voice. You can’t lose your voice. Tension tightens up the vocal chords, and you start talking up in your throat.

“In terms of remembering lines, repetition helps a lot. Repetition brings freedom. Some sentences don’t even finish, so you must mentally connect yourself with key words. It doesn’t sound like it makes sense, but it works. In a sentence where Bill has three M’s — three words beginning with the letter M — I zero in when he says the word ‘moment.’

“And it’s staying focussed. To make things more contemporary, the play was upgraded to where the professor, whose character always has to stay in touch, now uses a cellphone instead of a landline. The first preview, right after the backstage announcement for everyone to turn their cellphones off? Immediately afterward, one went off in the audience. It would’ve been so easy to laugh or make a remark, but you just go right on. Stay focused.

“Sometimes to calm down between matinee and evening shows I’ll wander Times Square. It’s so noisy, busy and crowded that I can actually meditate in the middle of that mob. It relaxes my body. And nobody ever recognizes me. In Times Square, people are in such a rush, so involved, that they don’t make eye contact. In the midst of all that, you can be actually alone.”

OPENING night of “The Royal Family” last week, the audience thunderously applauded Tony Roberts, whom a fluke condition had sidelined until then. Willing to work the night before, he was told to relax another day. With an afternoon rehearsal, he made the opening and only fluffed one line, which great old pro Rosemary Harris picked up for him quickly. See, not only was he over whatever had felled him, but he’d get no shot at a Tony if he weren’t onstage opening night.

RE some of the criticism of Obama‘s Nobel, Jimmy Carter says he personally is still angry when he recalls his lousy presidential p.r.: “My family was depicted as hillbillies with straw sticking out of our ears, our eyes crossed, saying ‘sho nuf.’ It represents a bias that still exists in this country. I don’t feel I have any need for redemption. I don’t feel I failed as president. They now write about me like I’m a different person, but I haven’t changed.”

A COUPLE who bought a handsome East Side four-bedroom co-op, passed the board, unloaded their old apartment with everything in it, still can’t decide on a motif. Built-ins or no built-ins? Trendy and modern or, if contemporary, will they appear dated? On the eve of moving in, they haven’t even found a decorator they like. Rather than get crazy, they solved the problem by coming into an empty four walls and hiring a company that will rent them, temporarily, a whole houseful of furniture including paintings, kitchenware and mattresses.

Only in New York, kids, only in New York.