Acting

Here are the ups and downs of being a teenage actress on a television show with strong adult themes: Your training at a prestigious ballet school has to be dropped, bad. But you get to spend your summers on the beach in California, good. You get to kiss the boy you've had a crush on because it gets written into the script, good. But this is your first kiss -- like, ever -- and so your first kiss will take place on camera, beneath a boom microphone and in front of the crew . . . along with your mom. Bad. You're on TV, cool.

WASHINGTON -- The notion that Congress could consider pizza a vegetable may be just too much to digest. The SLICE Act, for School Lunch Improvements for Children’s Education, has been introduced in response to congressional action last fall ensuring that two tablespoons of tomato paste slathered on pizza could continue to be classified as a full vegetable serving in the federal school lunch program.

When Helen Mirren was a girl growing up in England, she'd often saunter out onto local sidewalks, idling, hoping to be discovered. "I stood around on street corners imagining that a film director had to drive by and say, 'There's the girl for me.' Hoping that someone's going to go, 'She's the one,' " she said. "I really wanted to be an actress, but I just didn't think that it was possible for someone like me." Looking at Mirren now, seated on a couch in a posh Los Angeles hotel room sipping a cappuccino, it's difficult to imagine her as a young, wide-eyed girl, yearning desperately for some type of impossible dream.

WASHINGTON - Moms, a few dads and some children gathered at the Capitol on Tuesday to urge Congress to strengthen the federal government's powers to regulate harmful chemicals. The group of almost a hundred activists, which included registered nurses and cancer survivors, came from across the country to support the Safe Chemicals Act, which if passed by Congress would create a new process to monitor toxic chemicals used in consumer products. The chemicals, which are common in furniture and baby products, have been linked to neurological defects, cancer, developmental problems and impaired fertility.

I was shocked to read in Jack Mathews' May 12 "Cannes Files" that Nick Nolte says drinking alcohol helps his acting. Personally I feel this is a dumb statement, if only because it made news. It is dangerous to the young actors coming into this biz and also to the ones now in it. Nick Nolte should keep his drinking problem to himself. HARRY COHN Silver Lake

Dan Sullivan's parenthetical statement that being a liar is the basis of acting ("Helmond as Sarah Bernhardt: The Legend Doesn't Translate") reveals an ignorance of the craft unacceptable in a professional theater critic. He should know that the basis of all good acting is the truthful recreation of the artist's own experience brought into the context of the scene through creative imagination. This process has no more to do with lying than it does with pretending as children do at play.

"Inglourious Basterds," Quentin Tarantino's Nazi-era ode to the power of cinematic historical revision, won the Screen Actors Guild's biggest award Saturday night for movie ensemble acting -- something of a surprise win for the film that featured an international cast of stars, first-timers and unknowns. In the acting categories, Jeff Bridges and Sandra Bullock walked off with the top trophies for their starring roles in dramas ("Crazy Heart" and "The Blind Side," respectively).

Los Angeles County supervisors tapped Cal Remington, the former head of Ventura County's Probation Department, to be the acting leader of their troubled agency. The temporary appointment comes as the current chief, Robert Taylor, retires Friday. Taylor's relationship with the board has been severely strained in recent weeks after a series of management lapses. Remington has been asked to conduct a top-to-bottom assessment of the department before the permanent chief is appointed later this year, according to William T Fujioka, the county's chief executive.

Jack Mathews wrote in Film Clips (Jan. 15) that Sylvester Stallone received $12 million for "Rocky IV," making him the highest-paid actor in the world (this from a source called Parade magazine). It should be noted the $12 million paid was a package deal that included writing and directing, as well as acting. JOSEPH D. PETERS Monterey Park

IT was good to see a picture of Sarah Polley as the young director of "Away From Her" ["A New Generation," Feb. 17] but mystifying to read that she was "known mostly for acting in low-budget indie films" when those who saw her as the delightful 10-year-old Sally Salt in Terry Gilliam's "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" will never forget her charming presence, for which she received a best young actress nomination from the Young Artist Foundation....

Health experts estimate that half of all pregnancies in the U.S. are unintended. That adds up to about 3 million accidental pregnancies every year - and, as a result, about 1.2 million abortions. About half of these unintended pregnancies can be traced to failures of condoms, birth control pills and other forms of contraception. (In the other half of cases, couples fail to use contraception entirely.) Which types of birth control are to blame, and why? To find out, researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis offered free contraception to 7,486 women and followed them for two to three years to see how they fared.

WASHINGTON - The Congressional Budget Office warned that the country could be thrown into a recession if Congress tries to reduce the nation's deficit quickly with a combination of budget cuts and higher taxes scheduled to take place at the end of the year. The nonpartisan budget office laid out the stark choices Tuesday over what has been called the coming fiscal cliff as congressional leaders square off in an expected partisan showdown from now through December. The office warned that the growth of the nation's gross domestic product - the value of goods and services produced - would slow to just 0.5% next year if Congress did nothing.

No one is exactly sure how a mountain lion roamed into the heart of Santa Monica on Tuesday morning, coming face to face with the janitor of an office complex not far from the city's bustling shopping district. But it turned out to be an unwelcome visitor - and that generated much debate in the city. With news choppers circling overhead, Santa Monica police managed to corner the 3-year-old lion in the courtyard of the complex. Police said they made several attempts to contain what they described as an aggressive feline using tranquilizing darts, nonlethal bullets and a fire hose.

It's the playoffs, prime time for the rough-'n'-ready NBA. Polish the brass knuckles. This is the real ultimate fighting. There is a reason they label these playoffs by rounds. All they need are ring girls. How about calling them the Muhammad Ali conference semifinals, leading to the George Foreman finals? We wonder what Dr. Naismith would think if he came back to look at his game. No more peach baskets, Doc, but lots of elbows and forearm shivers. These guys hang necks on clotheslines, not clothes.

Carlos DeLuna was, in all likelihood, murdered by the state of Texas on Dec. 7, 1989. It's hard to come to any other conclusion after reading an exhaustive analysis of his case published online by a Columbia law school professor and his students. And he may not be the only innocent death row inmate executed by that notably bloodthirsty state. Cameron Todd Willingham, a man whose conviction for setting a fire that killed his three young daughters was based on spectacularly shoddy forensics work, was injected with a death cocktail on Feb. 17, 2004.

Re "Court takes up bid of illegal immigrant to be attorney," May 17 Sergio Garcia, an undocumented immigrant who passed the State Bar of California exams to practice law, is a perfect example of someone who would benefit from a federal Dream Act. Not only is he a model citizen, he's a smart one too. Why should this young man wait up to 15 years to become legal and then a lawyer? He should be admitted to the bar now, and a certificate of citizenship should be attached.

Acting is not a mad scramble for this week's script, lunch with so-and-so, next week's audition, then a 14-hour vigil of desperation by the phone. This is not a business where a divining rod chooses who can or cannot be an actor. Acting is truth. The searching for it, the revealing of it, the joy within it. The approach to this profession is a noble one that commands a great deal of respect along with relentless attention. The work is essential to good acting. The exploration jubilant!

It seems to be the question that actors hear most frequently: "How did you learn all those lines?" "You ask that question to any kind of actor and they will laugh," says Susan Anspach, who should know, given her roles in movies such as "Play It Again, Sam," "Blume in Love" and "Montenegro" and her experience as an acting teacher and coach. "Learning the lines is the easiest part of acting."

"I'm very excited," newly elected L.A. County Assessor John Noguez said almost two years ago after outspending his rival by more than $600,000 in a runoff campaign. "I believe the constituents believe that I will continue the legacy of continued excellence. " So much for continuing the legacy of continued excellence, or whatever Noguez was talking about. Now he's the target of a criminal corruption probe having to do with alleged tax breaks for his campaign contributors, and he's in a tight race with L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca to grab the trophy for worst county department head in recent memory.

Successful, micro-targeted neighborhood music festivals have been proliferating — including Make Music Pasadena, the Eagle Rock Music Festival, Venice's Abbott Kinney Music Festival and Echo Park's Culture Collide — and now we can now add "The Nice Stretch of West Hollywood That's West of Fairfax Avenue but East of the Sunset Strip Festival. " Sunday's festival is actually called the Hudson Block Party, and for a second year the classy-casual bar and restaurant that throws it has booked an unexpectedly buzzy bill of local and national acts, including White Rabbits, LP and Haim.