Acting

You can't call actor Logan Lerman spineless. "My whole family is in orthotics and prosthetics," he says, "so I grew up having to check for scoliosis every week. 'Come over. Let me feel your spine.' " The 17-year-old costar of "My One and Only" (with Renée Zellweger and Kevin Bacon) is also putting some backbone into his acting, despite his youth. "From a really young age, like 5 or whatever, I really wanted to do this because I really wanted to get out of school," he says with a laugh, calling from a beach at Lake Tahoe, where he's vacationing with his family.

ON either side of the stage in the Stella Adler Theatre, Dr. 4 and Professor Cheddar stand with long, plastic cylindrical sleeves. Dr. 4, played by Trish Sie, asks one of the many young theatergoers to just \o7try\f7 to fill her 5-foot balloon with air. A boy volunteer attempts to blow it up, barely filling a few inches before running out of breath. "That's nothing!" scoffs Professor Cheddar (Christin Underwood), opening her tube and blowing into it.

OF all the categories in the Emmy Awards, the ones for acting seem to me the most arbitrary, if for no other reason than that there are so many actors on television. Every series, TV movie or miniseries has its cast, every episode its guest stars -- most of them are good, many of them are great, and many of those are great in ways that don't necessarily attract awards.

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."

After spending the last month as a Hollywood darling, Olympic silver medalist Sasha Cohen has become tempted to leave figure skating's competitive ranks to pursue acting. Her career switch could occur after this week's world championships in Calgary, Canada, where she will be the favorite after the withdrawals of Turin champion Shizuka Arakawa of Japan and bronze medalist Irina Slutskaya of Russia. Cohen, of Corona del Mar, finished second at the last two world championships.

Louis B. Mayer used to brag that MGM, the studio he led through its golden age, boasted "more stars than there are in heaven." In those days, that was something: Stars counted. Garbo, Gable, Garland, just to cover the Gs. Today, it's said, the only thing a star is good for is to get you a table in a crowded restaurant. And it's true, stars can't really open films the way they used to; people respond more to Internet buzz, TV ads, movie crit -- er, no, Roger Ebert.

IN one month, John O'Donohoe was sued, was poisoned by anthrax, suffered a back injury and took his last breaths. And one look inside his pocket calendar shows that these sorts of setbacks aren't unusual for the Burbank resident. That's because O'Donohoe is role-playing -- as a patient for medical students, a witness in mock trials and a victim in a disaster drill.

She launched the careers of some of the most successful actors of the 20th century. Marlon Brando, her most famous pupil, once wrote that "she imparts the most valuable kind of information -- how to discover the nature of our own emotional mechanics and therefore those of others." Stella Adler, the high priestess of the American theater, was known for her boundless generosity toward young actors.

The scene takes place toward the end of Quentin Tarantino's rollicking World War II action-drama "Inglourious Basterds." As fire engulfs a Parisian movie theater packed with German military commanders, pandemonium ensues, diverting attention from the real action: a heart-pounding confrontation between a crack team of Nazi-terrorizing Jewish covert operatives (the so-called "Basterds") and the Third Reich's top brass. It's vintage Tarantino, hyper-real ultra-violence that arrives as a kind of catharsis after more than two hours of intricate plot twists and baroque dialogue as the Basterds, led by Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt)

Diane Baker's professional acting career began by her performing a scene from the 1955 James Dean movie "East of Eden." "I did the scene for three studios," says the vivacious 71-year-old. "That's all I ever did. I never went on an audition. I got offered contracts with CBS, Paramount and Fox. My agent came to me and said, 'You got offers from all three. Let's pick the best one.' It turned out to be Fox." Baker, who is celebrating her 50th year as an actress, has appeared in such classic films as "The Diary of Anne Frank," "Marnie" and the Oscar-winning best film "The Silence of the Lambs."