Actors

Darren James saw the news flash on his TV screen last week: A porn actress had tested positive for HIV. James, 45, felt a moment of shock, then sadness. "I feel really bad for this girl," he said. "One thing I can say, I just wish her well. It's the worst thing to get that call." It's the call James got in 2004 when the well-liked porn star known for his courteous nature on set found himself at the center of an HIV outbreak in the San Fernando Valley's multibillion-dollar porn industry.

If you ever want to stump your movie geek pals with a barroom bet, just ask them who's the actor who appeared in only five feature films and all of 'em -- that's right, all five -- earned an Oscar nomination for best picture.

Talk about a walk down memory lane. At 13, Keisha Castle-Hughes was the youngest nominee ever for a lead actress Oscar for her role as the tradition-bending girl in the indie hit "Whale Rider" -- and she became the town's darling. Five years later, Castle-Hughes has returned to Los Angeles to relaunch her career as an adult. There's been a world of change since her last Oscar-season visit; this time, she has a fiance and a toddler in tow.

Determined to make the rags-to-riches drama "Slumdog Millionaire" as authentic as possible, director Danny Boyle reworked his film's first act, casting Hindi-speaking children from Mumbai's slums in two lead roles. Now his choice to put the impoverished 7-year-olds into the film has sparked a growing controversy that is threatening to overtake the movie's global goodwill.

Four days after a profanity-ridden audiotape of Christian Bale ranting at the director of photography on the set of "Terminator Salvation" hit the Internet -- launching a veritable tsunami of fan reaction, Web creativity (including a dance remix) and comedic skits on late-night talk shows -- the actor has finally done what many professional public-relations types have advocated all along: He owned up to his mistake and apologized for his bad behavior.

Trim, outgoing and adorned with wavy golden locks, Virginia Madsen doesn't seem to have changed much physically over the 25 years she has spent before the cameras. The obvious difference is in the perspective that comes with having seen plenty of hilltops and valleys.

It's a point of pride for Samuel L. Jackson that if you list every film in which he has starred or appeared and add up their box-office receipts, the collective total would be higher than any other on-screen actor in history. That might be some arcane career calculus, but it does speak to the 60-year-old actor's crowded schedule and crowd-pleasing sensibility. On a recent afternoon, talking about his varied pursuits, Jackson began a sentence with, "In my spare time . . .

When "Race to Witch Mountain" director Andy Fickman wanted to track down Kim Richards, the former child star who appeared in the original 1975 version "Escape to Witch Mountain," he sought an unlikely ally: Paris Hilton. As it turns out, Hilton is the niece of Richards, who had all but disappeared from the Hollywood scene 20 years earlier. "My first crush was on Kim Richards. She had long blond hair. It was 90 feet long," the director recalled.

Despite appearances to the contrary, John Krasinski, the rangy costar of NBC's "The Office," does not fit into the category of actors who really want to direct. Even if the movie passion project he wrote and directed, "Brief Interviews With Hideous Men," is set to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival tonight. "I never wanted to be a writer, never wanted to direct anything," Krasinski, 29, said in West Hollywood last week. "People talk about being a triple threat.

It was a challenge that Barbra Streisand wasn't sure she could handle. Though she made her directorial debut with 1983's "Yentl" -- the musical drama about a young Jewish woman who disguises herself as a man -- she was initially wary of taking on filmmaker duties for the cinematic adaptation of Isaac Bashevis Singer's short story.