Celebrities

They show up with lunch sacks and stuffed bears, an occasional doll. On Wednesday morning, most simply walked up the sidewalk with their parents in tow to the green, wrought-iron gate. One arrived in a shiny, black Audi SUV whose driver popped out to open the huge door for his charge. After a moment, a pair of tiny feet clad in hot-pink Crocs sandals dangled out and another youngster headed into the First Presbyterian Nursery School in Santa Monica. They are preschoolers.

It's been more than a decade since Chris Rock and a shapely blond model struck up a conversation over Sunday brunch at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills. The relationship that followed was brief -- two dinner dates -- but there seems to be no end to the fallout from the liaison.

For those who live in the tabloid cross hairs, the fake name is essential. Privacy-seeking celebrities have standard pseudonyms for checking into hotels, booking spa appointments, reserving restaurant tables, advertising for help and setting up visits to the doctor's office. But when those attempts at anonymity make their way beyond the exam room door and onto a prescription pad, a Hollywood convenience becomes a crime.

Long before Hollywood felt comfortable expressing its politics, medicine and medical research were the entertainment industry's causes of choice. People who think that celebrity interest in medical science begins and ends with cosmetic surgery need to take a look at the names on the buildings at Cedars-Sinai: Steven Spielberg, George Burns and Gracie Allen.

On Aug. 16, 1977, the day Elvis Presley died, folklorist William R. Ferris remembers that in Memphis "it was like the ground began to shake." Within hours, hundreds of pilgrims had descended on Graceland, and the process by which a beloved public personage is transformed into a mythic figure was underway. But which Elvis would be mythologized, and whose legacy would be preserved? The youthful rock rebel or the Las Vegas glitter god?

Hollywood talent agencies pride themselves on placing their star clients into the biggest movies and TV shows. Now, add YouTube to the list. William Morris Agency, one of the largest talent firms, is in talks for a deal that would funnel its clients -- both actors and consumer brands -- into videos created for the Internet giant.

Like everybody else these days, politically engaged Hollywood -- and particularly its younger activists -- is in a back-to-basics mood. That's why David Arquette called together a group of actors, musicians, artists, even some athletes, recently at the Beverly Hills home of his manager, Eric Kranzler, to discuss new ways of taking on one of the oldest of causes: feeding the hungry.

Whether it turns out that he died of heart disease, a cocktail of potent prescription drugs or just years of indulgence and excess, one verdict is inescapable: What really killed Michael Jackson was an overdose of showbiz values. Like so many child stars before him, from Judy Garland and Sammy Davis Jr. to Tatum O'Neal and River Phoenix and Lindsay Lohan, Jackson never found himself a home in the real world.

When it comes to the glare of the paparazzi, age apparently has its advantages. Just ask actor Kiefer Sutherland, who walked out of the Glendale jail early Monday mostly to a collective shrug of tabloid indifference. He'd done 48 days behind bars without fanfare, judged uninteresting in the age of Britney, Paris, Nicole and Lindsay. Fame, a Santa Monica-based photo agency, sent a photographer, to little avail: Only one publication called with a request.

The investigation into actor Heath Ledger's death Monday as a possible drug overdose is bringing attention to a nationwide health crisis: Overdose fatalities have risen dramatically in the United States since 1999, largely because of prescription drugs. According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, unintentional poisoning deaths -- 95% of which are drug overdoses -- increased from 12,186 in 1999 to 20,950 in 2004.