Queen Latifah

It's official. The movie business has finally fallen in love with Queen Latifah. Fourteen years after her first rap hit, 10 years after becoming a regular on the sitcom "Living Single," seven years after wowing young moviegoers as a bank robber in "Set It Off," the 33-year-old hip-hop star and entrepreneur is Hollywood's latest overnight sensation.

If only she were singing "Having My Baby." A tremendously pregnant Catherine Zeta-Jones has agreed to perform in Sunday's Academy Awards, joining Queen Latifah in singing "Chicago's" nominated song, "I Move On." The John Kander and Fred Ebb tune had been performed in the movie musical by Zeta-Jones and Renee Zellweger, but Zellweger declined to perform in front of the Oscars' global television audience.

Exhibiting broad demographic appeal, Disney's Steve Martin/Queen Latifah comedy "Bringing Down the House" rang up an estimated $31.7 million over the weekend to debut at No. 1. Weathering mixed reviews that generally praised its stars but challenged the propriety of some of its racially themed humor, the film attracted a large cross-section of moviegoers, with 90% of its audience ranging from ages 12 to 50.

In the odd-couple comedy "Bringing Down the House," Queen Latifah plays a newly sprung convict who breaches the citadel of Steve Martin's power lawyer. The alliance of one of the funniest and most under-deployed comics in movies with the hip-hop diva, red hot off her Academy Award nomination for "Chicago," isn't just timely (they'll both be sauntering down the red carpet soon), it seems like comic kismet.

Actress and rapper Queen Latifah was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol early Wednesday, a California Highway Patrol official said. The hip-hop star was driving on the Ventura Freeway in North Hollywood when she was stopped about 3:15 a.m. for making an unsafe lane change, Officer Alex Delgadillo said. She failed a sobriety test, he said.

Although I agree the typical model and certain TV stars are way too thin ("Going to Extremes: XS and XL," June 2) and project an impossible image for young women, I think you do these same young women a disservice by referring to Camryn Manheim, Kathy Bates and Queen Latifah as having more "realistic" figures. Any way you look at it, these women are obese and as bad a health risk as the flip side of the coin. --JIM SULLIVAN Oceanside Is Kelly Brownell, co-director of the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders, actually claiming that skinny actresses are responsible for the rise in obesity in this country?

It seems unfortunate that your columnists chose to react to the extended and obscene coverage of the death of John F. Kennedy Jr. by minimizing the man and the legacy he, through no fault of his own, carried ("Grand Delusions," Opinion, July 25). The notions of royalty, myth and Camelot are media-driven drivel. Hawking the false impression that perfect people exist, the media have pounced on the opportunity to create a saint out of an untried soul. What is indeed tragic is that this apparently warm, intelligent and charismatic young man, who was on a studied path toward building a name for himself based on his own merits, died too soon.

* 1/2 QUEEN LATIFAH "Order in the Court" Flavor Unit/Motown With 1989's "All Hail the Queen," Queen Latifah offered a seductive blend of hard-core hip-hop, dance tunes and ballads. Like several other rappers, the New Jersey native eventually parlayed her musical success into a number of outside entertainment avenues, starring on television ("Living Single") and in film ("Set It Off" and "Sphere").

Each year the Grammy Awards honor artists as pillars of their fields. We asked a few past winners what 1996 releases they believe best represented their respective categories--regardless of whether their choices had been nominated this year. * SAMMY HAGAR (HARD ROCK): Hagar won 1991 best hard rock album Grammy as a member of Van Halen, the band that fired him (or which he quit, depending on who's talking) last summer.

The Scene: What a racket. Hollywood Boulevard was chock-a-block with shrieking fans as a line of early '60s, low-riding Chevy Malibus wound their way to Mann's Chinese Theater on Monday night, each one jettisoning another handful of celebrities. The occasion for the high-decibel hoopla was the premiere of New Line's "Set It Off," a lead-splattered romp about a female posse who set off on a bank-robbing spree.