Eminem and M?

Is Mariah Carey sneaking around with Slim Shady? Plus: Spielberg kisses up to Academy; Ol' Dirty Bastard fears for life and Michael Jackson gets even cornier.

Published July 23, 2001 4:06PM (EDT)

Is Eminem giving Mariah Carey the business?

It would be the oddest music-world romance since Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow were gettin' it on. But New York Daily News columnist Mitchell Fink is convinced that the rapper and the diva are enthralled in a real-life romantic duet.

His evidence? A clandestine meeting in a New York apartment, and talk from people who presumably oughta know.

True, Carey's handlers insist that the two "have business dealings, and that's all." Then again, in an interview in the new issue of Latina magazine, the "Glitter"-promoting popstress does seem to have cooled on her three-year beau, Luis Miguel.

"It's really hard to comment on [a relationship] when you might be having a bad day with someone or a bad week or a bad month," she says of Miguel. After all, "there's always speculation: Are they together? Are they getting married? Is he cheating on her? Is she cheating on him?"

Nevertheless, she will say this: "We're two separate individuals. No matter what happened or happens, I will always look at him as the amazing, talented, beautiful person that he is."

Sounds like a relationship R.I.P. to me.

But then, Carey says, she's not much for quickie romances and is "very protective" of herself "in terms of not being promiscuous."

And besides, she says, she's a little wrapped up in her "own thing" at the moment. "There's no room for me," she tells the magazine, "so there's no room for anybody else right now."

Not even a chainsaw-toting rapper in need of a No. 1 fan?

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Pay attention, Mariah!

"I'm a big believer that if your work eats up your personal life, it doesn't make you a better actor -- it probably makes you a slightly worse actor. Certainly a cranky actor."

-- Helen Hunt on the dangers of being all work and no play, in Biography magazine.

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Save the bastard!

Ol' Scaredy Bastard?

Ol' Dirty Bastard's people say the Wu Tang Clan rapper's fear of prison is "no laughing matter."

On a note posted on the official Wu Tang Clan Web site, Wu Tang Clan spokespeople say ODB is convinced that there is a conspiracy to kill him in the clink, where he's serving time for drug possession. The authorities have been warned of his concerns, they say, but don't seem to be taking them particularly seriously.

ODB's family, the note says, is prepared to "sue New York City and the government for Bill Cosby billions" should the rapper's worst fears be realized. "If something happens to him in the midst of his prison stay after he has continually tried to warn us," the note intones, "then it will not be a laughing matter."

Not like that Grammy outburst.

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Juicy bits

I don't know about Bette Davis eyes, but Steven Spielberg apparently has Davis' old Oscar. According to Variety, Spielberg is the anonymous bidder who paid $578,000 at auction for the statuette Davis won for her performance in the 1938 film "Jezebel." But he didn't do it to further weigh down his Oscar-lined shelves; he did it as an act of charity, donating the statuette to the American Academy of Motion Pictures in order to keep it out of less-deserving hands, much as he did back in 1996 with Clark Gable's 1934 Oscar for "It Happened One Night." "For Steven to do this once was breathtaking," Academy president Robert Rehme commented, "but for him to do it again is unbelievable." The Academy would like to thank Steven Spielberg ...

First a fifth season -- and now this: Jerry Adler, who plays Hesh on "The Sopranos," says the scuttlebutt among the mob show's cast members is that a "Sopranos" film may be headed to a multiplex near you. "Everybody's been pushing for it," Adler told a Web site called Cinematic Happenings Under Development. "Everybody's afraid of getting whacked. If you get whacked now, you're not going to be in the movie." In which case your big onscreen break will be sleeping with the fishies.

In his continuing effort to prove how good he is for the kiddies, Michael Jackson is apparently starring in and producing his own animated feature, "The Way of the Unicorn, The Endangered One." According to the Associated Press, Jackson will portray the voice of Sailor, an orphan who teams up with a "lonely rich girl" and a bunch of nearly extinct animals to save the world, in the $75 million flick. "This is the new Michael Jackson, the movie actor and producer," commented Dennis W. Peterson, who will co-executive produce the film with Jackson. If you want to know what happened to the old Michael Jackson, take it up with his plastic surgeon.

Too good to be true: John Majors, the musical. The BBC sniffed around and discovered that the whole thing was a big, fat hoax. Alas, the same cannot be said for "Riverdance."

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Miss something? Read yesterday's Nothing Personal.


By Amy Reiter

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Celebrity Michael Jackson Steven Spielberg