A man called horse!

Richard Harris, a real schwinger; the Paltrow broadcasting system; Kidman: Cruise is supercaliflabbergasting. Plus: Omigawd, Britney cops to cutting the cheese!

Published October 31, 2001 5:54PM (EST)

All the knights around King Arthur's round table couldn't make Richard Harris take Viagra again.

The 71-year-old actor, who will play Professor Dumbledore in the highly anticipated Harry Potter flick, tells the U.K. site teletext.com that the one time he tried the little blue pill, it worked "too well" on his proverbial sword in the stone.

"I was taking this woman out to dinner afterwards, and I couldn't zip up my trousers," he said.

Nice to know he's still an impressive swordsman after all these years. (I know, I know ... you havent thought about Harris' sword since chain-mail condoms went out of style.)

- - - - - - - - - - - -

She who smelt it ...

"When I go on stage, I do my thing and I perform and that's my time to express myself. But when I come off, I trip and I burp and I fart just like everybody else!"

-- Britney Spears admitting (oops!) to indulging in a little friendly cheese-cutting in a chat with the Associated Press.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Gabby Gwynnie

Ben Affleck may wish he didn't leave his relationship with Gwyneth Paltrow on such good terms. Though the actress famously refuses to talk about her ex Brad Pitt, she's more than willing to share a few theories about what drove former beau Affleck to drug and alcohol rehab.

"If you don't feel so good about yourself and if you've had a troubled childhood and haven't worked out those issues, you feel you're not whole or not good," Paltrow tells the Calgary Sun, perhaps alluding to the fact that Affleck's father, a recovering alcoholic himself, abandoned his family when Ben was but a boy.

"If you feel emotionally beat-up because of a parent or a certain set of circumstances and haven't really gone into therapy and figured it all out, you can develop a feeling of worthlessness," Paltrow opines. "When you become one of the biggest stars in the world, these problems and feelings are magnified. The more success you get, the more money you get, the more recognition you get, the more it juxtaposes the success with the fact that you feel so terrible about yourself and so undeserving."

That's when some "people turn to things to anesthetize the way they feel about themselves," Paltrow says, adding that she herself prefers to indulge her yoga habit.

Downward dog instead of the hair of the dog that bit you? Om ... OK.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Speaking of charitable ex assessments

"He's managed to sustain this extraordinary level of success since he was 17 and that's flabbergasting ... 'Vanilla Sky' is fantastic -- I saw him working on that and I think he's going to be amazing in it."

-- Nicole Kidman, on her ex Tom Cruise's career and the film in which he stars with his new girlfriend, Penelope Cruz, in a BBC interview this week.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Juicy bits

Hackman's revenge: If you ever find yourself in a little fender bender with Gene Hackman, do not -- I repeat, do not -- get all in his face and start calling him names. The tough-guy actor may just haul off and let you have it. A couple of randy fellows allegedly learned that the hard way Monday after Hackman's Volvo collided with theirs in West Hollywood. One witness told Reuters that the driver of the car with which Hackman's collided "was really close to [the actor's] face and kept stepping up on him. There was more of that for several minutes but [Hackman] seemed to keep his cool ... But then something was said and [Hackman] just hit him four or five times" before the frisky fellow's friend stepped into the fray and zonked the 71-year-old star with a below-the-belt hit. Talk about unforgiven.

Paula Jones, an honest woman? The New York Daily News reports that Bill Clinton's former accuser has married again, this time to Steven Mark McFadden, a 39-year-old construction worker whom she met three years ago through neighbors. No word on whether the bride wore white.

Are Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman afraid of Tony Soprano? Fuhgeddaboudit. The actors have filed a $300,000 lawsuit in Manhattan Supreme Court against James Gandolfini, accusing him of backing out of an agreement to buy their brownstone in New York's Greenwich Village. Gandolfini says he was just waiting for the couple to file renovation-related paperwork. Ethan and Uma say that's a load of crap. And I say they're two very brave people.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Miss something? Read yesterday's Nothing Personal.


By Amy Reiter

MORE FROM Amy Reiter


Related Topics ------------------------------------------

Britney Spears Celebrity