PRPG:
Celebrity Gossip

Celebrity Gossip

February 21, 2017

Here’s the latest edition of the BRI’s cheesy tabloid section—a bunch of gossip about famous people.
Celebrity Gossip

George Clooney

When Clooney was in middle school, he developed a medical condition called Bell’s palsy, which partially paralyzed his face for nearly a year. Clooney’s left eye stayed closed and he had trouble eating and drinking. This condition led to a lot of taunting in school, including the nickname “Frankenstein.”

Ice-T 

In 1984 Ice-T had just released the rap single “Killers,” one of the first “gangsta rap” records. At the time, he was also a member of the notorious gang the Crips, as well as an occasional pimp and jewel thief. Somehow Ice-T also got the job of ghostwriting rap lyrics for Mr. T’s motivational video for kids, Be Somebody…or Be Somebody’s Fool. Sample lyrics from the song “Treat Your Mother Right”: “‘M’ is for the moan and the miserable groan / From the pain that she felt when I was born.”

Elvis Presley

Could you imagine Elvis—with a British accent—saying, “I fart in your general direction”? According to former girlfriend Linda Thompson, the King was a huge fan of the British comedy troupe Monty Python. “He’d be doing all the voices,” she said, “which is mind-boggling. He’d even do the ladies’ voices.”

Coretta Scott King

Walter and Betty Roberts, a young couple in Atlanta, Georgia, gave drama lessons to the children of Coretta Scott and Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s. Even though the Roberts family was white, they welcomed black children into their home during those racially charged times. In October 1967, upon hearing the news that Betty Roberts had to go to the hospital to deliver her third child, Mrs. King paid all of the family’s hospital bills as a gesture of thanks. That child: Julia Roberts.

DENNIS HOPPER

In the mid-1960s, the up-and-coming actor bought a painting called Sinking Sun by pop artist Roy Lichtenstein—which he then lost to his first wife in their 1969 divorce. What did it cost him? “I paid $1,100 for Sinking Sun,” he explained in an interview. “My ex-wife sold it for $3,000, thinking she’d made a good deal.” After changing hands one more time, the painting was auctioned off in 2006 for $15,780,000.

Quentin Tarantino

“I’ve always thought that I might have been Shakespeare in another life,” Tarantino told GQ magazine. “I don’t really believe that 100 percent, and I don’t really care about Shakespeare, but people are constantly bringing up all of these qualities in my work that mirror Shakespearean tragedies. I remember in the case of Reservoir Dogs, writing this scene where the undercover cop is teaching Tim Roth how to be an undercover cop. When Harvey Keitel read it, he thought I had just taken Hamlet’s speech to the players and broke it down into modern words.” Here’s the spooky part: “I’d never read Hamlet!”

Hilary Swank

The two-time Oscar winner was studying a script in a busy Los Angeles bakery when she noticed an older woman—who was obviously in a hurry—asking for help at the counter. All the salespeople were busy with other customers, so Swank got up, walked behind the counter, and put together the woman’s order. (Swank was a regular there, so the staff welcomed her help.) Later that week, Swank was pulled over for speeding on the Pacific Coast Highway. The cop let her off with just a warning. Why? He had been in the bakery that day and witnessed Swank’s good deed. And the woman she helped, he told her, was actually a high-ranking judge in Malibu.
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