Dillon and Richard Dreyfuss in ‘Close Encounters’ – Columbia Tristar/Courtesy of Getty Images
The Hollywood Reporter notes actress Melinda Dillon passed away on January 9. One might not recognize her name, but the actress logged memorable performances as the matriarch in 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind for Steven Spielberg, as well as 1983’s holiday classic A Christmas Story.
A Tony-nominated actress, Dillon was twice nominated for an Academy Award, as well: for Close Encounters, in which she played the mom of an alien-abducted kid, and in 1981 for her performance in Absence of Malice opposite Paul Newman.
Dillon also appeared as John Lithgow‘s wife in 1987’s Harry and the Hendersons and 1991’s The Prince of Tides opposite Barbra Streisand. She was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award for Paul Thomas Anderson‘s 1999 drama Magnolia.
On her Instagram, Oscar-nominated Everything Everywhere All at Once star Jamie Lee Curtis celebrated a major milestone: nearly a quarter century of sobriety.
“8760 DAYS OF SOBRIETY = 24 YEARS,” Curtis captioned her post, which was next to a picture of her hand holding her landmark sober coin — and her cute white poodle-mix pooch.
“There are so many people who are in the prison of addiction,” Jamie continued. “Through recovery rooms all over the world. I’ve been able to find myself again. Safe. Satisfied. Strong. Steady. For anyone struggling today in that prison, I woke up today sober as an example that it is possible and that there is help for you and hands reaching out to offer you a step up into the light!”
She also credited her sister and a colleague with offering those hands of help: “The community of people in recovery have been amazing,” Curtis concluded.
The actress has been very vocal about her sobriety. In 2018, the Halloween series star revealed to People that her addiction to pain pills began in the late ’80s and lasted 10 years.
“I was ahead of the curve of the opiate epidemic,” she said at the time. “I had a 10-year run, stealing, conniving. No one knew. No one.”
She says she was initially prescribed opiates after minor plastic surgery “for my hereditary puffy eyes” and soon began abusing the painkillers, even stealing pills from friends and family.
In 1999, she sought help and attended her first recovery meeting, she told the magazine.
Curtis’ family has a long history of addiction. Her father, actor Tony Curtis, battled alcohol, cocaine and heroin addictions, and her half-brother Nicholas Curtis died of a heroin overdose in 1994.
Bam and Steve-O in 2002 — Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic, Inc
While the Jackass gang was famous for performing death-defying stunts, Steve-O fears there’s one situation his friend and fellow co-star Bam Margera won’t escape: addiction.
Steve-O, born Stephen Gilchrist Glover, has been clean and sober for 15 years, and he implored Margera to reverse course; the latter has battled addiction for years without success.
On Thursday night, Steve-O appeared onstage with Margera at a live event; Steve-O said taking Bam on his comedy tour was an attempt to get Margera back on the straight and narrow. However, Steve-O later lamented it was short-lived.
Hours after the pair posed at the start of the show, Steve-O posted a plea to Instagram when he apparently learned Margera fell off the wagon.
The message was subsequently deleted, but not before fans grabbed a screen cap. “Bam, last night you had your five year old son with you on stage at my show, and you were blessed with the chance to spend another day or two with him — then as soon as you left my show, you stayed up all night getting loaded,” Steve-O claimed.
“You say you want to have a relationship with your son, but your actions guarantee the exact opposite will happen … I’ve tried everything I can but I can’t force you to get honest and do the work of recovery,” he continued.
Steve-O added, “I wish you could know how much I’ve hated feeling braced for news of your death, but you’re making it clear that I have no other choice. You’re dying, brother, and it sucks that I can’t do anything to save you.”
There was no apparent response from Bam, but many of his fans implored him to straighten up.
While he certainly deserves it, considering his movies have made more than $9.3 billion worldwide, Harrison Ford says he doesn’t get movie legend treatment on set.
The 80-year-old star of 1923 and the upcoming fifth Indiana Jones film, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, appeared on Live! With Kelly and Ryan on Friday. He was asked if his resume makes him intimidating for cast and crew.
“The answer is no,” Ford said. “People treat me just like an ordinary person.” And while some stars of his stature have been known to lord over productions, Ford has no such appetite. “I do like to be directed, by almost anyone,” he added with a smile.
Ford also gave a taste of his final Indy adventure, which is set in 1969. “When we find him, he’s on his last day at Hunter College as a professor, and the story goes on from there.”
Kelly Ripa underlined, “So he’s about to retire … and all hell breaks loose?”
“It does, yeah,” Ford said with a laugh.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny also stars Ford’s Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade co-star John Rhys-Davies, Boyd Holbrook, Mads Mikkelson and Emmy winner Phoebe Waller-Bridge. The Lucasfilm movie from director James Mangold opens June 30.
Lucasfilm is a subsidiary of Disney, the parent company of ABC News.
HGTV star Tarek El Moussa and Heather Rae Young have welcomed their first child together.
The couple announced the arrival of their son in a joint Instagram post on Thursday, sharing a picture of the newborn cradled in their hands while wrapped in a blanket.
“Our baby boy is here [heart emoji] 1.31.23,” El Moussa wrote in the caption. “Mama & baby are happy, healthy, tired but doing well. Our hearts are so happy.”
Friends and followers flocked to the comment section to congratulate the couple, including Young’s fellow Netflix Selling Sunset co-stars Jason Oppenheim and Chrishell Stause, and TV presenter Ant Anstead, who was previously married to El Moussa’s ex-wife Christina Hall.
“Yay!!! So excited for you two (three!!!!),” Oppenheim wrote.
Stause commented, “Omg sending SO much love your way!!!”
“HUGE congratulations you guys!” Anstead wrote.
Even the official HGTV account got in on the celebration, writing in the comments, “Welcome to the HGTV family little one!”
El Moussa, 41, and Young, 35, who tied the knot in October 2021, received the news about their pregnancy while undergoing in vitro fertilization treatments last year.
“It was a huge shock,” Young told People in July. “We just weren’t expecting this. We had just gone through IVF. We had embryos on ice. We had a plan.”
“I think when you least expect it and there’s no stress in your life, the world just brought us what was meant to be. I’m so excited that it happened like this,” she added.
Ever since he portrayed The King in his Golden Globe-winning and Oscar-nominated performance in Elvis, Austin Butler is being snarked on online for not dropping his “Elvis Presley voice” after the film.
However, on Friday’s episode of BBC One’sThe Graham Norton Show, the actor explained there’s a medical reason for it. “I am getting rid of the accent, but I have probably damaged my vocal cords with all that singing. One song took 40 takes,” he said.
He called the attention and accolades for his performance in Baz Luhrmann‘s film a whirlwind: “Because when you are making a film you never really know how it will be received. With this one there were so many ways it could go wrong, so to be received in the way it has means the world to me.”
What was also key, Butler explained, was his co-star Tom Hanks, who played Elvis’ scheming manager Col. Tom Parker.
“I had no idea what it was going to be like meeting someone you have admired for so long,” the actor said. “You hope they would be warm to you, but you never really know.”
He added, “He is such a master of his craft, and I was intimidated, but the first time I met him he gave me the biggest bear hug and joked about how nervous he was.”
A little over three months after announcing their engagement, The Bachelorette alum Clare Crawley and fiancé Ryan Dawkins have tied the knot.
“Mr. And Mrs. Dawkins!” Crawley, 41, wrote on her Instagram Thursday, along with pics of her and the 47-year-old businessman’s wedding day.
Party of Five alum and Bachelor fan Jennifer Love Hewitt responded to the post, writing, “This makes me so happy!!!”
Dancing with the Stars pro Peta Murgatroyd added, “Big congratulations beautiful…You’re a stunning bride!”
Bachelor Nation also weighed in, with Bachelorette alum Tayshia Adams commenting, “You look stunning Clare!! So happy for your ever after!”
“Clare!!!!! Soooo beautiful and so happy for you both!!!!!” Trista Sutter, a runner-up on season 1 of The Bachelor, shared.
The Bachelorette season 15 star Hannah Brown gushed, “Congrats Claire — you are a beautiful bride.”
The Bachelor season 11’s Ben Higgins also offered his congratulations.
Crawley shared the news of her engagement back in October, “He has held me in my darkness, loves me through my healing, and we now celebrate the light together!” Clare captioned a photo of Dawkins getting down on one knee. “The easiest YES of my life”
Clare began dating Ryan in 2021, but didn’t go public with the romance until September of 2022, writing, “Him,” along with a video of them singing in the car together, before adding that she found her “perfect fit.”
Crawley previously got engaged to Dale Moss during season 16 of The Bachelorette in 2020, leaving the reality series early after hitting it off with the 34-year-old former football player. Adams took her place as the season 16 lead.
Crawley and Moss called it quits in January 2021. They reconciled a month later before splitting for good in September 2021.
Paramount+ has renewed the Yellowstone prequel 1923 for a second season, Deadline reports. Starring Helen Mirren and Harrison Ford, 1923 was Paramount+’s most-watched premiere ever when it debuted in December, pulling in 7.4 million total viewers across all platforms. The first Yellowstone prequel, 1883, starring Tim McGraw, Faith Hill and Sam Elliott, was a one-and-done. 1923 returns this Sunday after a brief hiatus…
Four episodes into its first season, NBC’s Night Court has gotten a season 2 renewal, the network announced on Thursday. The series stars The Big Bang Theory alum Melissa Rauch as judge Abby Stone, the unapologetic optimist daughter of the late Harry Stone — played in the original series by Harry Anderson, who died in 2018 at age 65 — as she follows in her father’s footsteps, presiding over a crew of oddballs and cynics. John Larroquette, who played prosecuting attorney Dan Fielding in the original series, reprises his role for the sequel. India de Beaufort, Kapil Talwalkar and Lacretta also star. Night Court has put up strong numbers since its January 17 premiere, reaching 25.7 million total viewers across all viewing platforms, according to NBC…
Nielsen reports Netflix’s Ginny & Georgia debuted at the top of the streaming rankings for the first week of 2023, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Season 2 of the coming-of-age drama, about a mixed-race teen and her 30-year-old mother, played respectively by Antonia Gentry and Brianne Howey, premiered on January 5 and amassed 2.52 billion minutes of viewing time for the week of January 2-8…
The Daily Show reporter Roy Wood Jr. will headline the 2023 White House Correspondents’ Association’s annual dinner on April 29. “It’s an honor to be a part of a long-running tradition of celebrating those members of the media, who work so hard to uncover the truth, and hold our government accountable,” Wood said in a statement on Thursday. “It will be a great night that will go down in the history books, or not, depending on which state you live in.” The White House Correspondents’ Dinner returned as a live event in 2022 following two years without it due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Daily Show host Trevor Noah hosted last year’s show. Wood also has a stand-up special, Imperfect Messenger, on Paramount+…
A deadly plane crash brings a group of unlikely people together to deal with their grief, and make connections that likely never would have otherwise happened. That’s the premise of the new Apple TV+ series Dear Edward, debuting Friday.
It’s from Friday Night Lights creator Jason Katims, who tells ABC Audio despite the heavy subject matter, it’s not a depressing show.
“To me, it’s really a story about resilience and about moving on and about the power of the human spirit,” he explains.” “I think of it as a very uplifting show and show that I think is really about connection.”
Connie Britton, who stars in the new series, echoes the same sentiment, stating, “Even though there’s a lot of grief and sadness and loss and tough emotional stuff around that in the show, the ultimate takeaway is actually life affirming. And actually hope. And that, I think, is a really wonderful thing to be able to create.”
Britton plays a wife who loses her husband in a plane crash, and she finds out he left behind some secrets — which got her thinking about what loose ends she might leave behind if something tragic happened.
“I’m not a fearful flier at all,” she explains. “But I, now that I’m a mom, you know, that’s all I think about. I’m just like, if I died in a plane crash, is my son taken care of?”
So, what drew her to the role?
“I love that this was an ensemble,” she shares. “I love that this was a really connective way of talking about grief. And by creating a system of support, even through all these very, very different lives.”
The first three episodes of Dear Edward airFriday with one episode-a-week thereafter.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny whips into theaters on June 30, just shy of the 81st birthday of the movie’s star, Harrison Ford.
The leading man may be well past retirement age, but thanks to digital wizardry, the new movie will be showing both past and 1969-set “present” day adventures of the swashbuckling archeologist. Getting a chance to show what an Indy in his later years would be up to, Ford says, was “always” his goal.
“I always wanted to do it,” Ford told Variety on the red carpet of his Apple TV+ comedy series Shrinking. “I wanted to do the rest of the story to see the end of his career.”
And while Indy famously said, “It’s not the years, it’s the mileage,” his real-life alter ego insists he’s finally done with the role. “It’s the last time for me,” Ford insisted.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny was directed by Oscar nominee James Mangold and produced by Lucasfilm, which, like ABC News, is a subsidiary of Disney.
