Antonio Stallings | Showbiz Cheat Sheet Writer

Halle Berry and Mark Wahlberg Bonded Over Parenting for ‘The Union’

Antonio Stallings — Tue, 20 Aug 2024 02:32:00 +0000

Mark Wahlberg and Halle Berry recently teamed up for the first time for the Netflix thriller The Union. The pair found they had a lot in common, especially when it came to juggling their family lives with work.

Mark Wahlberg and Halle Berry were impressed with each other’s parenting

Halle Berry and Mark Wahlberg | Neil Mockford/GC Images

Wahlberg noticed how well Berry handled parenting when they collaborated for The Union. The two flew all over the world for the movie. As busy as they were, Berry always managed to set aside time for her kids.

“Well, it’s pretty clear — she’s a mom first. The kids are the top priority…to see that she can balance all of those things and this career and being Halle Berry, but becoming Roxanne, and doing all these things. And I know it’s not easy, but she makes it look easy,” Wahlberg said in a recent interview with Audacy.

Meanwhile, Berry had the same sentiments for her The Union co-star.

“If one of his kids called in that moment, we’d be on a roll waiting to go, and he’d be like, ‘Hello’…He’s relentless at that. He is very available to his children,” Berry added. “He was talking to them all the time, all hours of the night… And it was also, he does a hundred things too, like all these businesses and stuff. He [is] flying somewhere and he comes back, but he comes back prepared. Like, you think somebody’s doing all this stuff he’s doing, he’d kind of be phoning it in. But he really — he knows his stuff. He’s prepared. And it was nice to work with people that are professional ’cause it doesn’t always happen today.”

Both actors have a full house. Berry currently shares two kids with her exes Olivier Martinez and Gabriel Audry. Wahlberg shares four with his wife Rhea Durham.

Berry and Wahlberg’s lives as parents also affected their careers similarly.

“I still try to, whether it be with my family or my faith, I still try to kind of maintain that artistic integrity where if it’s something that I want to do, even though I may have some explaining to do and try to finesse the situation a little bit. But as I get older, I’ve also embraced being older, playing a dad,” he said.

“I feel the same way. It certainly changed me as a mother, but what it also connected me to was [that] I don’t worry what my children will think about what I do. You know, if it’s not appropriate for them to see, then they don’t see it,” Berry added. “I still do what I wanna do as an artist. I want to instill in them [that] you have to follow your own dream, follow your passion, do what makes you tick. And part of being a mom doesn’t mean that I’m just a mom, that that defines me. I’m still an artist. I’m still a woman. I still have aspirations outside of being a mother.”

Mark Wahlberg and Halle Berry felt competitive with each other for ‘The Union’

Wahlberg and Berry didn’t only bond over their families. The two are very familiar with the action genre. So both knew what it took to look and act believable in films that required peak physical fitness. Wahlberg, who served as producer for The Union, cast Berry in the film because she still maintained all the qualities of an action hero.

“I think there isn’t any reason that she wouldn’t be the most perfect person,” Wahlberg told Bossip about casting her. “I mean her strength, her poise, her talent, her physicality — I mean everything. She could do it all. Her timing — comedy, all of it. And you know any guy would believe that, you know I certainly would, and any guy that I know would believe that somebody would wait 25 years hoping that she would walk through the door.”

Thanks to Berry’s performance, Wahlberg couldn’t help but try to match his co-star’s physicality.

“When she was there, I was willing to step it up a little bit more,” Wahlberg said. “I was like ‘Well you know, look I’m getting older… I get it. Why don’t I let the young guy who looks just like me, except he’s 20 years younger, come in and and take over?’ But when she’s there you gotta step up.”

Matthew Perry Wished He Could’ve Stopped the End to ‘Friends’

Antonio Stallings — Tue, 20 Aug 2024 01:24:00 +0000

Friends lasted 10 seasons before the series came to a conclusion in 2004. But if it was up to late actor Matthew Perry, the show would’ve never ended.

Matthew Perry disagreed that ‘Friends’ had to end

Matthew Perry | Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic

Friends’ lifespan was much longer than other shows, thriving on television for a full decade. But that wasn’t enough for Perry, whose post-Friends endeavors didn’t seem to capture the same magic as the hit sitcom. After Friends ended, Perry admitted to having bad luck in movies. For a time, the studio lost faith in the actor’s reliability as a film star.

“I did about three movies that failed in a row,” Perry said in a 2015 interview with Buzzfeed. “And then they stopped offering me movies.”

He had slightly more success in the space of television. He managed to secue a main role in Aaron Sorkin’s Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and Mr. Sunshine. Both shows only lasted for one season, although he found his work in Studio 60 particularly rewarding. According to the publication, Perry was proud of his performance on the series. But felt discouraged when his own creative ideas clashed with Sorkin’s.

“Aaron Sorkin’s dialogue was the best writing I’ll ever have,” he said. “But there were times when I had ideas, and they were sort of shut down.”

Perry had a few recurring parts in other shows as well. But none of his projects seemed to reach the heights or energy that Friends enjoyed. So much so he found himself reflecting on the show often, wishing that it continued.

“I find myself sort of reminiscing about about how much fun the show was, and the hours that we worked. You know, you can see how much we laughed and everything. I was asked about it recently and I found myself saying, ‘If I had a time machine, I would like to go back to 2004 and not have stopped,’” Perry once said according to Female First. “Friends was the greatest job in the world.”

Matthew Perry considered walking away from acting for good after ‘Friends’

After the premature ending of Studio 60, Perry found his career stalling for a bit. So much so that he considered walking away from acting permanent.

“At the time, I thought, I’ll just retire! I’ve won the lottery. I’ll just hang out and do whatever I want,” Perry said.

Perry certainly could’ve retired comfortably if he wanted to at the time. Celebrity Net Worth reported that he earned $1 million for an episode of Friends at the height of the show’s popularity. And thanks to his syndication earnings, Perry had an accumulated net worth of $120 million at the time of his death.

But Perry couldn’t retire. Even though he didn’t need the money, he still needed the work. “But I have to work,” he continued. “I have to be a person that’s working. “Doing Go On was fun; doing Mr. Sunshine was fun; doing Studio 60 was a very interesting challenge, but fun. And doing The Odd Couple is fun.”

It helped that Perry wasn’t really bothered by the cancellation of his shows. At least not enough to truly quit acting.

“When all of those shows were canceled, I was absolutely fine,” he said. “I didn’t shed a tear at all. I was ready for them to be done, even if some of them were good. When you get the network call saying you’re canceled, I was, like, cool, no problem. The same thing would be true for The Odd Couple. I think I’m just lucky that I don’t need it.”

Jennifer Lopez Wondered if She Was Unfairly Targeted by Critics Because She Was a Minority

Antonio Stallings — Sun, 18 Aug 2024 23:18:17 +0000

Jennifer Lopez was used to facing a lot of criticism for her work. But she felt a lot of the negative feedback she faced might’ve come from an unfair place.

Jennifer Lopez’s critics affected her success

Jennifer Lopez | Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic

Even when Lopez was experiencing a career high, she was bothered by her detractors’ opinions. Back in her younger years, Lopez’s successful debut feature Selena coincided with her debut hit record On the 6. The movie didn’t do too well at the box office, but garnered massive critical praise from critics, with some highlighting Lopez’s performance. Likewise, On the 6 was a commercial success, going gold the first week of its release back in 1999.

But she had enough skeptics at the time to make Lopez doubt herself and her skills as an artist.

“I’m killing it, and then everybody’s like, ‘She can’t sing, she can’t dance, she can’t act, she’s just some pretty face or her butt is big’ or whatever they were saying about me and I started thinking, ‘Yeah, that’s true,’” she recalled according to People. “And it really hurt me for a long time.”

The more successful she became, the louder some of her critics were. So much so that Lopez wondered if the source of her criticism was about more than just her work.

“The rumors at that time were so endless,” Lopez said to Complex (via HuffPost). “I still haven’t figured that all out completely. I’ve thought sometimes, ‘Was it because I was a woman? Was it because I was a minority? I was like, ‘Why me? Why are they picking on me so much? What have I done?’ It’s funny. Men get praise when they are successful, like, ‘Look how great he’s doing.’ Women get criticized for some reason. I don’t understand it. All I know is that because I’ve stuck around for so long people realize, ‘Oh, that must not be true.’ ‘We finally got to know the real her.’”

How Jennifer Lopez handled harsh criticisms

Regardless of the true reasons behind the criticism, Lopez felt the best way to deal with her skeptics was to keep moving forward.

“I just couldn’t allow myself to let that become who I was. I was like, ‘No, I’m gonna make another record, I’m gonna make another song, I’m gonna make another movie,’” she said. “‘I’m a great actress, I’m a great singer, a great dancer, I’m great at this stuff! And I’m gonna keep going!’ And I did. And that’s all I did. I just kept going. And I just started working harder and harder than everybody else.”

Lopez also maintained confidence by believing in herself and her abilities. She gave credit to her upbringing for helping her navigate through the entertainment industry. Although she’s come a long way from her humble beginnings, Lopez was born and bred in the Bronx. The lessons she learned in her hometown came in handy later on in life.

“Thank God I’ve been blessed in that way. But I’m the same person. They know that I’m still Bronx-y. I still wear hoops. I still like to rock sneakers and sweats. I always felt like I was out of place in Hollywood. But I also felt that the street smarts I had from growing up in New York served me well out here,” Lopez said.

Over the years, what’s further helped Lopez prosper was ignoring the critics in her own head.

“I think that, for me, the most important thing for me is not listening to all the outside voices, but making sure that the voice that I’m speaking to myself, that roommate is a kind roommate, is a good roommate, is someone that’s lifting me up like [producing partner Elaine Goldsmith] does every single day,” she added.

Michael Weatherly Once Felt ‘NCIS’ Being the Number 1 Show Could be a Bad Thing

Antonio Stallings — Sun, 18 Aug 2024 01:38:00 +0000

NCIS used to generate the highest ratings in all of television at the peak of its popularity. But Weatherly felt being the country’s No. 1 show could come with some significant drawbacks.

Michael Weatherly quipped that ‘NCIS’ was better off being the No. 3 show on television

Michael Weatherly | Sonja Flemming / Getty Images

NCIS met and perhaps even surpassed expectations when it became the No. 1 show on television. The show’s former star Mark Harmon once confided that the series took a while to find its footing. At first, NCIS was just getting by.

“We were able to keep it afloat a couple of years because we weren’t good enough to get all the attention, and we weren’t bad enough to get canceled,” Harmon once told Seattle Times. “And the biggest thing: We shoot in Santa Clarita. Nobody from the network wanted to drive out there!”

The show’s first few seasons experienced lukewarm reception and ratings. It wasn’t until its third season that NCIS started to find both itself and its audience. Soon, the show climbed the ranks to being the most-watched program in the country. But in a resurfaced interview with TV Fanatic, Weatherly somewhat longed for the days when NCIS wasn’t as successful.

“I just don’t want anything to change,” Weatherly said. “No. 3 is kind of better. They’re still not gonna cancel you if you’re No. 3. But now everyone’s looking. It’s kind of like when they give you the ball in football.”

Michael Weatherly wondered if audiences thought ‘NCIS’ was a spoof

Weatherly once theorized that the show faltered initially due to how it was presented. In its infancy, he wasn’t sure if audiences knew what to make of NCIS, particularly in the United States. To Weatherly, other countries had a more accurate first impression of the long-running procedural.

“NCIS is sort of [promoted as] ‘The Unit’ meets CSI when clearly, to my way of thinking, we’re more like Scooby-Doo meets M*A*S*H. You know, it’s like we have a mystery van, and we go around, and if weren’t for those damn teenage kids,” Weatherly once told The Futon Critic. “And then Klinger wearing a dress trying to get the Section 8, we’ve got some kookiness. And so it’s always interesting to me because in other countries like France on M6, the personality of the show is much more at the forefront.”

According to the actor’s own experiences, audiences even considered NCIS a parody of another similar series.

“So no one even really… people actually think that NCIS is like making fun of CSI. It’s almost like spoofing it. I mean the sensibility is so much different,” he said.

Weatherly figured that NCIS finally obtaining a syndication run might help improve its status. He might’ve been right, as the show’s constant reruns on platforms like the USA Network have helped create more awareness of the series.

“I do also have this sneaking suspicion that when we start the syndication run – which I think is next summer, not this summer, I think it’s 2008 – I think there’s a portion of the audience that just isn’t around on Tuesday night at 8:00 to sample it,” Weatherly said. “But they might like on Saturday night at like 11 pm. Like come back from a party, smoke a joint, and be surfing around and catch a ‘head slap’ or Ducky talking to a body, or they’re going to see Pauley Perrette and think, ‘Wait a minute, that’s an interesting creature.’ And I think there’s going to be this weird sampling of the ‘other’ audience. Because I think we’ve strip-mined everyone from 50 to 65. I think we’ve found every single one. I don’t think we have to sell to them anymore. It would be a disservice to push ourselves into that.”

Ben Affleck Felt He Married Someone Above Him by Being With Jennifer Garner

Antonio Stallings — Sat, 17 Aug 2024 18:14:00 +0000

Ben Affleck couldn’t stop gushing about how much he admired his ex-wife Jennifer Garner at one point. And the fact that he felt Garner might’ve been a bit out of his league affected their relationship in a surprising way.

How Ben Affleck handled the idea of marrying someone above him

Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner attend Variety’s 4th Annual Power of Women Event on Oct. 5, 2012 | Amanda Edwards/WireImage

Affleck felt he might’ve lucked out by marrying Garner while they were together. But even back in the golden years of their marriage, Affleck asserted that his relationship wasn’t without its problems.

“Jennifer played such a profound role in making me a better person,” Affleck once told The Hollywood Reporter. “We don’t have a perfect marriage, but she inspired me; and finding myself in that marriage and having a child dovetailed with getting to be a little more mature.”

One of the reasons why Affleck thought so highly of his ex-wife was her compassion. The Gone Girl star believed that Garner held no malice towards anyone, which he admitted sometimes worked against him.

“She truly is kind,” Affleck added. “She means no one any harm. She doesn’t have ill will for any person. She’s not competitive with other people. She’s not spiteful. It’s one of those things where it becomes almost aggravating at times. Every time I go, ‘F*** him!’ I see in her face that she just thinks that’s petty and small.”

According to Contact Music, Affleck shared his belief that Garner might’ve been a better person than he was. Which was a key reason why their marriage worked as well as it did.

“There are two things for a marriage to be good. One is to work hard on it. The other one is to marry above you. And I succeeded at both of those,” he said.

Why Jennifer Garner’s kids told her that she used to be their family’s ‘only hope’

Garner and Affleck’s relationship moved at a very quick pace. They were engaged to each other after nine months of dating, and got married in June of 2005. They gave birth to their first child six months after that. Given how young they were, Garner asserted that their newfound parenthood took quite an adjustment period.

“When we had our first, we had only been together a year. We were babies. It happened so fast, I hardly even remember what we were like before the kids got here,” Garner said in a 2014 interview with InStyle (via E! News).

With the arrival of two more children, Garner and Affleck could only spend time together sparingly. Because of this, Garner chose to stay home with her family most of the time so Affleck could devote his time to his work.

“I keep things rolling and foster his connection to the kids. He’ll always make time for them—he screwed up a week of production to take our daughter to her first day of kindergarten—but there’s only so much, practically speaking, that he can do,” Garner said. “I make sure that I am facilitating the most meaning for each kid out of whatever time he has.”

Garner also commented on their different parenting styles, confiding that Affleck was seen as the funnier of the two. But the Elektra actor had her ex-husband beat when it came to movies. Garner quipped that most of Affleck’s films were too dark for them to watch at the ages they were. So the kids hoped that Garner would make movies that were more age-appropriate.

“My kids are always saying, ‘Mom, you’re our only hope. Dad does all these grown-up movies,” Garner recalled. “We can’t see Argo or Gone Girl. Batman looks too scary. You have to do things we can see.'”

Kate Winslet Once Shared Her Rough ‘Titanic’ Experience Later Helped Her With This Movie

Antonio Stallings — Sat, 17 Aug 2024 03:41:00 +0000

Actor Kate Winslet was exposed to many uncomfortable conditions while filming James Cameron’s physically taxing Titanic. But Winslet’s experiences on the film’s set came in handy while shooting another movie years later.

How ‘Titanic’ helped Kate Winslet with ‘A Little Chaos’

Kate Winslet | CBS /Getty Images

Winslet collaborated alongside Alan Rickman for the second time in her career in the 2014 period piece A Little Chaos. The project saw Winslet playing a female gardener tending to the gardens of royalty in the 1600s. While filming, there was a scene in the feature where her character had to fix a flooding stream. This required Winslet, who was pregnant at the time, to immerse herself in water. But she asserted that the scene wasn’t as hard to shoot as some might’ve thought. Especially since Winslet took control of the scene entirely.

“I was absolutely fine in the water. It was warm and at night and it wasn’t cold so it was like getting into a big bath,” she once said according to Contact Music. “I was bossing everyone around and they were like, ‘Kate, we’ve really warmed the water for you’. I was like, ‘Well, what temperature have you warmed that water to because if it’s too warm, it’s like getting into a hot tub and we’re not supposed to get into hot tubs too long any of us, let alone pregnant women.’”

Winslet credited her time on the Titanic for being able to handle the experience the way she did. The Oscar-winner was exposed to floods quite frequently in the disaster romance.

“I said, ‘You’re gonna have to change the temperature. Plus, when you turn on those rain towers and the cold water hits warm water you’re gonna get steam which you don’t want, because this is supposed to be a river,’” she recalled. “Sure enough, they did a test and there was steam everywhere. I said, ‘Told you!’ Dare I say it but I did learn that on Titanic.”

Kate Winslet recalled her ‘Titanic’ injuries

Titanic was as harrowing as it was rewarding for Winslet. It may have financially secured her career at the time, but it alsi pushed the actor to her physical limits. A normal work day with Cameron and her co-star Leonardo DiCaprio meant spending 20 hours in grueling conditions.

“And two-thirds of it was night shooting–because the Titanic sunk at night,” Winslet once told the LA Times. “It was every man for himself on the set–you had to ensure that you snatched some sleep during the day, with a black eye mask on. Sometimes you’d find yourself having lunch at 2 a.m. or breakfast at 4 p.m. It was very disorienting.”

Winslet took home physical injuries that served as reminders of her time on the Titanic.

“I chipped a small bone in my elbow,” Winslet reflected. “And at one point I had deep bruises all over my arms. I looked like a battered wife.”

Perhaps one of the most dangerous positions Winslet was put in was when the actor nearly drowned. A coat she was wearing at the time snagged on a gate during a scene where she was running from wild waters on the ship. The coat had gotten caught on an opening gate, dragging Winslet down underneath the water.

“I had to sort of shimmy out of the coat to get free,” she remembered. “I had no breath left. I thought I’d burst. And Jim just said, ‘OK, let’s go again.’ That was his attitude. I didn’t want to be a wimp so I didn’t complain.”

Marlon Wayans Had to Sacrifice Everything He Loved to Do for ‘Requiem for a Dream’

Antonio Stallings — Sat, 17 Aug 2024 02:37:00 +0000

Actor Marlon Wayans surprised many with his highly praised performance in the drama Requiem for a Dream. But he made a lot of sacrifices that might’ve helped further immerse him in the role.

‘Requiem for a Dream’ director took away everything Marlon Wayans loved for the movie

Marlon Wayans | Jason Mendez/Getty Images

Wayans famously portrayed Tyrone C. Love in the 2000 cult classic. He collaborated alongside director Darren Aronofsky for the first time, which he saw as one of his favorite filming experiences ever. In a resurfaced interview with Female First, he reflected on what it was like working with the director.

“First of all I think Darren Aronofsky is a great director everything he does, well three out of four things, is Oscar nominated. He is just a visionary and he is one of the greats of our generation he is a throwback to the days when they made movies with people who had their own rhythm and own way of telling the story and can do various styles within his own style,” Wayans said. “And Darren cares about everything in the frame from the actor to the lighting and the set – every one of the little shots of the drugs and the eye that he was shooting he really knew what he wanted.”

A known perfectionist, Aronofsky required Wayans to endure certain trials before they started filming. Which included walking around New York in the blistering cold.

“And, for me, it was the process that we went through before the acting – he had me come out to New York in February and we rehearsed for two of three months before I shot,” he remembered. “I had to walk around New York in February freezing cold – and he was like ‘I want you to know what the New York cold feels like I want you to remember this because you will be filming this winter scene in summer’ and I said ‘Hey bro I am from New York.’”

But Aronofsky took things a bit further by removing as many temptations from the Scary Movie star as possible. This made sense as the movie’s themes focused on addiction, and its characters’ inability to manage their own self-destructive desires. Aronofsky made Wayans feel his character’s sense of withdrawal in his own comical way.

“It was little rituals like that – we found five thing that I love to do; I love sugar, sex, masturbating and he was like, ‘You can’t do any of those.’ And I was like, ‘Why?’ And he said, ‘I want you to know what it is like to go without something that you love,'” Wayans said.

Marlon Wayans initially turned down ‘Requiem for a Dream’

Wayans almost rejected what would be one of his most iconic roles. When he read the script, he noticed that the character’s dialect was a bit retro.

“When I first read the script I was confused and I was like ‘What the hell? Why is this brother talking like he is from the seventies?’ I was like this is another stereotypical brother role – here the white man has gone and done [it] again,” he said.

But he changed his mind after reading the book the film was based on. Additionally, he became more familiar with Aronofsky’s work, and was eager to be a part of his filmography. Wayans wanted the role so much that he screened several times for the picture, and even lost days of sleep because of it.

“I just wanted to work with Darren and then I got the script and it all sort of locked in for me. It was not easy Darren, the bastard, made me audition five times and I when I auditioned I wouldn’t sleep for two or three days, I wouldn’t wash and I just went back to performing arts high school mode I was like ‘I want this,’” he recalled.

In the end, Wayans was pleased to see that shooting Requiem for a Dream more than lived up to expectations.

Michael Weatherly Would’ve Needed Someone to ‘Put a Gun to My Head’ to Do ‘NCIS: Los Angeles’

Antonio Stallings — Sat, 17 Aug 2024 01:26:00 +0000

NCIS spawned one of many spin-offs when it inspired the creation of NCIS Los Angeles. But Michael Weatherly initially felt it was a bad idea to overlap with the second series.

Michael Weatherly didn’t want an ‘NCIS’ crossover with ‘Los Angeles’

Michael Weatherly | Cliff Lipson/Getty Images

NCIS had a successful experiment with spin-offs that started with NCIS Los Angeles. As its title implies, Los Angeles followed a group of federal agents hunting down dangerous criminals in the city. Starring LL Cool J and Chris O’Donnell, the show was a success from the start. Its debut episode was the second most watched show at the time, only behind NCIS‘ season seven premiere.

Although he seemed excited about the prospect of an NCIS spin-off, Weatherly felt it was a bad idea for Tony DiNozzo to crossover with the other show. He believed he worked best alongside his familiar crew.

“I won’t do a crossover, unless they put a gun to my head,” Weatherly once told TV Fanatic. “It won’t help them, and my character is really only valuable in the context of Ziva, Gibbs and McGee. Robbed of his context, that guy might really be inappropriate.”

However, Weatherly seemed to change his tune years later. He did a crossover episode with Los Angeles in the 2015 episode “Blame It on Rio.” This time, a Weatherly who was a bit older seemed to embrace being in another different environment on the show.

“They’re a peak experience for someone like me. For 13 years, besides a tiny part here and there, I’ve just been playing DiNozzo. So having other experiences with the character is super important to me. Plus, I love to see how DiNozzo travels, how he’ll be in different settings. On NCIS, he can only do so much,” he said in a resurfaced interview with TV Insider.

At the same time, he harbored similar concerns appearing on Los Angeles that he had several years prior.

“To be honest, I was a little nervous about going into NCIS: Los Angeles because I wasn’t sure how DiNozzo would be received—not just by the team, but by the audience,” Weatherly said. “Would he mesh with them? Look, I’m the same age as LL Cool J and I think we were the oldest guys on set next to Miguel Ferrer! But that’s the funny thing. Rather than having to play a faux youth like on NCIS, I was playing a little creaky on NCIS: L.A. And I enjoyed that Eric and Daniela were all really athletic and beautiful around me. It was just really refreshing. I felt like ‘Oh, s***, am I aging out of the game?’ Which I realized is totally a DiNozzo paranoia.”

How Michael Weatherly’s parents reacted to the ‘NCIS’ spin-off

Weatherly was especially impressed by the show’s premise and immediate success. So much so that he doubted a younger version of himself would’ve believed how the NCIS franchise turned out.

“It’s been the kind of year,” Weatherly once told NJ. “That, if seven years ago, you had come up to me and said, ‘Michael, I just went with the Ghost of Christmas Future, and I was mostly paying attention to my own stuff, but I happened to notice that there’s an NCIS: LA with LL Cool J and Chris O’Donnell, which is a spin-off of your show, and it’s the No. 1 new show on television, and your show is the No. 1 show on television,’ I think I would have bet you maybe $40,000 that you were lying. Not a million dollars, but I would have bet you something big — like a car.”

But Weatherly’s parents assumed that Los Angeles meant their son’s own time on the show was coming to a close. And even offered some friendly advice as to how Weatherly might improve his job prospects just in case.

“My parents thought immediately that meant I must be losing my job to someone,” Weatherly said. “After the second episode aired, my mom called from Rhode Island. She said, ‘It’s a big year. You don’t want to maybe bring it down like two inches off the waist?’”

Halle Berry Refused to Tell Anyone She Was Injured on ‘Bruised’

Antonio Stallings — Fri, 16 Aug 2024 03:34:00 +0000

Halle Berry sustained many injuries while doing her passion project Bruised. But she made it a point not to tell anyone how bad her injuries were.

Halle Berry feared exposing her injuries would’ve shut ‘Bruised’ down

Halle Berry | Phillip Faraone/Getty Images

Bruised was a very important project for Berry. The 2021 sports drama was initially meant for Blake Lively to star in several years ago. But when Berry got a hold of the project, the piece resonated with her in such a way that she insisted to be the film’s star. Additionally, Berry also opted to direct the project when she couldn’t find another filmmaker who was right for the part.

“I didn’t know this is what I wanted to do,” she said in an interview with Goldderby. “I didn’t really set out to direct this. I wanted to be the actor to play this amazing character that I love so much within a sport that I loved so much. I only ended up directing it because I couldn’t really find someone that shared the vision that I had because I had to reimagine the story. It wasn’t written for someone like me. It was written for a very young, white, Irish-Catholic girl. So I had to reimagine it. I ended up directing it because I couldn’t find anyone that saw it the way I saw it.”

Berry would end up playing Jackie Justice, who was a retired MMA fighter looking to make a comeback. This required Berry to undergo an intense training regimen to move and look believable as a fighter. Due to the physicality of the role, however, Berry experienced many injuries. But she opted to keep her own bruises quiet for the sake of the movie.

“I knew if I told [producers] this happened, they would shut down and I would probably lose my funding. I just willed myself to do it,” she said in an interview with USA Today. “I took a bunch of Advil and I just acted as if it wasn’t happening.”

Halle Berry was happy to get her face messed up in ‘Bruised’

Berry saw Bruised as another opportunity for audiences to see beyond her looks. Although Berry’s career has certainly benefited from her good looks, it’s also stood in the way of the actor getting the roles she wants.

“It was intentional to not play the gorgeous girl,” Berry told W Magazine. “I came from the world of beauty pageants and modeling and right away when people heard that I got discounted as an actor.”

It was why Berry was determined to be cast in her breakthrough feature Jungle Fever. The Spike Lee movie famously saw the actor portray a drug addict, requiring Berry to significantly downplay her looks. When she first read for the part, Lee initially had Berry in mind to play his wife. But Berry insisted on playing the addict.

“Spike Lee wanted me to read for the part of his wife and I read that part fine enough, but then I said to Spike ‘You know I really am eyeing this crack ho role, can you please let me audition for that?’ And he said, ‘no, no I don’t see you as the crack ho,’” she recalled.

However, she managed to convince Lee that she was right for the part. Acquiring the role meant Berry was one step closer to accomplishing her goal.

“So, I had the job of trying to eliminate that part of my persona, and Spike gave me a chance to do that. And I took on roles early on that really didn’t rely on my physical self at all and that was a good way to sort of get some credibility within my industry,” she said.

Bruised held similar importance to Berry. Make-up helped give Berry’s face all of the black eyes and scars that often came with being a fighter. But it was a look she was proud of.

“Especially being me and people always commented on how I look, it was so liberating to wake up every day and the more [expletive] up I looked, the better it was going to be for the day’s work,” she said.

Jeremy Renner Once Revealed the 1 Marvel Character That He Couldn’t Relate to

Antonio Stallings — Fri, 16 Aug 2024 02:41:00 +0000

Marvel star Jeremy Renner made his mark on the cinematic comic book universe as Hawkeye. Avengers saw him teaming up with several superheroes, but there was one he worked alongside with that he couldn’t relate to. So much so that if he was offered the character, he would’ve passed on him without hesitation.

Jeremy Renner wouldn’t have played this Marvel character

Jeremy Renner | Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic

It didn’t take long for Renner to sign with Marvel after he was approached for the role. The studio already built up some good will with Renner thanks to 2008’s Iron Man. Though he knew little about the character, he assumed that the superhero archer would be handled similarly.

“I remember going in to talk with [Marvel Studios president] Kevin Feige and [Marvel Studios co-president] Lou D’Esposito, and they’d show me the Ultimates version of Hawkeye. Iron Man had come out, and I said, ‘I’m into what you guys are doing because I loved Iron Man. I like how you made Iron Man plausible. So that’s where they wanted to go with [Hawkeye]. I’m like, ‘Great,’” Renner said in an interview with Vanity Fair.

However, Renner started second-guessing doing the film when he realized how long he’d be playing Hawkeye for.

“You gotta kinda sign on for a bunch of Avengers films and potential Hawkeye films, kind of sign your life away. I’m like, ‘Wait, I might be 50 in tights,’” Renner said. “That was my main concern. I’m like, ‘I don’t know if I want to do this. I don’t know if anyone wants to see me in tights at 50.’”

Renner’s estimation wasn’t far off at all. The actor was already fifty when he was last seen as Hawkeye in his titular television series. But Hawkeye has been more than good for the character, earning Renner a nice fortune and his own spin-off show. Renner also found his role very relatable, more so than other Marvel characters who he teamed up with. Thor, for instance, was one superhero he would’ve turned down playing no matter what.

“I’d have passed on Thor all day long – not that I’d ever be cast in that – but like, that kind of thing I’d be like, ‘I don’t know how to do that, I’m sorry,’” Renner once said according to FemaleFirst.

Jeremy Renner was once frustrated by his Hawkeye character

Renner has been given much more to do as Hawkeye the longer he’s portrayed the superhero. But initially, he was a little confused regarding his character’s direction. In the first Avengers movie, although Renner plays an important part, Hawkeye succumbs to mind control. It was a storyline that Renner wasn’t too fond of, as it delayed the character development he was hoping to see in the role.

“I was just getting to know who Hawkeye was, and then zap, I go round like a zombie, I’m like Loki’s minion. And I’m still not even sure who Hawkeye was at that point,” Renner once said according to Playlist. “So I’m a little frustrated, because I was so excited to figure out who Hawkeye was. I just had a heart attack in every scene. I’d just be walking with…Scarlett Johansson, and just like be ugh [clutching my chest]. And they said, ‘What are you doing man?’ I’m giving you an option if you just want to kick me out of this movie. Just you know, at any given moment, if you wanna kill me off, daddy’s gonna be having a heart attack.”

This would change later on. Subsequent films like Age of Ultron and Civil War allowed much more exploration of Renner’s character. Hawkeye, especially, gave Renner several episodes to familiarize himself with the superhero in a way he’d never had before.

It seems that whatever reservations Renner had about playing the superhero have been addressed. Renner would even be eager to return to the role if Marvel gave him a call.

“Getting asked back to do those things would always be an honour. I’m always willing to get ready. I think I need something to look forward to, or something to try and achieve…keeps me going in my progress. Stuff like that, ‘oh, can I ever get back to that kind of shape’ to be able to be that flexible with all these busted-old hips and things? Yeah, I think it would be a good challenge, and I’m up for it,” he said in an interview with JoBlo.