Journalist, Author & Syndicated Columnist
Blessed with a simple, heartbreaking beauty, Marlee Matlin carries her star status with self-effacing humor. A native of Chicago’s northwest suburbs, Matlin presently lives in New York. Having lost her hearing at the age of 18 months, she was recently back in town to attend the creative arts festival at the Center on Deafness in Des Plaines where she had been a student.
“Somebody was saying that I was too tall to be a rock singer,” Grahame “Skin” Skinner said. “Actually, I didn’t sing in most of the groups I was in before because I didn’t think I had a good voice. I played a little guitar — very little. The theory goes that a baritone doesn’t reach his potential until he’s 35, so I’ve still got several years to ago. Then I can make my comeback.”
During Paul Young’s last visit to the United States, he impaled himself onstage and was propositioned on national television. He’s still not sure which made him feel more uncomfortable. “I’m never quite sure when I’m being chatted up,” said the soulful British pop singer. On NBC’s “Tonight” show, actress Sonja Braga indicated she was interested in more than Young’s British accent. “I just sat there thinking, `This can’t be happening.’ It’s quite easy to flirt when you’re onstage, but in private, it’s a totally different situation.”
While many would-be actresses would jump at the chance of nabbing a three-year contract on a television soap opera, Rebecca Schaeffer passed it up. “If I give you the real reason why I didn’t take it, I’m going to sound so cocky,” Schaeffer said during a break from working on her role in “My Sister Sam,” a CBS sitcom that airs at 7:30 p.m. Mondays on
WBBM-Channel 2. “But I got offered a role on `Loving’ within a couple of months after I had moved to New York. So I thought, if I got this so quickly, I might want to hold out for something that I really wanted to do.”
At barely 5 feet and 90 pounds, Anita Baker is as talented as she is petite. Her soldout concert Saturday night at the Arie Crown Theater — the second of three consecutive Chicago dates – proved that she has no problem matching the exuberance and joy she expresses on her gold album, “Rapture.”
A lot of people are fooled by his name. Patrick Francis Bishop sounds about as American as you can get. But the Eurasian star of “General Hospital” considers himself more Asian than Caucasian. “I think it’s the same for most kids of mixed marriages,” Bishop said. “If a person’s half black and half white, society tends to think of him or her as black.”
Before he hit it big last year as the Russian boxer in “Rocky IV,” Dolph Lundgren was best known as the boyfriend of singer/actress Grace Jones. Today, the Swedish actor doesn’t have a steady girlfriend. He’s too busy starring in “Masters of the Universe” for Cannon Films.
Alyssa Milano has been acting for about half of her life. When you’re 13 years old, that’s not a long time. But the young actress already has starred opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger and John Gielgud. Television viewers may know her as the tomboy daughter on ABC’s popular “Who’s the Boss?” series. The sitcom, starring Tony Danza, airs at 7 p.m. Tuesdays on WLS-Channel 7.
People who recognize Courteney Cox remember her as the girl who danced with Bruce Springsteen in the “Dancing in the Dark” video. Although Cox did little more than look enthused and dance with “The Boss,” her 20 seconds of video exposure opened the door for her in Hollywood.
“The Women” is a hysterical, satirical look at women living in a man’s world during the 1940s. Everything about the play is quick and breezy. The all-female cast from By Any Other Name Theater Company tackles the fast-paced and clever script with the same ease they manage the countless costume changes during the two-hour-plus show at Paladium Productions.