Eric Bana, the Aussie hottie who will play villain in JJ Abrams’s new Star Trek prequel movie, is featured on the cover and in the pages of the new issue of Details magazine. Here is Bana’s coverphoto along with a portion of his coverstory interview:

SOMETHING HAPPENED TO BANA when Hollywood called. He was a successful Australian comedian who’d spent five years doing stand-up before landing his own TV show, Eric. Then, in 2000, his searing performance as the blaring psycho Mark Read in Chopper demonstrated a raw talent at full tilt—and offered him a ticket to the movie major leagues. But no sooner had he burst through Hollywood’s gilded doors than he steadied himself and began a run of characters who were defined by their inability to emote: the hawkeyed hard case Hoot in Black Hawk Down; Avner the conscience-stricken assassin in Munich; the conflicted scientist in Ang Lee’s Hulk; Hector in Troy, the warrior trying to avoid war. In these roles Bana glowered, his eyes dark, wrestling with some inner dilemma. The old Bana does reveal himself occasionally: At Aussie Rules football games, for example, Bana screams himself hoarse. In his comedy-club days, he had to stop going to contests on the night before a gig, because he wouldn’t have a voice the next day. But now, for the most part, he’s thoughtful, earnest, and a little serious. And he’s sincere about wanting to show me around Melbourne. On finding out how far I’ve come, how limited my time is, and that this is my first visit to Australia, he chews pensively, calculating an itinerary … We stop at a park and watch some ducks being fed. It seems a little sedate for Hector of Troy. But the ducks aren’t the draw for Bana. “It’s a Formula One track. There’s a race in three weeks’ time.” He never planned on being Eric Bana the actor, or the comedian, for that matter. What he really wants is to be Mario Andretti. Between shooting movies, Bana can be found “fart-arsing around with my car, getting ready for a race.” Although he has more than one, his favorite car is a fire-engine-red ‘74 XB Falcon coupe that he calls the Beast. He’s had it since he was 15. “Three of my closest friends—our relationship has been maintained because we’ve always worked on this car,” he says. “The car has transcended itself. It has become a campfire.” But one day, during the Targa Tasmania rally in April 2007, he crashed into a tree. “I totaled it. After a two-year restoration, everything handmade. Oh, it hurt—yeah. Absolutely.” He falls silent for a moment, still mourning the Beast … [H]e drives to a small, nondescript brick building and we park outside the house he lived in when he first attempted to make people laugh for a living. He made the decision to give comedy a try after driving around the United States in a 1979 Mustang on his own for six months. He was all of 22. “It sounded like a great idea at the time, but after 10 days straight without talking to anybody, you start to think, What the fuck am I doing here?” he says. Still, he plowed on, from city to city, sleeping in his car because money was tight. And then he got lost in the wrong part of Washington, D.C. “I’d be pulling up to street corners, and there were gangs right there, and I’m in this little Mustang by myself. I thought, I am fucking dead. I was running red lights, hoping the cops would pull me over.” The experience prepared him for stand-up—the loneliness and fear had hardened him. So when he was working as a bartender in a comedy club back home a few months later, he says he thought, “These acts are all a bit shithouse—I can do that. I’ll be a bit uncomfortable up there, but after the trip I had, how bad can it be?” It was the right choice. He has a talent for impersonating people. On YouTube you’ll find Bana doing Arnold, Bana doing Tom Cruise. He went about as far as you can in Australia—from $60-a-night gigs to his own TV show. And then, after 10 years, he quit. “I got sick of listening to myself,” he says. “I had all the tools, but my act had stagnated and I felt dirty.” Comedy is not something Bana wishes to revisit. The closest he’s come to that is a part in the upcoming Judd Apatow movie Funny People, starring Seth Rogen and Adam Sandler. “All I miss about comedy is being producer, director, and writer. I miss the control,” he says. Like many comics, Bana is prone to dark moods … In a few weeks he’ll be racing again. Then there’s a heap of press to do for all the movies he’s got in the can—Star Trek, Funny People, the chick-flicky Time Traveler’s Wife. Beyond that, he’s just reading and deciding what comes next. The in-between is his favorite time, living his Melbourne life, sticking the bikes on the roof of the car and taking the kids to the beach. Today he’s happy just to be a tour guide. “If you’ve got time tomorrow, you should check out the Melbourne Cricket Ground—it’s one of the great sporting stadiums. I think they do tours,” he says before we part. He shakes my hand and heads into the balmy night in the city where he can fool himself into thinking that he’s still plain old Aussie Eric, the family man and race-car nut who remembers who he is just enough to forget what he does.

What a strange interview … especially for a coverstory. There is no talk of his new film nor does he even really talk about his acting career … that said, I had no idea that Eric Bana used to be a comedian. Honestly, I can’t see it so I may have to look up some videos on You Tube to get a sense of his humor. While the interview feels a bit lacking to me, the accompanying photoshoot does not. After the jump, check out some photos from Eric’s Details magazine photospread which was shot by Steven Klein …

READ THE REST OF THIS POST »

Baseball star, sometimes Madonna paramour and admitted steroid-user Álex Rodríguez is featured on the cover and in the pages of the new issue of Details magazine. In his coverstory interview, A-Rod talks about his “favorite” Madonna song, poses for a (IMHO) narcissistic photospread and the overall state of his sports career … just hours before Sports Illustrated breaks the news that A-Rod tested positive for using a “banned substance” after he publicly went on the record to adamantly deny that he’s ever used banned substances in his career. Meh. Timing is everything. Here are a few photos from A-Rod’s Details photoshoot and a portion of his coverstory interview:

The night before his life changes forever, Alex Rodriguez calls from Miami with an urgent request. A-Rod is worried about something he said during our interview last night. I’ve been hearing mysterious warnings all afternoon: Alex needs to talk. Alex wants to clarify something. Can’t say what. Alex will call you from his car. “Listen,” Rodriguez says. “I was thinking about one thing that I spoke about—it’s something that’s kind of trivial but will give me a hard time for no reason.” He pauses. “The song.” Aha. Last night, he let slip his favorite Madonna song. The curious relationship between A-Rod and the pop icon makes for delicious gossip, of course. Is Rodriguez terrified that Madonna will resent the tongue-wagging? Or, better still, has he picked the wrong song as his favorite, and fears that an offended Madge might march her stilettos over his back? No: Rodriguez believes that revealing the song would lead to its being played every time he stepped to the plate during an away game. “The last thing I want to do is go to every stadium and have them play that song,” he says. Fine—to be honest, it’s not even a great Madonna song (if it had been something juicy like “Justify My Love,” forget it). Looking back, his preoccupation seems surreal. Just the day before, Selena Roberts, a reporter from Sports Illustrated, had confronted Rodriguez at a Miami gym, asking for his reaction to evidence that he’d tested positive for illegal steroids in 2003. And now here he was, sweating a Madonna song. It’s like worrying about the in-flight movie as your plane is belly flopping on the Hudson River. Maybe Rodriguez is in denial. He’s just spent the afternoon happily posing for the cover shoot for this story, showing off his strapping physique and loosening up with shots of Patrón. His pals talk of continuing the party nearby, at the remodeled Fontainebleu hotel. When he calls later there’s no panic in his voice, no foreshadowing of the humiliation that he, at least, knows is coming. It really is as though his biggest concern in the world is that Madonna song. That fear is misdirected anyhow: Like an opposing team’s ballpark needs any inspiration to crank up a Madonna song when A-Rod comes to the plate. Velvet-vested organists have been practicing the entire Ciccone oeuvre for months. You know what happens next. Just over 12 hours after we hang up, Sports Illustrated publishes its story. Two days after that, a tearful Alex Rodriguez carefully confirms to ESPN that he used a “banned substance.” Excoriated in the media, the best baseball player of his generation is in an unimaginable fight to get his good name back. He’d probably give anything to return to worrying about that damn song. “Alex,” he says, extending a hand. “Nice to meet you.” Rodriguez strides toward my table in a sleek Italian restaurant in Miami’s South Beach wearing a cappuccino-colored sweater, a white oxford shirt, jeans, and pristine white sneakers. Style-wise, he’s a little Fred Rogers, a little Jerry Seinfeld. His eyes are turquoise green, and his brown hair is cut and gelled impeccably (the frosted tips were excised a while ago). On his left wrist is a red string Kabbalah bracelet. He orders an iced tea and explains why he was delayed on his way to dinner. One of his daughters was taken to the hospital with a staph infection. She’s going to be fine, he says, sounding relieved. Spring training is less than two weeks away, and Rodriguez has been working out down the road in Coral Gables, at the University of Miami, “about six mornings a week.” He’s pleased with the three new hires the Yankees spent $423 million on—first baseman Mark Teixera, pitchers C.C. Sabathia and A.J. Burnett—and his face brightens as he talks about playing in the new $1.6 billion Yankee Stadium. He tells me he grabbed a souvenir seat from the old ballpark before it was shuttered. “What I really wanted I couldn’t get,” Rodriguez says. “There was a scale in the training room that had been there for years. Very cool, rustic, gold. Babe Ruth weighed himself on that scale. Joe DiMaggio. Mickey Mantle. I would have paid a funny number for that.” A waiter interrupts to ask for our dinner order, and Rodriguez waves him off—no food, thanks—as we discuss other off-season dramas. He mentions that he voted for Obama. “I’m cheering hard for him,” he says. “But we have to give him time and be patient.” (Three days later, the new president will call revelations of A-Rod’s steroid use “depressing news.”) Rodriguez, whose baseball salary alone is $28 million this season, admits he lost a chunk of change in the economic meltdown. “Whoever says they didn’t is lying,” he says, leaning forward in his chair. He says he feels bad for Michael Phelps, who’s recently been photographed lip-locked to a bong. “We live in a world right now where everyone’s keeping score,” Rodriguez says of the hunger for scandal. “And it doesn’t stop when the games end. . . . They’ve crossed over. And you have the Internet stuff, and all these phones. . . . It’s very intense.” Of course, A-Rod’s own version of the bong photo—a far more damaging one—is ready to drop. Earlier in the day, Rodriguez had his encounter with Roberts, the Sports Illustrated reporter, at the University of Miami gym. “You’ll have to talk to the union,” he told her when she confronted him about the positive drug test. “I’m not saying anything.” But he never mentions it to me. There are no urgent calls to or from his handlers, no interruptions at all. If he’s distracted, he isn’t showing it. He’s polite, unrushed, engaged. This is not to suggest he is loquacious; to say Alex Rodriguez is a guarded person is to say NORAD’s headquarters is a garage with a Master Lock. He examines each question for trapdoors before answering. You can’t fault him for protecting himself, but you can practically hear a P.R. team rattling off talking points inside his head. Responses are wiped clean of anything raw, off-message, or authentic.

The interview does go on from there and actually offers some bit of personality … he confesses that he sometimes will ride the subway to baseball games (“I have a hoodie on, but all it takes is one person and then you’re done. But it’s great. The fans get a kick out of it, I get a kick out of it. We talk about who’s pitching tonight, and what we need to do. It’s like being on sports radio”) and, of course, does talk a bit about Madonna … tho, he never quite offers anything that might be construed as scandalous (“We’re friends. She’s an amazing entertainer. And it’s been amazing how she’s been able to stay on top for three decades. I have a lot of respect for her”). He also throws in bits about his now ex-wife saying that he and Cynthia have a “wonderful relationship”. The whole thing ends with A-Rod’s press conference admitting his use of banned substances and kinda throws a bucket of cold water over the entire interview. It’s an interesting read, I think. After the jump, check out one more photo of A-Rod from his Details magazine photoshoot — it’s not to be missed, he is actually kissing his #1 fan …

READ THE REST OF THIS POST »

Kanye West, and his very large head, are featured on the cover and in the pages of the new issue of Details magazine. In his coverstory, West reveals that his drive for success in the music industry is most likely derived from his “sex addicted” youth … which is all kinds of disturbing on so many levels. But, it’s Kanye West and he is God’s gift to music so … just deal with it. Here is Kanye’s Details magazine coverphoto and a portion of his coverstory interview:

Kanye West is on another magazine cover (this time with a sure-to-be-appreciated gray-free beard) and as usual the rapper turned auto-tune singer turned fashion designer is full of Kanye-isms. To name a few:

What other new tales of grandeur might Kanye have added to his repertoire? Just that a sexual addiction at a young age has somehow fueled his drive for greatness… “People ask me a lot about my drive,” he says. “I think it comes from, like, having a sexual addiction at a really young age. Look at the drive that people have to get sex—to dress like this and get a haircut and be in the club in the freezing cold at 3 a.m., the places they go to pick up a girl. If you can focus the energy into something valuable, put that into work ethic…” That actually sounds more like normal behavior than a full-blown sexual addiction, but if Kanye says he was a sex addict then he was probably the greatest addict to have ever been addicted to sex in the history of sexual studies. He also notes that he was a highly advanced computer programmer of sexual addiction and produced his first Super Mario Bros.: The Penis Remix in the seventh grade: “My game was very sexual. The main character was, like, a giant penis. It was like Mario Brothers, but the ghosts were, like, vaginas. Mind you, I’m 12 years old, and this is stuff 30-year-olds are programming. You’d have to draw in and program every little step—it literally took me all night to do a step, ’cause the penis, y’know, had little feet and eyes.” Cute, right? However, it should be noted that Kanye is over music and penis games as he’s now turning his great sexual addiction nuclear energy exclusively to fashion. He plans on moving to Paris and being mentored by his fashion idol Marc Jacobs. In fact, Yeezy is so into M.J., he intentionally left the designer’s number on the table for his Details interviewer to see. After all, what’s the point in being subtle now?

LOL! Kanye West is just a really funny man to listen to when he’s spoutin’ off. I love the Cyclops comment … except, someone should prolly tell him that Cyclops‘ nuclear power comes from his eyes when he takes off his sunglasses, not puts them on. And, you gotta wonder why it is so important for him to talk about that sexual video game he came up with in the 7th grade … I mean, really. It sounds a lot like when Kenny Chesney started bragging about having sex with “over 100 women” to try and get people to believe that he isn’t gay. It just sounds too contrived.

And since we’re on the gay tip, Kanye also waxes on the state of Gaydom in this new Details magazine interview. Altho he’s never been to a gay bar (and would NEVER go to one), he does reveal that he’s got love for his gay brethren. After the jump, check out two more photos of Kanye from this issue of Details and read about his thoughts on gayness …

READ THE REST OF THIS POST »

Lost star Matthew Fox is featured on the cover and in the pages of the new issue of Details magazine wherein he talks to the mag about, among other things, a future after the series ends its run. Here is Matthew’s coverphoto and some quotes from his probing interview:

On ‘Lost’ coming to an end: “Personally, it’s a relief … I owe this show a great amount, and I think it’s exceptionally good … [but] I am looking forward to the freedom that comes with not working on one project professionally.”

On moving to Oregon: “My major motivation is to be closer to family. My brother is there, my mother is there … I really miss that kind of wide-open space.”

This is a lot of ecstatic waxing on the eve of the debut of the next season. It sounds like Matthew has really thought long and hard about the time in his life after he leaves the island and Lost behind him for good. After the jump, check out another photo of Matthew from this issue of Details magazine along with a couple of screenshots from his video interview with the mag …

READ THE REST OF THIS POST »

Tom Cruise is featured on the cover and in the pages of the new issue of Details magazine — The Power Issue. Each year, Details complies a list of the 40 Most Influential Men in the World (you may recall that Kevin Federline was the coverboy for last year’s issue) and has chosen #7 ranked Cruise for the cover:

From the mag: When Barack Obama declared “We are the change we’ve been waiting for,” the pundits scratched their heads. In retrospect, though, it seems as if That One was onto something. For better or worse, we’re living through a moment of intense transformation. In politics, the Bush years have been dustbinned. As far as the economy goes, the heady days of hedge-fund excess have been reduced to burnt toast. And from a Madonna standpoint, the Guy Ritchie era has been swept away. “The Power 40″ reflects this whiplash-inducing volatility. Many of the usual suspects have been replaced with an array of wild cards and agents of change. A home-wrecking home-run hitter? Check. Tech guys who have all of tweendom a-Twitter? Yup. Buddhists with bombs? Uh-huh. This year proved you can never be sure of what comes next (hell, Chinese Democracy finally showed up, didn’t it?). The whole point of power, after all, is to keep ‘em guessing.

Yay! The Twitter guys get my vote … they rule … oh yeah, and the Obama guys, too! I don’t really get why Tom Cruise won the cover of this issue (then again, I didn’t get why K-Fed won his cover last year) but I guess it’s better than putting the so-called “Press Whore” on the cover. After the jump, check out the photo of Tommy that is featured inside the mag along with a portion of the blurb about his power and influence …

READ THE REST OF THIS POST »

Shannen Doherty is featured in the new issue of Details magazine (the one with the Gossip Girl guys on the cover) wherein she talks about shark attacks, her ex-husband and (of course) her return to the world of 90210. Here are a few of Shannen’s Details magazine photos which were shot by Michael Evanet for the mag:

Not long ago, Shannen Doherty, the once and future Brenda Walsh, took a day off from shooting the short-lived TV show North Shore in Hawaii and went on a shark-diving trip with a couple of friends. Hundreds of yards offshore, Doherty descended into the water in a protective cage. Members of the boat’s crew chummed the water, sharks gathered—and Doherty freaked. “I couldn’t breathe, I started having an anxiety attack, I couldn’t stay out of their reach,” Doherty says, shuddering. Her Irish brow crinkles into slight worry lines that make her look her age, which is 37. “They were slamming into the cage—they looked so frickin’ mean! My leg slipped a little through the bars, and a shark swam up against me and rubbed off a layer of my skin.” Doherty is telling the story in a restaurant on the Pacific Coast Highway, in Malibu, a few hundred yards from the beach. She still owns nine or ten surfboards but hasn’t been on one—or even swum in the ocean—since the shark encounter. “I tell myself the least I can do is give the ocean back to the sharks,” Doherty says. And then she giggles. “No, that’s just a bullshit rationalization—I’m just terrified now.” … Shannen Doherty may not have been a nice girl, but she is a sweet woman. Then again, there is nowhere to go but up after you’ve singlehandedly defined the modern American mean girl. The journey began with her performance in 1989’s Heathers, as the quiet yet lethal member of the troika of button-nosed title characters. But Doherty went hard-core after she was cast on Beverly Hills, 90210, which made its debut in 1990. As Brenda Walsh, she played a virginal daughter of Minnesota relocated to the zip code of the entitled and wealthy. Brenda was initially a likable, naïve beauty, but her equanimity didn’t last long: she soon morphed into Elizabeth I in Guess jeans, adopting a kill-or-be-killed attitude toward all of teendom. Kurt Cobain’s refrain “Here we are now, entertain us” might have captured the nineties Zeitgeist, but so did Brenda’s Season 2 bon mot, “To be a bitch or not to be a bitch—that is the question.” “I don’t think Brenda was a complete brat,” Doherty says. “She was fueled by her insecurities: not being from Beverly Hills, not feeling safe in that environment. And then the love of her life was stolen from her. That can really injure a young girl’s esteem.” Alas, poor Doherty was playing the role of a lifetime as her TV and real-life personae began to merge. There was boy trouble and more boy trouble. Doherty’s relationship with Dean Factor, heir to the Max Factor makeup fortune, ended when a restraining order was filed against her after she allegedly tried to run him down with her car. (Her memorable line: “If I really wanted to run him over, I wouldn’t have missed.”) Then there was a teen-angst-worlds-colliding liaison with Judd Nelson. Next Doherty met George Hamilton’s son, Ashley. They married after two weeks; the union lasted all of seven months. Her chaotic personal life exacted a professional toll. Amid rumors that she was consistently showing up late to the set, Doherty left Beverly Hills, 90210 in 1994, after the fourth season. She lay low for a while, except for a winning turn in Kevin Smith’s Mallrats in 1995 and an appearance in Playboy. Then, in 1998, Aaron Spelling cast her in Charmed—as an actual witch—opposite Alyssa Milano. Just as the “Shannen is back” story line began to gel, she quit, reportedly because she was at odds with Milano. But that was seven years ago. Since then Doherty has, much to her relief, fallen off the tabloid radar. “I have a great life now,” Doherty says. She owns three horses and rides them obsessively, and her parents live a five-minute drive away. “If you could see me with my horse Picasso, how I call his name and he sticks his head out of his stall and then licks me from the neck up—that’s what my life is like now,” she says. “It’s really kind of boring.” An obvious question arises: If Shannen Doherty is so happy with her placid life, why is she raising Brenda Walsh from the dead?

And the Details article, which you can read HERE, goes on to answer that question. The one question that isn’t answered in her interview is how the magazine stylist managed to convince her to wear that horribly outdated leather vest for the shoot? It looks exactly like the sort of outfit that Brenda Walsh would’ve worn back in the day … and mebbe I just answered my own question. I’ve yet to grow tired of all the Brenda Walsh/90210 hoopla but it can’t last much longer … especially since this week’s ep (which aired last night) was the last ep of 90210 to feature Doherty for some time. How much longer can she milk this role? I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

After the jump, check out a few new outtake photos from Shannen’s feature in Radar magazine along with some outtake portions of her interview with the mag …

READ THE REST OF THIS POST »

The trio of hotness on the hit CW series Gossip Girl, made up of Penn Badgley, Chace Crawford and Ed Westwick, are featured on the cover and in the pages of the new issue of Details magazine. In the boys’ coverstory (which they shared, apparently) the guys talk about all the fun and foibles that come from starring on the popular “It” show of the moment. Here is the GG boys’ cover photo and a portion of their interview:

A year ago, no one knew their names. Now, after getting chased around New York by schoolgirls and going to every posh party in the city, the three guys of Gossip Girl are realizing just how famous they’ve become. In an interview with Details magazine, Chace Crawford, Penn Badgley and Ed Westwick shared their craziest experiences since starring on the CW show. “We have a lot of older fans,” Badgley said. “I get a lot of guys coming up to me who are like, ‘Oh man, my wife loves the show.’ Couple of drinks later they come up and they’re like, ‘You know what, I love Dan.’ And they probably watch the show more than their wives.” With the fans, of course, come the paparazzi and the rumors. Badgley has learned to tune out the comments on his relationship with costar and girlfriend Blake Lively. “One of the things that’s been my bread and butter with all these television shows I’ve done is that I don’t give a sh—,” he said. Crawford, 23, may have the worst luck with Internet rumors. “Model turned actor, dime a dozen, eye candy, doesn’t know what he’s doing …” … His character, Nate Archibald, just stopped being a hooker for his ex-girlfriend’s boyfriend’s stepmother, and he still says Nate is too sweet. “I’m hoping for a fall from grace for Nate. Five years from now, I better have murdered someone!” The other two also have thoughts on the direction their characters should go. Badgley thinks Dan is too judgmental and wants to explore his dark side, but Westwick thinks the opposite for bad boy Chuck. “Chuck’s just this vain kind of metrosexual Manhattan eccentric living in a flash world,” Westwick says. “He’s just mischievous. In the second season, you will see him do more of the good-guy thing.” Whether their alter egos are good or bad, the Gossip guys are hot and enjoying their moment in the spotlight. “One day it’s all going to go away,” Crawford said. “If this is what it is, then it’s wonderful.”

It’s nice that the guys have no problem sharing the spotlight … but they’re young and the show is still pretty new … the camaraderie may yet still fall apart to make way for in-fighting. You gotta wonder if Penn Badgely would’ve been able to score the cover of Details magazine all by himself. I could see Ed Westwick on the cover on his own and I can deffo see Chace Crawford scoring magazine covers left and right … but I’m not so sure about Penn. At least they’re all getting along and playing nice now so it’s not an issue … yet. I’m glad to hear that the guys seem to have their heads on straight and are being realistic about their new found fame. I think it’s wise to just enjoy it while they can and ride the wave for as long as they can. If they do a well enough job now, they may be asked back to reprise their roles 15 years in the future when the inevitable Gossip Girl spin-off show rears its ugly head.

[Source, Source]