"Ten years ago, I came up with the idea for fashionable and fitted maternity clothing. I opened my own one-room shop and did everything: I waited on customers, got them water, packed the FedEx boxes - there were extremely difficult customers who'd go mad if their clothes were a day late. It would just destroy me. The reality is, to get where you want to be in your career, you're going to have to do a lot of stuff you don't think big-shots do."
Liz Lange, Founder and CEO of Liz Lange Maternity, on Hard Work
WBA Super Middleweight champion Anthony Mundine and former Australian rules footballer and Brownlow Medalist, Ben Cousins, talk at a media conference in Sydney on February 6, 2008. Cousins and Mundine spoke alongside rugby league champion Sonny Bill Williams and Olympic gold medallist Nova Peris to campaign an anti-drugs message at Tony Mundine's gym.
How coule he?? Make an ad for HP - The Hands of a Seinfeld
Jerry Seinfeld is an American Treasure. There is no amount of celebrity, however, that makes it ok for him to repeatedly drench us in a river of shameless self promotion. Ok, we get it: You're wife has a cookbook and you made an animated movie about bees. You're life is awesome.
All we're saying is, next time Seinfeld is on screen for more than a minute, it better be as part of a Seinfeld reunion show.
"according to the New York City police. Some signs pointed to an accidental overdose or a suicide, although no note was found, police sources said. Mr. Ledger was 28.
At 3:31 p.m., January 22nd, 2008, according to the police, a masseuse arrived at the fourth-floor apartment of the building, at 421 Broome Street, between Crosby and Lafayette Streets in SoHo, for an appointment with Mr. Ledger. The masseuse was let in to the home by a housekeeper, who then knocked on the door of the bedroom Mr. Ledger was in.
When no one answered, the housekeeper and the masseuse opened the bedroom and found Mr. Ledger naked and unconscious on a bed, with sleeping pills — both prescription medication and nonprescription — on a night table. They attempted to revive him, but he did not respond.
They immediately called the authorities. As the news reports spread quickly, throngs of people gathered in the neighborhood.
Hugh Jackman Aussie Superstar bookmark this at :: del.icio.us
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Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Hugh Jackman is a Tony Award-winning Australian acting phenomenon, who has commanded both silver and small screens since his 1994 debut on the Law of the Land series.
Since then, Hugh has starred in a series of both commercial as well as critical successes, including the X-Men-trilogy, Kate & Leopold, Van Helsing and The Prestige.
In addition, Hugh has established himself an honorable reputation on Broadway, portraying e.g. Peter Allen in The Boy From Oz - a performance which was universally praised.
LONDON (Reuters Life!) - It has been nine years coming, but some early reviews of the Spice Girls' world reunion tour that kicked off in Vancouver, Canada, on Sunday said it was worth the wait.
"The solid gold Spice Girls," said London's Evening Standard, a reference to golden outfits the "girl power" quintet sported during the show, one of several costume changes on the night.
The reviewer called the performance "ebullient pop music of a very high standard, presented with panache, and highly unlikely to provoke any attendance at the refund window."
Despite the sassy young singers who stormed the pop world in the 1990s all now being in their 30s, four of them with children, they had yet to pass their sell-by date.
"There seems no diminution in the energy they are prepared to expend, or the lengths they will go to please the audience."
Born October 12, 1968 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, of English parentage.
Hugh was raised in the suburbs of Sydney as the youngest of 5 children.
He has a Communications degree with a Journalism major from the University of Technology Sydney.
Attended ‘The Journey’, a 1 year workshop at the Actor’s Centre Sydney, after which he enrolled at the WAAPA, Perth. Here he did courses like ‘Voice’ and also ‘Artiste’, what helped him to earn money as a clown at children parties, whilst studying. He majored in Drama after 3 years.
Immediately after his graduating he got offered a starring role in an ABC TV mini series: the prison Drama ‘Correlli’. Here he met his future wife, the lead actress of this series and also Australian movie star: Deborra-Lee Furness.
Several TV guest roles followed, as an actor and variety compere.
An accomplished singer, HJ has starred as Gaston in the Australian production of ‘Beauty & the Beast’, where Trevor Nunn saw him and so he also starred as Joe Gillis in the Australian production of ‘Sunset Boulevard’ and in the Royal National Theatre’s production of ‘Oklahoma!’.
After filming 2 feature films in between, he visited the USA for the adoption of his son Oscar Maximillian (born 15. May 2000) and got a call: to replace the unable to play Dougray Scott as Wolverine, 4 weeks into the production of the ‘X-Men’ movie. That was the start for his career in the USA / international movie market.
Now he and his family (meanwhile they had adopted their daughter Ava Eliot, born 10 July 2005) travel between Australia, U.K., Canada and the USA, depending on the locations of his and Deborra-Lee’s movies.
Russell Crowe donated the following artwork to the Heart Foundation (Australia).
It raised over $7,000 (AUST) for the charity in an online auction. Cindy D., the winning bidder, has been kind enough to let Maximum Crowe to show it on Maximum Crowe fan website
Russell Crowe has spent years trying to escape the cricketing image associated with his famous cousins. His image is very different indeed ... as Jean Norman found out.
RUSSELL Crowe has flashing green eyes, a sultry pout and an aversion to being known as the "singing cousin of the cricketing Crowes".
He is Martin and Jeff's cousin and he is a musician but Russell Crowe deserves better than the popular description.
At 24 he has just finished playing the lead role in a Sydney play for which he received rave reviews and which led to him appear on the cover of an Aussie glossy. He is about to star in a major new musical and he has just recorded a demo tape with EMI.
"I'm not going to do some rock star trip," he sighs as he goes off into a cute sulk and says, "I hate talking to reporters but I really was perceived wrongly when I was working in New Zealand."
Well, well. Really? How?
It all started when as a student at Auckland Boys Grammar, Russell hated having to wear roman sandals and objected to the way a pupil's worth was apparently judged not by creativity but by their prowess (or lack of it) at rugby and cricket. Being a Crowe meant there were some pretty high expectations aimed at him.
"Sure I had the potential to possibly play in an under-11 side but not really the ability or the desire and, besides, everyone else was bigger than I was.
"I wasn't expelled or anything but let's say it was a very amicable parting."
The acting bug, as they say, had already bitten and bitten deep. His parents were location caterers in Australia so as a child Russell hung around a lot of film sets. "It was a case of being in the right place at the right time and I was soon playing kiddie roles. I was in Spyforce when I was six and The Young Doctors when I was 12. 1 played this kid who lives down the road from the hospital and his parents are never there so he hangs around the hospital.
New Zealand Women Weekly 1989 Article by Jean Norman
Heath Ledger about the paparazzi bookmark this at :: del.icio.us
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Sunday, July 15, 2007
"Most of the time you don't even know they're there. Now, that's the scary thing. It's really strange and invading, but I'm still working it all out. I try to not let it bother me. I really try and find the humour in all of it. And if I want to swim naked in my pool, I'm still going to do it. I certainly don't want to feel that I have to change everything in my life that I do to cater to them. I just won't let it happen."
Comedian Mick Molloy’s new TV show The Nation, which airs on the Nine Network, is on struggle street after its ratings hit a new low last night.
On the same day Nine launched Sea Patrol, the most expensive drama in Australian TV history, The Nation returned an audience of 575,000 viewers.
The Nation jokingly gate-crashed the elaborate Sea Patrol launch yesterday on the HMAS Sydney in attempt to drum up support for its own show.
It seems any little bit would have helped.
The paltry audience numbers in the 9.30pm timeslot, where one million viewers is considered a good result, fell even lower than the show’s figures for the past fortnight, which have just topped 600,000 viewers.
Last night’s episode, which featured a spoof of MTV car makeover show Pimp My Ride called Pimp My Coffin, was outrated by All Saints on Seven, Numbers on Ten and most shockingly, Foreign Correspondent and First Tuesday Book Club on the ABC.
Its poor performance also contributed to Nine making a rare appearance in third place overall for the night behind Seven and Ten.
Explosive Expose - Who Killed Channel 9? bookmark this at :: del.icio.us
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Sunday, July 8, 2007
With Kerry Packer at the helm, and with a host of stars and personalities that made it the envy of its rivals, Channel 9 dominated the airwaves, consistently winning the ratings battle and fostering a unique esprit de corps within its ranks. But in a few short years, it's gone from top dog to also ran - with rock bottom morale, mass redundancies and a resurgent opposition mainly staffed with vengeful former Nine management.
Where does the blame lie, and who's brave enough to expose the dysfunction, mismanagement and more than occasional act of bastardry that reads as a how-to of how not to run a business?
In this extraordinary book, Gerald Stone gives a truly eye-opening inside account of the death of a television network. The result is a drama far more riveting than anything on television, played out by an incredible cast of characters, most of them household names, some of them business legends, and all of them as you've never, ever seen them before.
Sink or swim: Faraway Downs, on the set of Baz Luhrmann's film Australia, is being left to dry out while stars Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman film scenes in Sydney.
You need only choose...then keep chossing as many times as necessary. That is all you need do. And it is certainly something you can do. Then as you continue to choose, everything is yours... - Vernon Howard
I am not judged by the number of times I fail, but by the number of times I succeed; and the number of times I succeed is in direct proportion to the number of times I can fail and keep on trying. - Tom Hopkins
To begin to think with purpose, is to enter the ranks of those strong ones who only recongnise failure as one of the pathways to attainment... - James Allen
Home and Away actor Kate Ritchie has become the queen of the nation's small screen with the Gold Logie for Australia's most popular TV personality. The top gong followed her second consecutive award as most popular actress - in the role of Sally Fletcher, which she has played for almost 20 years, her entire career. It was Ritchie's second time to be nominated for both awards.
"I am forever having people approach me and telling me they've watched me on tele and feel like they know me, and for a long time I felt like I needed to be the person that everybody else thought I was."
In the past year Richie has branched out beyond her long time Home and Away role to sing on the show, It Takes Two, and appeared on regular afternoon radio in Sydney. "Over the last year I've come to realise it's much more rewarding just to do exactly what you feel is right... tonight proved to me I must be on the right track."
Music world farewells Lobby Loyde bookmark this at :: del.icio.us
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Musician Lobby Loyde, who taught rock legend Billy Thorpe how to "really" play the guitar, is dead.
Loyde died in a Melbourne hospital on Saturday night after a long battle with cancer.
He was 65.
Loyde made his mark on the Australian pub rock scene in the 1970s, playing alongside Thorpe in his band the Aztecs, and also with the Coloured Balls.
Celebrated for his plectrum guitar technique, he died with his family and his favourite black Gibson guitar by his side.
In a death notice in the Herald Sun, Loyde was described as the "grandfather of Australian rock n' roll" who performed his "final orchestra with humour and magnificence".
"We have lost one of our time's most eccentric and unique souls," the tribute read.
"The intervals (sic) over so go up and start your second set. Rock the balls out of heaven."
Friends and fans said the fact he battled cancer for as long as he did was a testament to his courage.
Pop music guru Molly Meldrum told News Limited it was typical of Loyde to have outlasted the experts' diagnosis.
"He was very, very sick and he was very brave in the way he handled it too," Meldrum said.
"Lobby was one of those amazing characters. I mean, he was a brilliant guitarist and he was also just an incredible character.
"Family and friends were very important to him, and he had some great friends in his family as well."
Meldrum said Loyde and his good friend, Thorpe, who died in February, laid the foundations of the Australian rock music scene.
"We were talking about this at Billy's funeral. What became pub rock, they more or less paved the way for it," Meldrum said.
"They set a scene, and Melbourne became the rock capital of Australia - whether Sydney liked it or not.
"Once you took him off the stage and away from his guitar there was a different person.
"A very thoughtful and a very intelligent person, quite frankly.
"And that combination, plus the brilliance of him as a musician, people just absolutely revered him."
Higgins steers her way back to the top bookmark this at :: del.icio.us
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Australian songstress Missy Higgins has leapt back into the charts after the astounding success of her first album, The Sound of White, in 2005.
Higgins' new single Steer debuts at number one on the Motorola ARIA singles chart this week.
RnB diva Beyonce's single Beautiful Liar debuts at number five, ahead of her five-day tour of Australia this week.
Australian rock favourite Silverchair hold on to the top spot on the album charts, ahead of Avril Lavigne's The Best Damn Thing which debuts at number two.
Big Brother launched on the Gold Coast bookmark this at :: del.icio.us
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Beautiful, 20-something and with a dominant personality.
That is what the casting call could have read for this year's first wave of contestants who have entered the Big Brother house on the Gold Coast.
A cast of 12 people, six men and six women aged between 20 and 32 years, were introduced and unleashed in a new environmentally-friendly house during a recording on Saturday night which was screened on Sunday night.
Production was delayed twice at the Dreamworld complex due to members of the audience streaming the recording live onto the internet.
The website Behind Big Brother also posted profiles of the housemates, stealing a small amount of Big Brother's thunder for the big launch.
A show's spokesman confirmed that three young men were removed during filming because they were taking live footage of the show.
The show's host Gretel Killeen said one of the men had "been welcomed into our rehearsals" during the afternoon, and was ejected before it was demanded that all mobile phones be turned off.
But regardless, Big Brother was back. On the surface though, little had changed from previous years despite a number of promises during the hype-filled lead-up.
Killeen had said this year's contestants would be more beautiful on the inside than out, while producers had promised a more worldly cast.
That was in response to the criticism which followed some unsavoury action in the house last year, including the "turkey slapping" incident which saw two male contestants kicked off the show.
But as the female contestants who were introduced to the house first lined up on a couch it looked like a scene straight out of a central casting audition: Aleisha (Vic), 20, the cute hairdresser from a small country town; Emma (NSW), 24, a personal trainer; Hayley (Vic), 24, a former champion body sculptor and lawyer; Kate (Vic), 25, a champion debater; Rebecca (QLD), 23, a Life Be In It coach and Mormon; and Theresa-Jane, or TJ, (NT), 22, a barmaid and the only non-blonde.
Then came the men: Jamie (Vic), 29, a self-confessed nerd, karaoke host and orphan; Bodie (WA), 24, an electrical designer and former underwear model; Andrew (Vic), 28, a fireman; Joel (SA), 24, a restaurant manager and Young Liberal Party member; Thomas (WA), 27, a real estate agent with a degree in chemistry and human biology; and Travis (Vic), a 32-year-old father of one.
The Big Brother team had again promised a number of trademark twists.
Killeen told the audience she couldn't reveal the identity or nature of a mystery individual labelled Mr X but she did confirm to the live audience that contestants would not start with any prize money - the assumption being that they will have to compete for it during the course of the series.
Also, it was revealed that there are two sets of two people in the house who share a previous relationship that at least one of the pairs may not know about.
An extra six potential housemates were also introduced, two of whom home viewers will choose to enter the house.
As for the promise of a "green" house, Big Brother didn't disappoint, even including a bicycle-powered washing machine.
No reference was made to the dramas of 2006 which prompted Communications Minister Helen Coonan to launch an inquiry into reality TV.
While producers haven't delivered on the promise for a wider age gap or less model-like contestants, a source guaranteed deeper conversation, saying this year's contestants had been "around the block and back" with no shortage of skeletons in their closets which will be revealed throughout the show.
It is believed Big Brother is saving its biggest secret for Monday night.
Kylie Minogue is reportedly set to return to the small screen as a cyberwoman out to snare Dr Who on the British television show's Christmas special.
The News of the World said filming would start in July on the Dr Who special which could revive the Australian pop singer's TV career.
"Kylie jumped at the chance to be in the show and is really looking forward to acting again," the newspaper quoted an unnamed BBC insider as saying.
Minogue made her name as Charlene in Neighbours before leaving the Australian soap in 1987 to concentrate on her pop career in the UK.
In recent years, Minogue made a brief return to her television roots when she guest-starred in the popular Australian comedy series, Kath and Kim.
Far from the suburban adventures of Kath and Kim, Dr Who is a science fiction series depicting the adventures of the Doctor, who travels through time in a phone box known as the Tardis and fights foes, the most famous of which are the daleks and the cybermen.
In 2005, the BBC resurrected the series, which originally ran from 1963 to 1989.
Billie Piper featured as Dr Who's companion, Rose Tyler, in the revived series but has since left the popular show.
Denmark's Crown Princess Mary gave birth to the royal family's first daughter since 1946 at the weekend.
The Tasmanian native's husband Frederik was beaming as he addressed reporters outside the hospital.
"It's a unique thing to have a daughter. I feel truly great about it. She has dark eyes and very dark hair — lots of it!" he said.
Following Danish tradition, the girl will not be named until her christening in coming months. She will be third in line to the Danish crown, behind her father and 18-month-old brother, Prince Christian.
Christian hasn't met his sister yet, but his father said the toddler is excited to welcome her and can already say the word "baby".
Frederik said that for him, going through the birth was easier the second time around.
"One wasn't as scared as the first time around," he said.
"It seems fair to say that the father's grasp of the situation was better than the first time.
"I feel great joy and great happiness ... and I can only say it's a relief, but full of happiness and love."
Frederik said he would let Mary decide when she was ready to leave the hospital.
"We leave it up to the mother to decide ... so you can get your sleeping bags out," he quipped.
Prime Minister John Howard led the chorus of congratulations from Australia yesterday after the birth was announced.
"On behalf of all Australians I send them my very warm congratulations. He (Frederik) looked a very happy father on the television," Mr Howard told reporters in Sydney.
Tasmanian Premier Paul Lennon said the state government would announce details of how it will mark the birth in the coming days.
"I'm sure I speak for all Tasmanians when I say we are delighted to hear the royal family's news," Mr Lennon said in a statement.
"Obviously, the link between Tasmania and Denmark has become very strong, and we share the joy of the Danish people as they celebrate the arrival of the first daughter to be born into the Danish royal family since 1946."
In a statement, the Danish royal court said the princess — who had been expected at the beginning of May — weighed 3.35kg at birth and was 50cm long.
"We're very excited, very happy, very healthy baby. A lovely new addition to our family," Mary's sister Jane Stephens told the Ten Network.
News of the birth of Mary's daughter was "fabulous and exciting", the Royal Danish Consulate in Tasmania said.
"It's just fabulous news and I think it's very exciting for the family," honorary vice-consul for Denmark, Judy Benson, said.
"Although the baby arrived a couple of weeks early, it is wonderful news ... from the perspective of a young family having one each, that's fabulous."
Ms Benson said news of Mary's baby daughter would be celebrated across the Apple Isle.
"Tasmanians love Mary and Frederik and this is a wonderful occasion."
The Danish heir to the throne met Mary during the 2000 Olympics in Sydney and married her four years later.
Comedian Mick Molloy’s new TV show The Nation, which airs on the Nine Network, is on struggle street after its ratings hit a new low last night.
