Jennifer Love Hewitt Pulled a Director Aside Who Told Her She Needed to Act Sexier, She Replied: ‘I Don’t Know What That Means. I’m Only 23’

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Claire Foy recently appeared on the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast while on the press tour for “All of Us Strangers” and was asked to reveal the worst acting note she ever got on set from a director. She didn’t hesitate to answer: “Start acting, darling!” “First job I ever did on TV, which was ‘Being Human.’ The pilot, with Russell Tovey and Andrea Riseborough.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Jeffrey Wright‘s latest stop on his “American Fiction” press tour was a cast interview with Entertainment Weekly in which he shocked his co-stars with a story about how he once refused a studio’s request to censor his dialogue. The Emmy winner starred in Ang Lee’s 1999 Civil War drama “Ride With the Devil” as a former slave fighting for his freedom. “In this scene in which he has this kind of the apex of his awakening and his need to emancipate himself, he says, ‘Being that man’s friend was no more than being his n—–.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director America Ferrera has found herself in the Oscar race for supporting actress thanks to her role in “Barbie,” which is largely defined by a nearly three-minute monologue in which her character, Gloria, passionately rails against double standards women face on a daily basis. Both the speech and “Barbie” at large have been criticized by some for being an oversimplification of feminism, but Ferrera rejected such criticism during a recent interview with The New York Times. “We can know things and still need to hear them out loud.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director The “Harry Potter” film franchise might have saved Gary Oldman’s career, but he’s not giving himself much praise for his performance as Sirius Black. Oldman debuted as the fan favorite character in 2004’s “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.” During a recent interview on the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast, the Oscar winner called his acting in the “Harry Potter” movies “mediocre.” Most fans across the world would probably disagree.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director If you don’t know the actor Milana Vayntrub by name, then chances are high that you would recognize her face. Since 2013, Vayntrub has been the on-and-off again star of many AT&T commercials as the character Lily, a jolly AT&T employee who has comedic interactions with customers at a store. Vayntrub’s Lily was the face of a national AT&T campaign for three years before she took a hiatus and revived the character in 2020 for a series of pandemic-themed commercials.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Jessica Chastain started 2023 by telling Andy Cohen on “Watch What Happens Live” that she was open to reading a script for the film adaptation of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s bestselling novel “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.” The Oscar-winning actor has long been fans’ top choice to play the title character, a reclusive old Hollywood star who reflects on her life during a final interview with an unknown journalist. “I do know there is an online thing about it,” Chastain said when asked about the fan casting. “Sure, send me a script.” Cut to the end to the year, and Chastain is officially closing the book on starring in a “Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo” movie.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Hannah Waddingham appeared on the Christmas episode of ITV’s “James Martin’s Saturday Morning” (via The Independent) and revealed she’s ready to defend Tom Cruise against his critics after working with the Oscar nominee on the upcoming “Mission: Impossible 8.” It was announced in March that the “Ted Lasso” Emmy winner was joining Cruise and the “Mission: Impossible” gang in the eighth installment, which was originally designed as the second part to “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.” Waddingham’s “Mission: Impossible 8” character has not yet been revealed, but she said she spent five intense days with Cruise filming the action tentpole on the USS George H.W. Bush fighter carrier.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Zack Snyder has spent the last several years attempting to launch new IP for Netflix, be it his action zombie epic “Army of the Dead” or his new space opera franchise “Rebel Moon,” but the 57-year-old filmmaker is better known for putting his stamp on famed IP, from “Watchmen” to “Man of Steel,” “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” and “Justice League.” Would he ever return to tackling a pre-existing franchise? “I mean, like, how much IP is there?” Snyder recently said in an interview with The Atlantic before thinking of at least one bit of IP he might like to tackle one day. “It’d be cool to see, like, 20-year-old James Bond,” Snyder said.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Casey Kramer, the daughter of film director Stanley Kramer who acted on stage and screen, has died at 67 years old, her family announced. She passed away at her home in Chicago, Illinois on December 24.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Zack Snyder is currently leading the Netflix charts with his space opera “Rebel Moon: Part One – A Child of Fire,” and he recently got a huge sign of support from none other than Christopher Nolan. In a profile published by The Atlantic, Nolan said Snyder’s influence on cinema is so dominant that part of his touch can be felt in any “superhero science-fiction film coming out these days.” Nolan served as a producer on Snyder’s “Man of Steel” (2013), which was based on a story Nolan cracked with his “Dark Knight” trilogy co-writer David S. Goyer.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Taraji P. Henson revealed during a recent SAG-AFTRA conversation moderated by Variety’s Angelique Jackson that she fired members of her team after her career hit a wall despite the global success of “Empire,” the Fox musical drama series that she starred on for six seasons from 2015 to 2020. Henson played the outspoken and ferocious Cookie Lyon, which won her a Golden Globe and earned her two Emmy nominations.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Sydney Sweeney’s starring role in the Rolling Stones‘ music video for “Angry,” the lead single off their most recent album “Hackney Diamonds,” led to some claims that she was sexualized during the nearly four-minute clip. The video features Sweeney wearing black studded chaps and dancing in the back seat of a convertible as it speeds down Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. The street is lined with animated billboards showing the history of the Rolling Stones.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” star Leah Jeffries recently spoke to Essence magazine about how her casting as Annabeth Chase in the new Disney+ series initially generated backlash from some toxic fans. Racist trolls were upset that a Black actor was cast as a character described in the books as a blonde white girl. “The White Lotus” actor Alexandra Daddario played Annabeth in Fox’s “Percy Jackson” film adaptations.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Quentin Tarantino fans were sent into a frenzy in late 2017 after it was announced that Paramount and “Star Trek” producer J.J. Abrams had accepted Tarantino’s pitch for a new “Star Trek” movie and were working with “The Revenant” screenwriter Mark L. Smith to iron out the script.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director “Avatar: The Last Airbender” creators Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino spent two years developing a live-action adaptation of the animated classic for Netflix before they shocked fans by announcing their exit from the project due to creative differences. The decision left Albert Kim, best known as a writer on “Pantheon” and an executive producer on “Sleepy Hollow,” as the live-action series’ showrunner without the support of the franchise’s original visionaries.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director As 2023 draws to a close, Christopher Nolan is feeling pretty good about the state of the movie business. That shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise considering “Oppenheimer” pulled in a remarkable $954 million at the box office this year, beating every superhero movie and several major Hollywood tentpoles, like “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.” Audiences turning out in droves for a three-hour, R-rated and incredibly dense biographical drama as if it were a major action movie blockbuster has Nolan quite optimistic about the future. “I’ve just made a three-hour film about Robert Oppenheimer which is R-rated and half in black-and-white – and it made a billion dollars.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director George Clooney turned up as Bruce Wayne in the final moments of “The Flash,” but in no way does that mean he’s interested in playing Batman again. Speaking to Entertainment Tonight while promoting his latest directorial effort “The Boys in the Boat,” Clooney said the chances of him playing Batman again are less than slim to none. “I do not think there’s enough drugs in the world for me to go back,” Clooney said bluntly.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director With “Barbie” now available to stream on Max, director and co-writer Greta Gerwig hit the late night press circuit and revealed on “The Late Show” one of the wildest ideas Ryan Gosling wanted to execute in the film as Ken. One of the character’s most memorable looks in the blockbuster comedy is a white mink coat. According to Gerwig, Gosling pitched her on having Ken dance with and fight the mink coat during the “I’m Just Ken” dream ballet.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Timothée Chalamet was supposed to cameo in Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” movie alongside their “Lady Bird” and “Little Women” star Saoirse Ronan, but he never found out what the director had planned for her former collaborators. Scheduling conflicts prevented Ronan and Chalamet from appearing in “Barbie,” which became Warner Bros.’ top-grossing film in history and the biggest movie of 2023 with $1.4 billion in box office sales. “There was an idea for Saoirse Ronan and I to do a cameo in it,” Chalamet said during a recent interview on “The Tonight Show.” “I don’t know what the cameo would’ve been.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Andre Braugher‘s cause of death has been revealed to be lung cancer, the actor’s publicist confirmed to Variety. Braugher died December 11 at 61 years old.