Newsweek’s Oscar Roundtable
Those people at Newsweek think Daniel Day-Lewis, George Clooney, James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie, Ellen Page and Marion Cotillard will be nominated for Oscars this year, so they gathered them together for their 11th annual Oscar roundtable.
Daniel Day-Lewis arrived a little late, but he did it in style. He was wearing a jaunty porkpie hat and a black-and-white Western shirt that looked like something swiped from Bob Dylan’s closet. The result was so un-Hollywood that George Clooney, this roundtable’s class clown, couldn’t stop ribbing his fellow best-actor hopeful.
Question: “Daniel, do you remember your first professional job?” Clooney: “It was a Western, wasn’t it?”
One of the delights of these annual gatherings is watching beautiful, talented, rich celebrities become just folks. James McAvoy, who stars in “Atonement,” spent the time waiting to go onstage at L.A.’s Hammer Museum talking about trying to steal some wineglasses from a recent Oscar event, only to be caught by the waiter. Just before they were announced onstage, Clooney turned to Angelina Jolie and said, “Let’s not go out!” She then pointed to two nonactors nearby and said, “Let’s send them instead.” Before long, everyone-newbies and supercelebs-bonded. Jolie and Marion Cotillard, the French star of “La Vie en Rose,” chatted about Provence. “Juno” star Ellen Page confessed that she just got her first apartment. It’s a converted brothel, and it’s haunted. “My stuff keeps vanishing,” she said. “Weird things, like makeup.” Advice to Ellen: if you do win an Oscar, hide it.
Click here to be transported to the site where you can watch the event, and there’s also a transcription of the interviews.
It’s lovely to see Ellen Page up there amongst all those big actors, and she’s charmingly quiet (although very eloquent) and at odds with her Juno character. George Clooney mentions he’s just realised he lives near Britney Spears, since he came home one night and there were helicopters flying about his house! James McAvoy also says that The Goonies was the movie that made him want to act (Sam will love that). Also, there are many mentions of Clive Owen…
