The dumbest things stars say or do

Have you ever said or done something, only to realize the next moment what a dumb thing you’ve said or done?

It happens to anybody all the time – even to the stars who are just as human as you and me, and especially so because they are forever in the glare of public scrutiny and therefore under a lot of pressure.

You’ve seen it happen on national television when stars break down in tears, their faces contorted and distorted with (fake? put-on?) emotion, or when they utter something (usually) defamatory or derogatory and, in the next (sober) breath, apologize profusely for it.

My New York-based friend Raoul Tidalgo, entertainment editor and columnist of The Filipino Reporter (circulated in the East Coast), just sent me a copy of a book entitled Movie Stars Do The Dumbest Things and I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Hollywood stars, young and old, are no different from their local counterparts where doing and/or saying dumb things is concerned.

Here are samples of the book’s juicy and amusing items:

• Before Woody Allen married his first wife (Harlene Rosen), his pals were worried about his lack of sexual experience. When they asked Allen if he was a virgin, he nervously said, "No." The buddies almost believed him, but still insisted that Allen spend time training with a hooker. When they told Allen the cost, he said, "Do you think she’ll take a traveller’s check?"

• When teenage Brigitte Bardot gave up her virginity to aspiring director Roger Vadim, she asked if she was a woman yet. "Twenty-five percent," he told her. The second time they did it, she asked again. "About 55 percent," he said. The third time they made love, she asked again. "One hundred percent," he said. So she ran to the window stark naked and announced to the world, "I’m a real woman!"

• On the set of Splendor in the Grass (1961), Warren Beatty wasted so much time looking at himself that the director, Elia Kazan, ordered his assistants to cover up all the mirrors. In another occasion while at a charity event, Beatty was overheard in the bathroom saying, "You look wonderful. God, you’re handsome!" He was talking to a mirror.

• For Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), Marlon Brando was supposed to be badly burned in one scene. He did research and found that such a person feels much like a person who is frozen. To achieve the "perfect mood" for the scene, Brando laid down on a bed of cracked ice, covered with a sheet, until he got "death tremors." Then he tried to do the scene. The partially frozen actor couldn’t remember his dialogue, so the crew wrote them on his co-star’s forehead with a grease pencil. Thereafter, Brando caught a cold, closing down production for three days.

• On the set of Living Color, lanky Jim Carrey didn’t like a certain script. When producer/director/writer comedian Keenen Ivory Wayans, the guiding force on the comedy variety series, insisted that Carrey read the script, Carrey turned around, pulled down his pants, bent over, put his hands on his butt, and read the pages through his rear end.

• Smiling around Paris, happy that no one recognized him, Charlie Chaplin was attacked with a vicious stomach cramp. Desperate to find a bathroom, Chaplin approached a porter for directions. The silent-movie star didn’t know French, so he grunted, squatted and rolled his eyes around. The porter thought he was mad and ran away. Chaplin hailed a cab driver and repeated the performance. The cabbie started laughing. Soon, a crowd formed around the groaning comedian. Finally, a cheese vendor came to the door and called out in English, "Do you need a job? You could draw in the customers." Chaplin shouted, "Not a job. A toilet." The cheese vendor invited Chaplin in. As he entered the store, the crowd recognized his famous tramp walk and started shouting "Charlot! Charlot!" As the mob rushed forward, Chaplin ran into the bathroom and bolted the door. The crowd broke down the walls of the building. Chaplin escaped, as the mob fought for souvenir bits of the bathroom.

• Johnny Depp believes in ghosts and insists that he has been visited by them at various times in his life. When he stayed in the room where famed gay English writer Oscar Wilde died, he said of the experience, "I was a little paranoid that I might be buggered by his ghost at 4 a.m."

• In June of 1995 in Hollywood, Hugh Grant reportedly paid Divine Brown $60 for oral sex. Nearby, cops watched the deal go down in Grant’s parked BMW. The law enforcers waited a few minutes more, then interrupted the two in the middle of a "lewd act." The Los Angeles police faxed a report to the newspaper offices of London’s The Times in a record 30 minutes. Brown later revealed that the whole incident could have been avoided if Grant had simply coughed up another $40 to go back to her place rather than doing it in the car.

• Leonardo DiCaprio went strolling on a beach north of Malibu, California. He looked so bad that an elderly lady offered him a sandwich. The young star took it and said, "You know, I’m actually a movie star." The woman responded, "Yeah, and I’m Raquel Welch. Enjoy."

• One night during the making in the Philippines of Brokedown Palace (1999), Claire Danes was on the phone with her boyfriend when she spotted a cockroach. She started screaming, so her boyfriend suggested that she simply turn on the lights. After discussing this option for half an hour, Claire confessed, "I went screaming into the bedroom and turned on every light and ran back panting, ‘I did it.’ I was going to have the hotel staff turn on the lights for me, but I braved it." Claire was proud of herself for having "survived the worst."

• Bette Midler enjoyed performing for an underclad gay crowd. "They all sit in front of me and when they love me, they throw their towels at me…" the performer gushed. "And when they give me standing ovations, all their towels fall to the floor." Midler later announced, "I have no gay friends, I wouldn’t know a homosexual if I saw one."

• In the most famous scene from Basic Instinct, Sharon Stone parted her legs on-camera to reveal she was not wearing underwear. She first said that she’d been tricked into doing the sequence, claiming that the director told her to take off her panties because they reflected too much light. After the footage made Stone a star, the actress claimed that taking off her underwear was her idea.