Writer: Bean-Thrower Hugh Grant Deserves Our Sympathy

Jim White in The Daily Telegraph sympathizes with Hugh Grant‘s predicament. “Thanks to digital technology there is no skill required to wield a camera. All that is needed is persistence, a thick skin and an ability to get anywhere: the characteristics of the cockroach. Major stars such as Grant are plagued by them, unable to move without being stalked. And then when they respond to the endless provocation, they get arrested. Only the hard-hearted could not feel there is some sort of inversion of natural justice in operation and feel sorry for Grant.”

Keira Knightley‘s mother, Sharman Macdonald, is fiercely protective of her daughter, and she also rages at the paparazzi. She tells The Guardian: “My daughter is followed all the time she’s out. I’m lost in admiration for the way that she deals with it, but the paparazzi are an accident waiting to happen. The way they drive, you think, my God.” Macdonald rubbishes claims that that she wrote her daughter into a sex scene with Sienna Miller in her Dylan Thomas movie. “‘What sex scene?’, said a baffled Macdonald. ‘It’s a friendship between women. Does one have to define that as lesbian? I don’t mind, but really.’”

In other news:

• Keira, Gerard Butler, Emily Blunt, Sacha Baron Cohen, and Bill Nighy are the Brits vying for MTV Movie Awards.(MTV)
• Composer Erran Baron Cohen, who composed the score to his brother film’s Borat, is now a star in Kazahkstan.(Telegraph)
• Sacha Baron Cohen‘s girlfriend, Isla Fisher, is set to star in The Cookie Queen. The Hollywood Reporter says, “The story follows Claire ‘Cookie’ Taylor (Fisher), who holds the record for all-time girl scout cookie sales. When she learns that a precocious fifth grader threatens to end her 20-year reign as cookie queen, she sets out to sabotage her.”
• Gordon Ramsay: the movie? (The Sun)
• Second Sight, the Clive Owen series you’ve likely seen here on BBC AMERICA, has been optioned for a movie, reports Variety. Owen has not signed on.
• Heather Mills is playing that old American game of redemption. But is she winning? The man that spear-headed the online campaign to save Martha Stewart says Mills’ PR makeover was a success: “I watched her performance, especially on the first show: it was amazing what she was able to pull off, and the dignity that she brought to it. And I think it’s made us all scratch our heads and say, well, what’s all the fuss about? Why would the Brits be so angry at Heather and beating up on her? We feel sorry for her because she’s had to flee her own country, come over to America, and be on a TV show to redeem herself in some way, to prove herself.”
  (The Independent)
• Oz star Eamonn Walker will be the first black actor to play Othello at Shakespeare’s Globe Theater. He talks to Whatsonstage.com about it: “There is some pressure. In Sidney Poitier‘s autobiography he describes how, as a black actor, you are always aware that you’re being watched and there is a responsibility that comes with being under that watchful eye. I know it’s an important time in history where cultures are merging, but all I can do is the best possible job as an actor. I’m just working my backside off with the Globe team to give the audience the best Othello they’ve ever seen. Scared as I am sometimes, it brings out the tenacity and fight in me.”
• Steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal and family lead The Times’ rich list.