CINDY CRAWFORD'S SECRET

ALTHOUGH Cindy Crawford is threatening to sue the French magazine Gala for publishing statements she never made about receiving Botox, we hear from fashion insiders that despite the false article, there has been speculation for some time the 40-year-old supermodel has in fact had a little nip and tuck. Cindy has retained her flawless looks with "Botox injections and an eyebrow lift," says a source. Her spokesman said: "Cindy Crawford has retained legal counsel to investigate the publication of a fictitious 'interview' in French Gala magazine. Ms. Crawford never participated in any such interview. The interview contained false and defamatory statements." After viewing photos of Crawford from 2004 versus 2006, renowned Manhattan plastic surgeon Dr. Howard Bellin (who has not treated the supermodel) told us, "She's either had a brow lift or found an incredible new way to tweeze her eyebrows."

SIGHTINGS..in NYC

KATE Bosworth sipping Peroni beer at Zac Posen's party at the Soho Grand . . . ANNA Kournikova in a sexy little dress and high heels at the Shore Club's Skybar in Miami Beach, dancing wildly at the bar . . . HEATHER Graham at Tequila Don Julio's Mexican Independence Day party at Lincoln Center honoring "Y Tu Mamá También" filmmaker Alfonso Cuaron . . . MOBY tossing back water while his three lovely female guests downed Roberto Cavalli martinis in the Sapa Lounge Monday night.

BABS (& HER SHADOW)

'I'M SURE President Bush is a very nice guy, but some people voted for him because they thought he was a person they could have a beer with. What is that about?! Do you want to have a beer with the doctor who's going to operate on you, or do you want him to be the top of his class . . . be a bit in awe of him?"

So says Barbra Streisand in the new issue of O, talking to Oprah herself. Streisand, schmoozing in anticipation of her next concert tour, says of her image, "I have found that the myth of the 'diva' is much bigger than me. If you look at the ad for my concert, the shadow is much bigger than the person."

Listen, shadow, schmado - in an era of people famous for absolutely nothing at all, we have a still-functioning and vital giant like Barbra Streisand. A woman famous because she has a unique talent, great ambition, an unstoppable work ethic. She ain't easy, but if she were, would we be talking about her 40-something years since she first made her mark?

SEINFELD'S B'DAY BASH

JERRY Seinfeld played the loving husband Sunday night when he hosted a 35th-birthday party for his wife, Jessica, at Il Cantinori. Seinfeld took over the entire East 10th Street eatery for about 50 guests - including Anderson Cooper, Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, Oscar winner Rachel Weisz and director Darren Aronofsky, architect Charles Gwathmey and wife Betty Ann, Tribeca Film Festival organizers Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff, New York magazine owner Bruce Wasserstein, HBO biggie Richard Plepler, and Gina Gershon, who seemed to be with Ronald Perelman. George Stephanopoulos and his wife, Alexandra Wentworth, ignored the "no gifts" advisory on the invite and gave Jessica a big fake diamond ring. Seinfeld gave a heartfelt toast to his wife, the mother of three, about how she brings joy into everyone's life.

SPLASHY RETURN

" Sony BMG head Clive Davis is said to be planning to have Whitney Houston sing at the charity event - if Houston stays sober.

Couple of Co-Stars

Toronto Film Festival
It looks like Jennifer Lopez (with hubby Marc Anthony) has gone retro. Maybe it was to promote her new movie -- in which they costar -- called El Cantante. It's the life story of Hector Lavoe, who started the salsa movement in 1975 and brought it to the United States.

Madonna's New Bob

Tokyo, Japan
While promoting a photography and videography exhibit, Madonna stepped out with a bold new look. What do you think of her brassy new bob? Give your opinion below.

Brooke & her Babes

Pacific Palisades, California
It was girl power at the Promises Foundation Hosts the First Annual Family Fun Festival and Polo Match. Here's a shot of Brooke Shields and her two adorable daughters, Rowan (l.) and Grier. Their dad is Chris Henchy. Also on the scene? Katey Segal and Tom Arnold.

Gwen's Hey Baby Hey

New York City
We love us some Gwen Stefani and we appreciate how she's indulging us by letting photos take photos of her scrumptious little boy, Kingston. We're in love.

READY, SET, GO AT 'TODAY......

September 18, 2006 -- DON'T expect to see the brand-new "Today" show set remain the way it is for too much longer. Our network insider says the on-air talent at NBC's long-running morning gabfest is already on the warpath over the $3.5 million makeover that heralded the arrival of Katie Couric's replacement, Meredith Vieira, last week. "They're fuming that it's too big. It just swallows them up, and it looks something like a hospital wing," our insider continues. "Both Meredith and Matt Lauer have complained about it, so there are going to be changes. It's going to evolve again over the next couple of months, and it's going to cost them millions more to do it, even though they worked on the new set since April." We also hear that construction crews have already been notified about some of the proposed modifications. An NBC spokeswoman admitted there may be some "small tweaks" in store for the set but insisted, "We're thrilled with the feedback. If you ask Matt, Meredith, Al [Roker] or Ann [Curry], they'd all agree they love it.

BALDWIN RIPS EX AND

September 18, 2006 -- ALEC Baldwin just can't keep his bitter anger about ex-wife Kim Basinger - or her pack of pit-bull lawyers - bottled up.
In a startling interview in the October GQ, the actor trashes the Oscar-winning blonde he divorced in 2002. Baldwin claims she told such horrible lies about him that he wanted to die. And he rips one of her attorneys as an obese blowhard.

"My ex-wife once said, 'He's Saddam Hussein.' She said that. And I thought, 'Do I hide myself in cramped underground quarters? Do I like to shoot firearms in a celebratory way? Did I execute whole villages of people and bulldoze their bodies into a pit? What are you saying? Explain this to me.' "

When Baldwin got hit with Basinger's legal missives, "it said all of these things, like I wasn't a good father [to 10-year-old daughter Ireland] . . . I remember lying in bed, thinking I wanted to die on the spot . . . I would say, 'Please don't let me wake up. I can't face another day.' "

He saves extra vitriol for Basinger's lawyers at Hersh, Mannis & Bogen, who he believes influence her. "[Judy] Bogen, she's this 300-pound homunculus whose face looks like a cross between a bulldog and a clenched fist. She's this hideously angry-looking woman. She'd snarl and hiss."

Bogen did not return our call.

SIGHTINGS....in NYC

September 18, 2006 -- MIRA Sorvino breast-feeding under her poncho at the table at Blue Fin on Times Square . . . A VERY pregnant Sofia Coppola with boyfriend Thomas Mars at Serendipity 3.

Pete's signs of his sorry times

Baseball's disgraced all-time hit king may have hit an all-time low by signing balls with this shocking inscription: "I'm sorry I bet on baseball - Pete Rose."

Thanks to a New Jersey auction house, you, too, can share in Rose's sorrow. Robert Edward Auctions plans to sell 30 of the baseballs for an expected $1,000 a pop.

"This is where the baseball collectibles field has impact on the history of the game," said Rob Lifson, president of the Watchung-based Robert Edward Auctions. "The collectibles field is not just shadowing the game - it's affecting its history."

It also could dash any hope Rose, who was banned from the sport he loved in 1989 for betting on baseball, has of getting into the Hall of Fame.

The bizarre ball signing marked the latest chapter in the sad saga of a man who was once one of baseball's most revered - and successful - figures.

Rose formally applied for reinstatement in 1997.

Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig extended an olive branch by meeting with him in 2002 to discuss his possible return - a meeting based on Rose's denials that he never bet on the game.

But then Rose became embroiled in a series of incidents in which he was seen gambling at casinos and sports books, and was hit with a lien from the IRS claiming he owed almost $1 million in back taxes.

In 2004, after almost 15 years of denials, Rose did an about-face and admitted in his autobiography "My Prison without Bars" that he bet on the game as a player and manager for the Cincinnati Reds. He repeated his admissions in an interview on ABC's "Primetime."

And now there are these damning baseballs.

Rose's agent Warren Greene and attorney Roger Makley did not return calls from the Daily News. Greene, however, acknowledged to Sports Collectors Digest, a hobby publication, that Rose did sign the balls.

"Pete told me he signed a couple of dozen as a favor to the guys in Cooperstown," Greene is quoted as saying in a story set to appear in Sports Collectors Digest this week.

He was referring to Tom Catal and Andrew Vilacky, two upstate memorabilia dealers who are friendly with Rose and are affiliated with Pete Rose Collectibles and the Pete Rose Museum, a shrine on the third floor of Catal's collectibles store, in Cooperstown. Robert Edward Auctions obtained 30 of the inscribed balls from the estate of Barry Halper, the New Jersey businessman and limited partner in the Yankees who died last year at 66.

Fergie Rocks the Curler-Hawk

Fergie in curlersFergie made a appearance in public mid-glamourification to pump up her vocals during an early morning rehearsal.

The newly solo artist returned to her gig with the Black Eyed Peas for a performance on NBC's "Today" show at Rockefeller Center in New York on Friday morning.

Fergie Ferg's hair may be wacky, but we commend her always taking a risk-- whether it be her outrageous clothes or downright crazy dance moves. She just doesn't care what people think, and we love her for it.

Lindsay Rushed To ER With Broken Left Wrist

Lindsay Lohan was rushed to St. Vincent's Hospital in New York late Friday night after breaking her left wrist at a Fashion Week party. The actress was attending an event at the Milk Studios in New York when she fell and broke her wrist in two places, says her rep, Leslie Sloane Zelnik. According to Access Hollywood.com, Lindsay's mother Dina Lohan drove in from her home on Long Island to meet her daughter in the hospital. (With regard to yesterday's report of Dina and Lindsay's spat at a restaurant, Sloane Zelnick tells TMZ that Lindsay "loves her mother very much" and wishes people "would leave her alone.") The accident is being investigated because Lindsay claims Milk Studios hadn't been careful enough in preventing people from slipping.

Apple computer aims to take over your living-room TV

SAN FRANCISCO -- Steve Jobs changed the way consumers listen to music. Now the Apple Computer Inc. chief executive wants to reinvent how they watch movies at home.

Tuesday, Apple announced a long anticipated thrust into living-room entertainment with a device that will display movies, television shows and other videos purchased over the Internet on television sets.


Apple unveiled the new device, which it is temporarily calling iTV, at an event here that also showcased a deal with Walt Disney Co. to offer movies for sale over the Internet, the first of a wave of licensing deals Apple hopes to strike with Hollywood studios for films. Apple also revamped its entire line of iPod portable gadgets -- trimming sizes and adding storage capacity -- in hopes of keeping sales of the device strong during the crucial holiday shopping season.

The iTV device, expected to sell for $299 when it goes on sale in the first quarter of next year, comes after years of efforts by high-tech companies to provide technology for moving content purchased on the Internet off computer screens and onto television screens that are at the center of home entertainment.

Such a device is regarded as key to enabling mass-market acceptance of the growing range of movies, television shows and other videos that media companies are making available online. While most such attempts to do so have met with middling results at best, entertainment companies believe Apple's track record in the music business with the iPod and iTunes Music Store could give iTV a better shot at success.

In an interview, Mr. Jobs said the transition from DVDs that currently make up most of the home video market to online distribution wouldn't "happen overnight." "It takes years of investment," he said. Mr. Jobs compared the growing acceptance of movie downloads to the gradual consumer embrace of music downloads after years of product enhancements by Apple. "There's no reason why movies will be that much different."

Drug overdose may have killed Anna Nicole's son

Anna Nicole Smith with son Daniel.
Investigators suspect a drug overdose may have killed ex-Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith's 20-year-old son after an autopsy showed he did not die from "natural causes" or a heart attack, the coroner said yesterday.
Daniel Smith died on Sunday in his 38-year-old mother's maternity ward hospital room in Nassau, Bahamas, just days after she gave birth to a baby girl.

"We have a cause of death, but I am reserving it pending complete toxicology reports. We have to be sure," Bahamian coroner Linda Virgil told the Daily News. Test results are expected tomorrow.

"It was not natural causes. Heart attack was ruled out," Virgil said.

She refused to confirm a report in yesterday's Nassau Guardian newspaper that "various medications, along with drugs, were found in his system."

The toxicology tests she is awaiting are used to determine levels of drugs, alcohol or poisons in the body.

Anna Nicole Smith had credited her son with helping her get clean when she became addicted to painkillers a few years ago.

But her half-sister Donna Hogan says the buxom model's party-girl ways may have corrupted her son.

"It was really hard to have her as a mother. ... She was known to be wild and he was around that his whole life," Hogan told the TV show "Inside Edition."

Girls on top

Newswomen rise from fluff stuff to network stars


Meredith Vieira
Has television journalism become women's work?
Katie Couric is in the top job at CBS. Diane Sawyer is the highest paid news personality at ABC. And the fortunes of "Today" are riding on the shoulders of Meredith Vieira, who this morning makes her debut on NBC News' top moneymaker.

"It's like the insect world, isn't it? There's a queen bee and there's the worker bees," says network news analyst Andrew Tyndall.

In the anthill of TV journalism, Couric is on top of the heap, earning a reported $15 million annually, while Sawyer is said to rake in at least $13 million, much more than her former "Good Morning America" co-host, Charles Gibson.

Vieira's defection from "The View" to "Today" comes with a hefty raise to $10 million a year, according to reports.

Vieira, long the breadwinner in the family (her husband, Richard Cohen, is an author and journalism professor at Columbia), has graduated to medallion member status.

But it wasn't always that way.

"I was a quota," says Vieira. "When I came into the business in 1975, it's because I was a woman and they wanted a woman, and in my case they also looked at me as a minority."

Vieira is of Portuguese descent, but the vowels in her surname often led people to assume she is Hispanic, she said.

"So that's how I got in the door. And I think that's how a lot of women were getting in the door."

Women have always been paired with men in television news, but in the past they were hired for their fluff appeal, there to soften the hard edges of the male co-anchor. Now they must be capable of doing the very serious interviews with intellectuals and heads of state while effortlessly segueing to cooking demonstrations and home decor tutorials. And that's one reason they can command the kind of money and power once lavished exclusively on men.

HE'S A REAL

September 12, 2006 -- 'I'M SURE happy about this award and the praise the movie has received, but I'm not now going to 'claw my way' back up to some position that people think I was at, or think I want to return to."
That's Ben Affleck, reflecting on his best actor win at the Venice Film Festival last week, for his performance as George Reeves, the tragic TV Superman in "Hollywoodland." Ben called from Los Angeles, fresh from Italy's ravishing city on the sea, and with sounds of his baby, Violet, and his wife, Jennifer Garner, in the background. Both were needing his attention for real things.

Much has been made of the irony of Affleck's role as the unhappy Reeves. Ben has had his share of trouble and media over-attention, but mostly - I think - he has struggled against Hollywood typecasting. He is more a "character" leading man than a spiffed-up action hero. So now he has played Reeves, who became a star for all the wrong reasons, or so he thought. Ben says, "If people want to read a lot into my choice, or call it a 'comeback,' that's OK with me. Now I try not to care so much about what 'they' think, or want to rail against assumptions, which are sometimes almost right, often very wrong. But it's easier for the press and the public to have one idea about a person. It's human nature to be interested in 'what the king is doing tonight.' The ancient Greeks gossiped! I get it.

"Aside from the script and the director, Allen Coulter, and the people I worked with, I was attracted to Reeves' story because it was, in a lot of ways, about being an actor, wanting to act, not having the opportunity. The terrible thing was that when he achieved the fame he'd dreamed of, he was not young anymore, and he found - surprise! - fame isn't enough. And he was ambitious back when people didn't conceal ambition. It was the American way, the Horatio Alger legend, fame was hard-earned. Today, nobody seems to want to admit to ambition, they just want to be famous.

"The movie itself is really about dissatisfaction with what one has. 'I know I'd be happier if I was this or that, had this or that.' So, everything about 'Hollywoodland' resonated with me in some way." (Adrien Brody plays the dissatisfied detective. Diane Lane appears as the dissatisfied wife of MGM's scandal-manager Eddie Mannix.)

Ben, whom I have never found less than charming, upfront, smart and cooperative, talked about how he has changed over the past couple years - a result of the films that didn't work, the relationship with Jennifer Lopez that the world presumptuously disapproved of, and now, marriage and parenting.

"I try to appreciate what a privileged life I have, and the great things about being in a business that doesn't encourage self-control, I'm more humble, less callous about certain things, but also not given to beating myself up so much. It took me a long time to grow up, find my center, evolve."

I stopped Ben, "How old are you?"

"Thirty-four."

"Ben, do you honestly think you could have been really centered in your 20s, with an Oscar in one hand and the world at your feet? You've actually gotten it together sooner than most."

He laughed, "You know, you're right, I guess. See, I still beat myself up a lot!"

Affleck is now editing "Gone, Baby Gone," his first feature film directorial effort. "I loved it! It was wonderful and terrible. One day I was sure I was a complete failure, the next I was thinking, 'OK, maybe this is pretty good.' It was the perfect bipolar professional experience."

Many people thought Ben - who can speak passionately on world issues - might even give up showbiz and go into politics. "Oh, it's not that I haven't thought about it. Not now, for sure, but you never know. But if I do, be prepared, I'm going to ask you to be on my team!"

Ben, I cast my ballot the first time we met.

'BRIAN HAS a lot more film of my backside somewhere, but he's not giving it up!"

That was Josh Hartnett, commenting at last week's L.A. premiere of "The Black Dahlia." Apparently, the Brian De Palma film is fairly discreet when it comes to Josh's love scenes with his "Dahlia" co-stars Scarlett Johansson and Hilary Swank. Well, we can always wait for the DVD director's cut, which usually features more of everything.

Those who have seen the film, based on one of the most infamous, and still unsolved crimes ever, say the violence - including shots of the dismembered body of aspiring actress Elizabeth Short - is disturbing. (Some would have preferred more gratuitous sex.) Both Scarlett and Hilary are reported as knockouts in their 1940s period clothes and makeup - Scarlett is a gangster's moll, Swank a rich nymphomaniac. And, like "Hollywoodland," the décor and atmosphere are drenched in despair and mystery.

At the premiere, it was noted that Scarlett and Josh - linked off-screen - seemed to keep their distance from each other. Has romance cooled? Or did they simply choose to avoid the red-carpet crawl, peppered with probing questions and requests for "just one more, holding hands!"

"The Black Dahlia" has a special screening this week in N.Y.C., a swanky affair hosted by the Cinema Society and Guerlain, at the Tribeca Grand Screening Room. Hilary Swank will preside.

HANKS' DARK SIDE, BY

September 12, 2006 -- TOM Hanks is seen as one of Hollywood's nice guys - but the Oscar winner's first wife, the mother of his kids, strongly disagreed with that perception.
In newly unearthed court papers published in the upcoming bio "The Tom Hanks Enigma," by David Gardner, actress Susan Dillingham charges that Hanks harassed her and attempted to kill her career.

"My husband has repeatedly verbally abused and humiliated me during the past 90 days in my home. This caused me to suffer great emotional distress," Dillingham wrote an L.A. court in asking for a restraining order against Hanks.

Dillingham, whose stage name was Samantha Lewes, died from bone cancer in 2002. During their messy divorce, which began in 1985 and dragged on for three years, the actress said Hanks tried to force her into depositions as she took the lead roles in a series of plays. "[It's] designed to harass and upset me at a time when I should be focusing all of my energies on my job," she wrote in one legal missive.

Hanks shot back in his own legal filing, alleging that Dillingham was delaying a divorce trial "merely to harass me and try to squeeze an unfair settlement out of me."

The couple - college sweethearts who wed after their son, Colin, was born in 1977 - began to have problems when Hanks' career took off in hits like "Splash" and Dillingham's stalled. They also had a daughter, Elizabeth, in 1982.

"Tom was spending less and less time at home . . . [and] with two children to care for and a husband who was away for long stretches . . . it was difficult [for her] to get work," Gardner writes. A year after the divorce, Hanks wed actress Rita Wilson.

Gardner also reveals that Hanks' kid brother, Jim, played a Forrest Gump-type character in a little-known soft-core sex flick two years before Tom created the role that won him an Oscar. In "Buford's Beach Bunnies," Jim invented the "now-famous jerky run associated with Forrest Gump" and, like Gump, showed a shy politeness toward women by calling them "ma'am," the author says.