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Your support makes all the difference.Janet Leigh doesn't take showers. The actress, who starred in one of the most famous horror scenes in movie history - the shower scene in Psycho - says she just a chicken at heart.
"It's not a hype, it's not something that I thought good for publicity,'' she told the Associated Press in an interview about her new book, Psycho: Behind the Scenes of the Classic Thriller.
"The reason is really not the filming of it,'' she said, noting that the scene was shot in more than 70 short takes over seven days. ''Before I saw the finished film, I had never realised how vulnerable you are in the shower. You're exposed, defenceless, you can't hear because of the running water. I don't like that situation. It had never dawned on me before."
Ms Leigh didn't have nightmares about it, but she still prefers a bathtub, "where I can see the door, the water's not running, so I can hear everything''.
Except for the 20 seconds or so of total horror as her character was being stabbed to death, she said, it was no great challenge. And no, she wasn't nude. It was 1960. She wore a bodysuit.
Michael Fay had his 15 minutes of fame last year, when he was caned in Singapore for vandalism. Mr Fay, 20, now works at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida, and lives out of the limelight, unrecognised by most people. "I just want to lead a normal life,'' he said. ''I want to make my own money, go to college - probably in Florida - and maybe get a business or marketing degree."
Mr Fay received four lashes for spray-painting cars, an offence which he still insists he was not guilty of.
La Cicciolina may be planning a comeback. Ilona Staller, the former porn star and former Italian Radical Party MP, will take to a Roman nightclub stage again in 10 days for an erotic show. She plans to bare her breasts and ''perhaps a little more,'' but what she's not revealing is whether she will re-enter the political arena.
Ms Staller told La Repubblica she wants to meet officials from various parties to set out her views on children's rights, an issue on which she has been campaigning in recent years. But she denied rumours linking her to Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia.
It sounded like an ordinary invitation from one amateur radio enthusiast to another: ''Why don't you come to drink at my house?''
Meir Globerman, the recipient of the invitation, nearly fell foul of Israeli coastguards, however, when he tried to sail his yacht from Eilat across the Red Sea to Aqaba for coffee with King Hussein of Jordan.
Fortunately, two Jordanian speed boats appeared and Mr Globerman's story was confirmed. "The King was waiting to have coffee and we spoke about peace and our shared passion: the radio," the Israeli said.
Maryann Bird
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