CELEBRITY WATCH
Listen to "Celebrity Watch" from CNN Radio's Ken Pauli Windows Media: 28k Real Audio: 28k

From staff and wire reports

Spielberg: Boy Scouts discriminate

LOS ANGELES, California -- Steven Spielberg doesn't agree with the Boy Scouts of American policy excluding gays, so the Oscar-winning filmmaker is stepping down from his post on the advisory board.

"The last few years in scouting have deeply saddened me to see the Boy Scouts of America actively and publicly participating in discrimination," Spielberg said in a statement released Monday and reported by The Associated Press. "It's a real shame."

Spielberg has been a member of the group's advisory board for about 10 years, said Marvin Levy, his publicist.

"Once scouting fully opens its doors to all who desire the same experience that so fully enriched me as a young person, I will be happy to reconsider a role on the advisory board," Spielberg said.

The Boy Scouts of America have not commented on the issue yet.

On the BSA Web site, a statement on the organization's stance on sexual orientation reads, in part, "We believe an avowed homosexual is not a role model for the traditional moral values espoused in the Scout Oath and Law and homosexual conduct is inconsistent with the values we wish to instill. ... We respect other people's rights to hold differing opinions and ask that they respect ours."

The United States Supreme Court last summer ruled the organization's national policy banning gay members and leaders is constitutional. The high court cited the right to freedom of association granted to private groups.

Mother Manheim: 'The best thing I've ever done'

NEW YORK -- Actress Camryn Manheim has won critical acclaim in her career, but nothing compares with being a mom.

"It's the best thing I've ever done," she tells Us Weekly in its April 23 issue. "I've had all this love to give somebody, anybody. And now I have this little guy who accepts it, who takes my whole heart that is filled to the brim with love."

Manheim, 40, gave birth to Milo on March 6. The star of ABC's "The Practice" hasn't disclosed how she got pregnant, or the identity of the father.

"I'm a single mom -- 100 percent," says Manheim.

Manheim, an insomniac, has hired a nurse to help with nighttime feedings but says, "I really want to be a hands-on mom. We'll go to Gymboree and infant swim care and Mommy and Me classes."

Sevigny says Hudson's 'boring,' Theron's 'tacky'

NEW YORK -- Chloe Sevigny says she's been getting too much recognition for her fashion tastes and wants people to remember that she's an Oscar-nominated actress.

"I love acting and I love cinema more than anything," Sevigny, nominated as best supporting actress nomination for her role in "Boys Don't Cry" (1999), tells Harper's Bazaar magazine in its May issue.

"For some reason the public has embraced me as a fashion icon, and I feel like it has diminished me as an actress. Or I don't get as much recognition as an actress -- and that upsets me."

As for the fashion taste of another Oscar-nominated actress, Kate Hudson, a finalist in this year's competition for her role in "Almost Famous"?

"People are saying Kate Hudson is fashionable now -- boring to me," says Sevigny. "And Charlize Theron -- tacky to me."

When she's out of the spotlight, Sevigny says, she sports clothes bought at thrift stores.

Irving teams up with 'Cider' colleagues again

NEW YORK -- Novelist John Irving won an Oscar the last time he teamed up with director Lasse Hallstrom, and producers Richard Gladstein and Leslie Holleran. So why not team up again?

According to Variety, Irving has agreed to help Hallstrom, Gladstein and Holleran turn his upcoming novel, "The Fourth Hand," into a feature film.

"The Fourth Hand" follows a TV reporter who gets his hand bitten off by a lion during a live report, and ends up meeting a childless Wisconsin woman who'll give him the hand of her recently deceased husband if the reporter will help her to conceive a child.

George Clooney has already been named as a possible star.

Irving won a best screenplay Oscar for penning the 1999 screen adaptation of his novel, "The Cider House Rules," which was directed by Hallstrom and produced by Gladstein and Holleran.

Irving says he's enjoying his foray in the movie-making business.

"My principal creative pursuit is so solitary, that to be my age and have a legitimate second career in a collaborative environment is a gratification I never expected," Irving said.