In an interview conducted months ago, but apparently timed for publication to coincide with the opening of "Star Wars," Liam Neeson told Redbook magazine he'd had it with making movies. "I'm getting out," he said. "I'm retiring from movies next year. I don't want to do it anymore."
By this week, however, Neeson said he didn't mean it. "It was something that came up from finishing a long period of work on stage and on film. . . . It's not true. I was just venting a bit of anger."Neeson had said that "film is a director's medium. It has nothing to do with actors. We are basically puppets, walking around, hitting marks, saying lines."
-- WRITING: The always industrious and always strapped for cash Duchess of York is at work on a novel, which will be published by Simon & Schuster, reports the Mirror of London. The Duchess' agent, Al Lowman of Authors and Artists group, told the British newspaper that the writing is "now in progress" but the book will be "very transcendental."
In keeping with that spirit, Queen Elizabeth II has had boots custom-made for her corgis, reports the Sunday Times of London, because gravel pathways at Buckingham Palace were giving them paw problems.
Furthermore, Prince Charles will pay about $80,000 to a former employee who claimed she was sexually harassed by one of the prince's aides. The settlement means that he won't have to testify in court. -- Leah Garchik