NICOLE KIDMAN has sparked speculation she could be heading down the aisle with boyfriend KEITH URBAN, after being photographed with a diamond ring on her engagement finger.

The actress has yet to confirm she is even dating country star and fellow Australian Urban, but friends say the pair have become closer and closer since they were first spotted together last year (05).

Kidman flashed the ring as the pair left a New York hotel together on Thursday (05JAN06).

The couple, who are both 38, have been spending New Year in the Big Apple after enjoying Christmas with Urban’s family in Nashville, Tennessee.

FOR once there was no sign of Nicole Kidman’s constant companion. But Keith Urban’s ring was clearly visible on the actor’s left hand in New York yesterday, as she presented News Corp chairman and chief executive officer Rupert Murdoch with a humanitarian award.

“As you are probably aware we are both from a place we call ‘Down Under’,” Kidman said, explaining why she had been chosen to present the Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s Humanitarian Laureate Award to Mr Murdoch.

The award recognised Mr Murdoch’s support for Israel. He thanked his “real friend and great sport” for agreeing to present it.

Kidman was clearly the night’s star attraction. Every glimpse of the ring on her wedding finger was greeted with scores of rapid-fire camera flashes from assembled paparazzi.

Kidman’s dinner conversation with Mr Murdoch and his wife Wendy Deng was interrupted by bursts of flash each time she lifted her fork to her mouth and exposed the ring to the photographers’ lenses.

Despite the ring, the actor has not confirmed whether she is engaged, let alone addressed the marriage rumours that have dogged her since she spent Christmas at Urban’s Nashville home.

Ms Kidman had spent the past few weeks holidaying with Urban in America after wrapping up filming of The Visiting. The pair has been photographed in Los Angeles, Nashville, Las Vegas and New York.

She appears to be uncomfortable with the constant attention generated by her romance with the country singer.

The pair fled trendy NYC nightclub Bungalow 8 just minutes before midnight on New Year’s Eve, after clubgoers started taking photos of the pair with mobile phone cameras.

They had spent less than two minutes inside the club.

Daniel Craig heads off to the Czech Republic this month to shoot Casino Royale, his debut as the sixth actor to play James Bond 007. You might think he’d be over the moon about his newfound fortune – reports USA Today.

But on this sunny day in the Capital City, he is all business. And the business at hand is playing Nicole Kidman’s love interest in the alien thriller The Visiting, a reworking of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It’s directed by Germany’s Oliver Hirschbiegel, who caused a sensation with a humanized Hitler in Downfall.

…

“I am in a very level place at the moment because I’m doing this,” he says, referring to The Visiting. “And I’m very much concentrating on doing this.” About Bond, he says, “As much as it’s a huge thing, it’s just another job at the moment.”

Kidman is confident her co-star will triumph as Bond.

“I think Daniel will just smoke in it,” she says. “He is such an accomplished actor. Stephen Daldry (who directed Kidman in The Hours and Craig on the London stage) said to me, ‘He is the best actor in England, and if you get a chance to work with him, do it.’ ”

Suggest to Craig that it is good that audiences will get to know him first in such movies as Munich, in which he plays an Israeli assassin, and The Visiting, due in August, and he shifts in his chair.

He is slightly more keen on chatting about his first sci-fi feature. He says he agreed to do The Visiting because “Nicole was doing it. And Oliver is doing it. I think Downfall is one of the best films in the past couple years.”

[link=http://www.mi6.co.uk/news/index.php?itemid=3218&catid=4]full interview[/link]

Naomi Watts thanks best friend Nicole Kidman for her Hollywood career.

The King Kong actress claims that Nicole’s inspiration helped her to succeed.

She told the Daily Star, “If it wasn’t for Nicole providing so much inspiration, I might have packed up and gone home.”

Kate Winslet has been named the Britain’s favourite actress while Tom Cruise has been voted the most irritating actor in a poll out today.

[b]English rose Winslet beat Nicole Kidman, Natalie Portman, Jodie Foster and Julia Roberts in the Empire magazine survey.[/b]

Cruise, set for fatherhood with new love Katie Holmes, was also voted the greatest movie star of all time beating names like Robert De Niro and Al Pacino in the poll.

The Top Gun star won the most irritating actor title ahead of Jennifer Lopez in second place, and Julia Roberts in third.

Kevin Spacey was voted favourite actor, over the likes of Tom Hanks, Johnny Depp and Russell Crowe.

Steven Spielberg won the favourite director title and Steve Buscemi was named the film world`s top unsung hero.

Seven out of ten also think there is too much product placement in films, while 81% thought there were too many sequels and remakes made in Hollywood.

Read the rest of this entry »

The celebrity gossip website Celebrity Couples Online has chosen Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie as the hottest celebrity couple on the Internet in 2005.
According to a press release, the selection process was based on three statistics; the popularity of individual couple pages on the Celebrity Couples Online website, the popularity of search engine keywords involving both members of a couple, as well as the length of time each celebrity was listed on the Yahoo! Buzz index. [The Yahoo! Buzz index is a listing of the most popular search queries over the course of a given time period.]

Those who visited the Celebrity Couples Online website chose the Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie destination page 36 percent of the time. Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban followed with 14 percent, with Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston third with 12 percent.

Although Pop-Tart Britney Spears was the most searched celebrity for 2005 according to Yahoo, Pitt and Jolie were still searched more times cumalitively as a couple.

Here is the final list in order of ranking.

1. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie
2. Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes
3. Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston
4. Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner
5. Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman
6. Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson
7. Ryan Phillippe and Reese Witherspoon
8. Matthew McConaughey and Penelope Cruz
9. Justin Timberlake and Cameron Diaz
10.Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore

NICOLE KIDMAN spent the holidays with new beau KEITH URBAN in Nashville, Tennessee.

The actress joined the Urbans at his rural retreat on Christmas Eve (24DEC05), according to US showbiz magazine In Touch.

The MOULIN ROUGE! star was spotted strolling with Urban and his mother, MARIENNE, in Percy Warner Park in Nashville late on Christmas Day (25DEC05).

Although locals reported seeing the loved-up pair holding hands, the couple still hasn’t gone public with the romance.

It’s the second successive US holiday Kidman has spent with Urban and his family – she also joined them for Thanksgiving at the end of November (05), inviting her own parents, JANELLE and ANTONY, to join her.

NICOLE Kidman and Keith Urban have set tongues wagging with a last-minute Christmas holiday in Las Vegas, the home of the drive-through wedding.

And fuelling further speculation of wedding bells – even the recorded kind – is word the couple were joined by Kidman’s parents, Janelle and Antony, along with her sister Antonia and brother-in-law Angus Hawley.
The Aussie amours stayed on in Sin City after Urban completed his US tour and picked up a Country Artist of the Year Award at Vegas’s 2005 Radio Music Awards last week.

The Kidman family entourage were spotted being shuttled to the Four Seasons Hotel on South Las Vegas Boulevard in two silver limousines. A black van carried their luggage.

Meanwhile, a British report has quoted an anonymous Kidman friend as saying a wedding is looming.

“Nicole has a mischievous streak and you couldn’t put it past her getting her own back and remarrying before Tom and Katie’s big day next summer,” the friend said.

NB: This is not really “news”, just some interesting information.

WHAT: Opportunity to interview “Dr. Christmas” at The Hollywood
Museum and get footage of the famed lobby of the historic Max
Factor Building with his new holiday decorations including a
specially decorated “Women of Hollywood” pink and white
Christmas Tree that glitters magnificently against the pink
marble of the main lobby. [b]The tree features Marilyn Monroe,
Doris Day, Sophia Loren, Nicole Kidman, Jane Fonda, Greta
Garbo, Bette Davis and others.[/b] Accompanying the tree is a
display of more than 50 celebrity-autographed ornaments by
many of Hollywood’s best-known stars, including Candice
Bergen, Kate Hudson and Bob Hope.

Concurrent with the new Barbra Streisand exhibit, there is a
Barbra Streisand tree featuring the likeness of Barbra and
inspired by her favorite colors. Also, a traditional 10-foot
Christmas tree decorated with red and gold ornaments, vintage
entertainment biz headlines and Jim Carrey’s favorite easy
chair from “Lemony Snickett.”

WHO: The renowned decorator Bob Pranga (“Dr. Christmas”) is the
author of the book CHRISTMAS STYLE and will be available for
comment on Christmas decorating trends and current creations
for Hollywood celebrities.

WHEN: CALL TO SCHEDULE ONE-ON-ONE INTERVIEW
Availability:
10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Thursday-Friday, December 22nd-23rd, 2005

WHERE: The Hollywood Museum
1660 N. Highland Avenue (at Hollywood Blvd.)
Crew Parking at Mel’s Drive-In will be validated

ABOUT THE DESIGNER: Since 1984, Bob Pranga has owned and operated “Dr.
Christmas,” a holiday decorating company in Los Angeles that
provides custom Christmas and special events design and decor
to celebrity clientele and businesses including Whoopi
Goldberg, Nancy Reagan, Bob Hope, Shaquille O’Neal, Shirley
MacLaine, Carrie Fisher, Andy Garcia, The Hilton Family,
Tiffany & Co., Macy’s, MGM and Walt Disney Studios. He has
been featured in countless magazines and on television
networks both in the U.S. and around the world. Bob’s
Christmas Tree design knowledge, visual advice and secret
holiday decorating tips are available in his book, CHRISTMAS
STYLE (DK Publishing).

MATTHEW BRODERICK hated making THE STEPFORD WIVES with NICOLE KIDMAN and has nightmares about being remembered for it.

The actor struggled to cope with his mother’s terminal illness throughout the shoot, but he admits the movie was terrible in its own right and regrets the whole experience.

Broderick says, “Making that film wasn’t enjoyable.

“It was nobody’s fault, but my part was not terribly interesting and my mum was dying, so there was really nothing fun about it.

“But even if she had been well, I wouldn’t have enjoyed it. It was not a thrilling film. I would hate it if it were my last.”