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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Sounds To Us Like He’s Skirting The Issue

Compiled By Staff Writer Rick Bo

Tom Cruise won’t say exactly what he’s doing in Stanley Kubrick’s new psychological thriller “Eyes Wide Shut,” but he wants to make one thing perfectly clear - he’s not wearing a dress.

“I’ve read a lot of stuff. No one’s gotten it right. They’re reaching,” Cruise told the New York Daily News about the dress reports.

Cruise and his real-life wife, Nicole Kidman, play out a variety of sexual fantasies in the film, currently in production in England.

He admitted that “it can be grueling” working with Kubrick, the director of “Dr. Strangelove” and “A Clockwork Orange.”

“He rehearses, we work on the scene, then he rewrites again,” said Cruise, who was nominated for an Oscar this year for “Jerry Maguire.” But, he adds, “As an actor, you have to support the director. It’s his vision.”

Loose talk

Kevin Costner, now filming the futuristic “The Postman,” on his last futuristic flop, “Waterworld”: “Making mistakes in your life is an underrated characteristic, is an under-appreciated experience in life, and I’m not afraid to fail.”

In the aging process, she’s apparently trapped

Hayley Mills turns 51 today.

Or bringing together snakes in the grass

“Anaconda,” the hit movie about monster serpents in the Amazon, was produced by an unlikely trio - fashion mogul Carole Little, her estranged husband, Leonard Rabinowitz, and his former girlfriend, Verna Harrah. Said Rabinowitz: “Show business has a way of separating strange bedfellows.”

To err is human, but to get even is divine

Former philanderer Hugh Grant’s girlfriend, actress/model Elizabeth Hurley, is pictured nearly nude in the new Paris-Match with a “mysterious unknown” in dark glasses applying suntan lotion to her backside. The magazine said the pix were taken poolside at Hurley’s Beverly Hills home.

Guess you could call him fundamentally sound

A happier lovebird, actress Mira Sorvino, singing the praises of her paramour, director Quentin Tarantino (in Los Angeles Magazine): “He is absolutely uncorrupted by Hollywood … He’s not pessimistic, cynical, sarcastic or gossipy. His true spirit is so nonjudgmental and not belittling … Even my mother loves him, and she’s a fundamentalist.”

Must be that old-fashioned Southern hostility

More on that Billy Bob Thornton marital split: the Arkansas-born Oscar winner’s fourth wife, Pietra Dawn Thornton, has obtained a temporary court order keeping him away from her, claiming that he punched, choked, bit and threatened to kill her during their four-year union.

In the phone book? She must be the real McCoy

An avid fan of Richard Crenna, star of such ‘50s sitcoms as “Our Miss Brooks” and “The Real McCoys,” has ordered to stay at least 100 yards away from him for the next three years. Veronika Kuncova, who says she came from the Czech Republic to meet Crenna, showed up at his home in October and took a few photos with him, then returned last month carrying a phone book listing her as “Veronika Crenna” at his address.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Photos

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Compiled by staff writer Rick Bonino