Sigourney Weaver has slammed the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, saying James Cameron didn’t win the Oscar for best director because he “didn’t have breasts.”
Outspoken “Avatar” star Weaver said she believed Cameron — who lost out to his ex-wife, “The Hurt Locker” director Kathryn Bigelow — didn’t win because the academy wanted to make history by naming its first ever female best director.
“Jim didn’t have breasts, and I think that was the reason,” Weaver told Brazilian news site Folha Online over the weekend. “He should have taken home that Oscar.”
In a rebuke hinting at frustration in the “Avatar” camp — who applauded gracefully when “The Hurt Locker” also took the best picture Oscar — Weaver added, “In the past, ‘Avatar’ would have won because they (Oscar voters) loved to hand out awards to big productions, like ‘Ben-Hur.’ Today it’s fashionable to give the Oscar to a small movie that nobody saw.”
“Avatar” has grossed $743.7 million in the United States and $2.7 billion worldwide, while “The Hurt Locker” has taken $16 million in the U.S. and just more than $40 million worldwide numbers that make it the least-popular best picture winner of all time, according to BoxOfficeMojo.com.
Weaver made her comments as she and Cameron promoted “Avatar” in Brazil and protested against the proposed Belo Monte dam in the Amazon — the world’s third-largest hydroelectric project — which they claim will destroy the jungle and displace indigenous tribes. Cameron also wrote a letter to Brazilian President Lula da Silva, who’s insisting the project will go forward and has refused to meet with him.
California officials say former “Baywatch” star Pamela Anderson has failed to pay $493,000 in personal income tax. Anderson is on the annual list of delinquent taxpayers released Monday by the California Franchise Tax Board.
The 42-year-old actress is currently competing on the television show “Dancing With the Stars.”
Anderson is among 250 individual and business taxpayers that owe more than $100,000 in back taxes. State records show a tax lien for $493,144 was filed against Anderson in April 2009.
Her attorney, Robert T. Leonard of Woodland Hills, says he is representing Anderson in the matter but declined to comment further.
Whoever stole the headlights off Jason Statham‘s SUV better watch out.
The actor who usually gets serious payback on badguys — he’s made at least a dozen violent revenge movies including “Transporter” and “Crank” — noticed that someone had ripped the headlights out of his vehicle when he left his Hollywood home yesterday, TMZ reports.
Statham’s assistant immediately called the LAPD but so far, anyway, the thieves had not been found.
Lindsay Lohan’s new party girl image, may have caused her to be left off of the cover of the upcoming Nintendo “DS Mean Girls” game. Lohan was the star of the hit 2004 film, but the cover features only Rachel McAdams, Lacey Chabert and Amanda Seyfried, making her curious absence all the more obvious, OK magazine reports on its website.
The three actresses featured on the cover, who played the trio of super-popular girls known as “the plastics,” did have a vital role in the film; however, the movie follows the life of a new student named Cady Heron, who Lohan played.
According to a description of the game found on GameStop, via PopEater, Mean Girls will “follow the misadventures of Cady from Jingle Bell Rock to the School Prom.”
lsmith@denverpost.com
