A lively fight over the $40 million estate of Dennis Hopper, who was buried in New Mexico yesterday, is now moving to probate court.
Hopper’s estranged wife, Victoria Duffy, 42, is going up against the “Easy Rider” star’s oldest daughter, Marin, 47, and the attorney representing Hopper.
A prenup with the actor said Duffy would get a $10 million settlement. However, the prenup grants Duffy a bequest only if the couple was married and living together at the time of his death.
Duffy will argue that even though they lived in separate houses at the time of his death, they were “living together” because her house was on his property, the website TMZ reports.
Marin reportedly is working hard to keep Duffy from getting anything, according to the New York Daily News.
Hopper reportedly wanted to freeze his estranged wife out of the 25 percent of his estate and $250,000 in life insurance money promised in the prenup. But the divorce, which he filed for in January, was not final when he died Saturday.
“Victoria has not handled this well, to the point where people are questioning her decisions,” a source told the Daily News. “But Marin disregards that Dennis and Victoria were married for 14 years – a long-term marriage by Hollywood standards.” Duffy was Hopper’s fifth wife.
Friends close to the actor and his wife were shocked when Hopper filed divorce papers in Los Angeles Superior Court Jan. 14, citing “irreconcilable differences” with Duffy and asking for joint legal and physical custody of their daughter Galen, 7.
Duffy did not appear, for obvious reasons, at Hopper’s funeral yesterday.
Jodie Foster knows what it takes to make it as a young actress in Hollywood. She gave “Twilight” star Kristen Stewart some advice at the New York Women in Film & Television’s Designing Women Awards this week.
Foster, 47, told Stewart: “Just about how to not go crazy,” said Foster, who co-starred with Stewart in 2002’s Panic Room, at the event. “And (how to) be a young actor who wants to have a long career.”
Sounds like the “Twilight” actress could use the advice. She recently equated being a celebrity — especially being the prey of paparazzi — to being raped.
“The photos are so … I feel like I’m looking at someone being raped,” she told Britain’s Elle magazine. “A lot of the time I can’t handle it.”
When the former co-stars caught up with each other at the Oscars this year, Foster told the 20-year-old, “You know, you could learn a thing or two from me,” Stewart revealed on the Tonight Show in March.
But Foster says Stewart is doing just fine with stardom on her own. “She doesn’t need any help. She’s on the right track. She’s a good girl,” Foster told People. “And I love that kid. I spent so much time with her.”
Paul McCartney said he was nervous about performing in front of President Barack Obama and wife Michelle as part of his Gershwin award for writing “Yesterday.”
McCartney was honored with America’s highest award for pop music Tuesday at the Library of Congress, and last night he collected the prize at the White House.
The Gershwin Prize for Popular Song is named for the U.S. songwriting brothers George and Ira Gershwin, whose collections are housed at the library.
“Some of the songs you write, you don’t know where they come from,” McCartney said on stage Tuesday night. “So I have to believe in the magic.”
The tune for “Yesterday” came to him in a dream, he said. Nobody could place it, so he claimed it as his own.
McCartney joked that the original lyrics were “Scrambled egg. Oh my baby how I love your legs.”
Then he took his guitar and said “Here goes nothin,” before he sang the familiar tune for a Washington crowd at a private concert at the library. The audience included House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Stevie Wonder and comedian Jerry Seinfeld. He also sang an encore of “Blackbird.”
‘He’s a great guy,’ McCartney told the White House press corps about Obama, ‘so lay off him.’
Multi-million selling McCartney, whose music with the Beatles, Wings and as a solo artist spans five decades, makes him an obvious candidate for the Gershwin Prize.
Librarian of Congress’s James Billington said: ‘He has made an impact far beyond music through his humanitarianism and activism around the world, which are emblematic of the spirit of the Gershwin Prize.’
The former Beatle said in return it was a ‘very special’ award because he had grown up listening to music composed by the Gershwin brothers, such as Rhapsody In Blue.
This is McCartney’s first major lifetime achievement award from the U.S. government.
He was slated to win a Kennedy Center Honor, the nation’s top prize for performing artists, in 2002, but backed out because of a scheduling conflict.
In 1990, McCartney won the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
Actor Val Kilmer is set to appear before a board of county commissioners in New Mexico to explain derogatory comments he’s been quoted as making about the state.
San Miguel County Attorney Jesus Lopez says the manager of Kilmer’s Pecos River Ranch told officials the “Batman Forever” actor plans to show up on June 23.
A 2003 Rolling Stone article quoted Kilmer as saying he lives in the “homicide capital of the Southwest” and that 80 percent “of the people in my county are drunk.” Kilmer has denied the statements.
Kilmer wants the county to approve a permit allowing him to rent out three guest houses on his ranch. The county’s planning and zoning commission approved the request, but the county commission wants him to explain his earlier remarks.
— The Associated Press also contributed to this report
lsmith@denverpost.com
