Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are donating $2 million to the Namibian sanctuary where they spent Christmas with their kids.
The donation to the Naankuse Lodge and Wildlife Sanctuary was made through the Jolie-Pitt Foundation in the name of their daughter Shiloh, who was born in Namibia.
In a statement released late Sunday, Angelina said, “We want her to be very involved and grow up with the understanding of her country of birth.” Angelina said Rudie and Marlice van Vuuren, the owners of the sanctuary, are old friends. “We continue to be impressed by their hard work and dedication to the people and conservation of the land and wildlife of Namibia,” she said.
The Jolie-Pitt family spent Christmas together at the exclusive lodge, where staff say the children helped to feed and care for orphaned baby baboons and foxes and saw a leopard released back into the wild.
The van Vuurens said in the statement that they were “overjoyed” that Angelina and Brad chose Naankuse as the foundation’s partner in Namibia.
Dara Barrett, head of finance at the Naankuse sanctuary, told The Associated Press that the money would be used primarily to benefit the community of San bushmen on the farm and surrounding areas.
“Some of the donated funds will be used in the running of a clinic which provides free medical care to the community of bushmen, including the treatment of malnutrition, tuberculosis and HIV,” she said.
The remainder of the funds will be used for large animal conservation projects and other San community projects which have yet to be identified, Barrett said.
After eight years, it’s over for Mila Kunis and Macaulay Culkin, according to the New York Post.
Kunis, 27, who co-stars in “Black Swan,” and child star Culkin, 30, split amicably and remain friends, according to her rep.
In a 2009 interview, Kunis said of Culkin, the star of the “Home Alone” movies: “We grew up together. You find a steady rock in your life and that’s all you need. We have our ups and downs, but work through them.”
Anne Francis, who starred in “Honey West,” the mid-1960s TV series about a sexy female private detective with a pet ocelot, died Sunday. She was 80.
Francis, who was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2007 and underwent surgery and chemotherapy, died of complications of pancreatic cancer at a retirement home in Santa Barbara, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Friends and family members were with her, said a family spokeswoman, Melissa Fitch.
The blond actress with a beauty mark next to her lower lip, Francis was a former child model and radio actress when she first got a role on the big screen in the early 1950s.
She acted or starred in more than 30 movies, including “Bad Day at Black Rock,” “Battle Cry,” “Blackboard Jungle,” “The Hired Gun,” “Don’t Go Near the Water,” “Brainstorm,” “Funny Girl” and “Hook, Line and Sinker.”‘
She also achieved cult status as one of the stars of “Forbidden Planet,” the 1956 MGM movie co-starring Walter Pidgeon and Leslie Nielsen and featuring a robot named Robby.
Francis, however, never became a major movie star and was more frequently seen on television as a guest star on scores of series from the late ’50s and decades beyond, including an episode of “The Twilight Zone” in which she played a department store mannequin who comes to life at night.
After partying hard on New Year’s Eve, David Arquette checked himself into rehab in California on Saturday, a friend told the New York Post.
The friend insisted that Arquette, 39, is trying to deal with alcohol abuse and that there’s no drug addiction. “He was drinking too much,” the friend said. “Once he drank too much, he became somebody he didn’t like.” The actor has been struggling with emotional problems — mainly over his October separation from his wife, “Cougar Town” star Courteney Cox, 46, the friend said.
—lsmith@denverpost.com
