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Blake Lively thought she had it made when she scored a coveted role alongside Hollywood veterans Julianne Moore, Robin Wright and Maria Bello in the new drama “The Private Lives of Pippa Lee,” but one critical scene which features her in leashed up in her underwear under the direction of a dominatrix (Moore) prompted the 22-year-old to question her chosen career. “It was an odd thing to do but really funny. There was a point when I was crawling on all fours and Julianne was like ‘purr for me’ and I thought ‘what am I doing with my life? I’ve finally got the most respectable job of my career yet I’m being leashed up and asked to purr,’” Lively told Tarts. “But Julianne is such a wonderful, kind and happy person so that made it easy to feel safe crawling around leashed up.

It seems Miss Lively certainly lives up to her name even when the cameras aren’t rolling and admitted she has issues sitting still.

“I always have to keep myself really really busy and I can’t stop,” the “Gossip Girl’ said. “All my friends are like ‘oh you don’t need to do something right now, just take a day for yourself. Take a couple of minutes to sit down; you don’t have to do all that.’ My biggest problem is I fill my life with too much business that I don’t need to worry myself with.”

On the note of worries, Lively has also made it her personal duty to be the bright spark in the familym having been raised with four other siblings. While children of her own aren’t on the cards quite yet, the starlet certainly has a thing for the little ones.

This week’s Saturday Night Live was all over the map: lame one minute, funny the next, and at the end, there was one sketch that — well, I’ll get to it in a little while. As host, Blake Lively was firmly in the plucky-not-awful tradition. It was one of those SNLs when you felt the rest of the cast had been enlisted to make sure the host was always surrounded by enough activity so that it wouldn’t look as though she was responsible for the dull patches. She did not do her version of Riverdance, which she performed so charmingly on Jimmy Fallon and had promised Fallon’s audience she’d do on SNL as well. That, I think, would have gone over a lot better than the Sesame Street scene that occurred during her monologue.

Early on there were a couple of dud political sketches — SNL got its obligatory Salahi party-crasher joke out of the way in the cold-open, and a little later committed its obligatory Tiger Woods sketch, framed as a CNN news report. I think it’s a good rule of thumb to never parody anything to do with CNN — the tediousness of that network infects everything it touches.

The night’s only Gossip Girl reference that I caught came in a sketch called Gossip Girl Staten Island. Its trite premise – that working-class folks are crass – was rendered instantly irrelevant earlier this week, when MTV premiered the reality show Jersey Shore, a far more vulgar and vivid piece of junk-TV.

The announced shutdown of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" in two years creates room for a new queen (or king) of daytime television.

Until that day when Winfrey's 7 million or so daily viewers start looking for something else to do, preparing to claim that audience will be one of the biggest competitions in television.

"You haven't had a time period like this open up in 25 years," said Larry Gerbrandt, an analyst for the firm Media Valuation Partners in Los Angeles. "It really gives the players a chance to reshuffle the deck."

Nowhere now in daytime television is there a show with the breadth of Winfrey's, which can feature an interview with singer Whitney Houston about her drug use one day, or Sarah Palin about a contentious campaign the next. She can do a serious hour about domestic abuse, bring Tom Cruise on to jump on her sofa, host a party with the Black Eyed Peas or give away cars to everyone in her audience.

The two shows closest to Winfrey's in the ratings are hosted by her protégés, Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz. Yet "Dr. Phil" has been around a while and the ratings indicate viewers are starting to tire of his form of tough love.

"Dr. Oz" was a breakout hit as a newcomer this fall, but its appeal as a health-oriented show is limited. Winfrey only had him as an occasional guest, and there are questions about how many people want to see him every day.

Both, however, will have restrictions removed from their contracts that prevented their shows from airing at 4 p.m. each day — Winfrey's preferred time slot and generally considered the key time in daytime TV because more people are available to watch, said Bill Carroll, an expert in the syndication market for Katz Television.

Winfrey has a financial stake in both shows, so if their audiences increase because she leaves, guess who benefits?

Strictly from a business standpoint, then, it seems odd that Winfrey has given signals that appear to be anointing DeGeneres as her chosen successor at the top of the heap. They've traded appearances on each other's shows recently and guess who's posing next to Winfrey on the latest cover of "O, The Magazine"?

"Ellen is probably in the best position to move into that role," daytime TV host Jerry Springer said.

DeGeneres' breezy show is primarily entertainment-oriented and less varied in topic than Winfrey's. But it has a greater potential to be broader than many of its rivals, and her profile should only increase with her upcoming role on "American Idol."

"Guests won't be afraid to go on Ellen," Springer said. "Any edge she might have is neutralized by her humor. She can be light yet she's obviously very bright. If you're looking to sell something, like a book or a political idea, you're not going to get beaten up by going on her show."

Television stations that have been reluctant to air DeGeneres' show at 4 p.m. for fear of competing with Winfrey would be much more willing with that roadblock gone, and her syndicators will be pushing to put her in that slot.

For all the promising signs for DeGeneres, her show still doesn't have as large an audience as "Dr. Phil" and "Dr. Oz." And she should be wary of another formidable competitor: "Judge Judy." The courtroom program isn't a talk show but is strong in the ratings in the late afternoon. There's no guarantee that Winfrey's old viewers will gravitate toward a talk show, or television at all. Daytime TV ratings have been sinking steadily over the years with more women in the work force, and Winfrey's exit could accelerate the decline.

Other competitors are Rachael Ray, an appealing personality whose show now takes a lot of morning slots, and Tyra Banks, who appeals to younger viewers. Meanwhile, a Winfrey protégé, makeover artist Nate Berkus, is readying his own show but there are questions about how limited his appeal would be.

"I'm sure there are people on the phone to their agents saying, 'Get me a meeting, I'm the next Oprah,'" Carroll said. "I would advise them to look up (failed daytime host) Jane Pauley's phone number. Wanting to be that and doing that are two different things."

New York: Oprah Winfrey is not going to host her own talk show on Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN), her new cable network launching in 2011.

Winfrey announced last month she's leaving Oprah in September 2011 to focus on OWN, which will launch in January of that year.

However, the network's CEO, Christina Norman has denied reports that the talk show queen would be launching her own new show.

"Her show, as you know it, is not coming to OWN," the New York Post quoted Norman as telling USA Today.

"She's going to have a significant presence on this network," but won't be doing a cable version of Oprah.

"Pieces of that show, we're going to want to find ways to retain; but I don't think the format exists in anyone's mind right now," she added.

The new network has announced only a few shows hosted by Oprah-regular Lisa Ling, sex therapist Laura Berman, Winfrey's pal Gayle King and professional organiser Peter Walsh (Clean Sweep), who's also an Oprah regular.

Winfrey herself will narrate a profile series called Master Class.

TIGER Woods, whose aversion to intimate revelations is legendary, is considering an invitation to appear on the sofa of talk show queen Oprah Winfrey.

For the interview to work - quite possibly with Elin Nordegren, the wife on whom he cheated, by his side - Woods, 33, would have to engage in the sort of public confessional that has been anathema to him.

His minders have not granted such access since a 1997 interview with men's magazine GQ backfired after he was quoted telling dirty and racial jokes.

That profile also hinted that when he was not playing the fairways, he was playing the field from what some in the sport call the real PGA - the ''Party Groupie Association'' (rather than the Professional Golfers Association).

The Oprah strategy is under discussion in Camp Tiger as a series of tawdry new claims emerge about Woods' alleged infidelities after he admitted unspecified ''transgressions'' and ''sins'' last week.

In the most recent, it emerged over the weekend that an unnamed waitress at a ''VIP cocktail bar'' in Orlando has hired a lawyer as she prepares to go public with claims of an alleged two-year affair that began in 2004 when she was 20, according to celebrity news website TMZ.

There were also reports of several other alleged affairs in the US and one some years ago in London, purported to have been with an unmarried television newsreader.

Over the previous few days, he had been linked in a string of reports to Rachel Uchitel, a New York party planner, Jaimee Grubbs, a Los Angeles cocktail waitress, and Kalika Moquin, a Las Vegas club marketing manager.

A financial deal was reportedly under way to secure the silence of Ms Uchitel, whose sexual encounters with Woods were allegedly fuelled by a prescription sleeping drug, Ambien (which is said to enhance sex in the minutes after it is taken), according to her friends quoted on website radaronline.

Meanwhile, Ms Grubbs said she had racy texts and voice messages to prove she had had a 31-month affair with Woods.

The latest claims come as lawyers for Woods and Ms Nordegren negotiate an upgrade of the ''prenuptial'' agreement signed before their Barbados wedding in 2004.

While it is usually divorce that hits the famous hard in their wallets, Woods will have to dig deep just to keep the mother of his two young children married to him.

Ms Nordegren will receive an immediate $US5 million ($A5.46 million), with staggered payments worth up to an additional $US55 million if she stays with her husband for another two years, a lawyer familiar with the negotiations told The Daily Beast website.

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie plan to leave their luxurious Chateau Miraval estate in the South of France because they can’t get their hands on its precious winery.

Pitt, a wine enthusiast, has also failed to persuade two other wineries in the region to sell up to him.

Angelina Jolie has joined Ben Affleck and Demi Moore in an effort to highlight the plight of desperate women in Third World countries by narrating a video about a teenage Cambodian sex slave.

The Oscar winner and United Nations Goodwill Ambassador agreed to front the hard-hitting film after being moved by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nicholas Kristof's stories about the death, mutilation and despicable discrimination against young women and teenagers in the world's poorest places.

In the video, shot by Kristof and aired on Oprah Winfrey's talk show on Tuesday (01Dec09), Jolie, whose adopted son Maddox is Cambodian, reveals the girl was kidnapped from her village when she was just 13, sold to sex slavery and forced into prostitution before she had experienced her first period.

The tragic teen in the video also revealed she was electrocuted twice a day for arguing too much, and tied up at night so she couldn't escape.
Through a translator, she revealed her virginity was sold four times before she managed to escape and she was "stitched up three times".
Jolie revealed, "Virgins bring in hundreds of dollars for brothel owners are are in high demand by men with Aids, who believe having sex with a virgin will cure their disease.

"Because these enslaved girls are forbidden to request condoms, they're vulnerable to STDs (sexually-transmitted diseases), Aids and pregnancies."

The girl fell pregnant twice and was forced to abort both children - the second when she was four months gone.

The Oscar-winning actress - who raises six children with her partner Brad Pitt - believes it is more important to look after her brood than star in movies despite her glittering Hollywood career as an A-list actress.

She said: "I am just a mom and that's how I am going to be the rest of my life. That sounds so funny, I mean, A-list actor. I am so happy to be working as an actor and to take some time off whenever I can, and that's something not a lot of people can do. I am so fortunate to juggle both."

The 34-year-old beauty loves being a mother to her three adopted children, Maddox, Pax, and Zahara and three biological children Shiloh, Knox, and Vivienne.

She is reportedly keen to adopt another daughter from Syria, Asia despite Brad's reluctance to have another child.

A source explained: "He has made it clear that six children are more than he can handle. The idea of one more seemed ludicrous, but Angie is determined to complete her rainbow family."

STEVEN SPIELBERG has walked away from his planned remake of classic JAMES STEWART movie HARVEY amid rumours he could not find a major star willing to take on the lead role.

The legendary director has spent the last six months developing the project, reportedly asking Tom Hanks to take on the part of Elwood P. Dowd, the character made famous by Stewart in the original 1950 film.

Hanks is said to have turned the project down, along with second choice actor Robert Downey Jr., according to Variety.

And after further problems with the script, Spielberg finally announced his departure this week (beg30Nov09).

A spokesman confirmed Spielberg has quit the project, but didn't reveal the reasons behind his exit.

Executives at the Fox 2000 studio will reportedly continue work on Harvey.