who was a singer at the time.
• 24 star Kiefer Sutherland has his family’s Scottish crest tattooed on his back. It’s one of six tattoos the actor boasts.
• Patrick Swayze’s first crush was on a dancer his mother taught, called Ellen Smith. The young girl later changed her name to Jaclyn Smyth and became an original Charlie’s Angel.
• If you decide you don’t want your Oscar, you are supposed to sell it back to the academy for $1.
• Former Destiny’s Child singer Farrah Franklin’s middle name is Destiny.
• Armourers created 9,000 arrows and 3,000 swords for historical epic Alexander starring Colin Farrell.
• Late rapper Tupac Shakur – who was shot and killed at the age of 25 in 1996 – came up with his signature shaven hairstyle because he suffered from premature baldness.
• The red carpet at the 2004 Grammy Awards turned green because the event was sponsored by beer company Heineken.
• Singer Robbie Williams once posed as a beggar in New York’s Times Square and gave £55 to the first person who gave him money.
• The oldest Oscar winner was 81-year-old Jessica Tandy, for Driving Miss Daisy in 1989. Gloria Stuart is the oldest nominee ever, nominated in 1997 for Titanic. She was 87.
• Singer-turned-children’s author Madonna likes to sing ‘Truly Scrumptious’ from hit musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang to her children Lourdes and Rocco.
• Hollywood star Tom Cruise insists on having his own stuntplane on standby whenever he’s on location filming so he can take off and relax high above the earth.
• Paycheck star Aaron Eckhart has a pet dog named Dirty.
• Wacky screenwriter and director Quentin Tarantino wrote a script called ‘Captain Peachfuzz and The Anchovy Bandit’ as a child.
• San Francisco-based Neil Diamond tribute group Super Diamond are the world’s top covers band – they charge £8,820 per show.
• Destiny’s Child star Beyonce Knowles’s hit single ‘Crazy In Love’ was the best-selling mobile-phone ring tone in Britain in 2003.
• Sugar Ray rocker Mark McGrath has such an intense fear of elevators that he insists on taking the stairs if he has to travel 40 floors or less.
• Judi Dench clocked up the shortest screen time for an Oscar winner. She won Best Supporting Actress in 1998 for less than eight minutes on screen in Shakespeare in Love.
• Hollywood star Bruce Willis holds the record for the biggest payout for voiceover work, after receiving £5.5 million for 1990’s Look Who’s Talking Too.
• A man in Dallas, Texas, spent his entire life savings – £22,105 – on 6,000 seats for people to see Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion Of The Christ, because he believes it will ‘change’ America.
• Scottish band Texas were named after the 1984 film Paris, Texas.
• Mel Gibson and Johnny Depp refused offers by bosses at the 2004 Oscars to present awards because they admitted they’d be far too nervous.
• Rockers U2 use a sound system on tour which weighs 30 tons.
• Hollywood is being hit by a new fad – bio-degradable pants. The two Hobbits Elijah Wood and Sean Astin are fans and hip-hop legend Missy Elliott is meant to be partial to the bizarre bio pants.
• Hit thriller Jaws 2 was originally going to be called ‘More Jaws’, but polling showed audiences assumed a film with that name would be a comic spoof.
• There are still two Oscar categories in which no women have ever won – Best Cinematography and the Best Sound.
• X-Men actor Hugh Jackman turned down a role in Australian soap opera Neighbours at the beginning of his career because he was auditioning for drama schools.
• Inspired by Mel Gibson’s controversial new movie The Passion Of The Christ, replicas of crucifixion nails are selling at select stores around America for £8.94.
• To mark young actor Tyler Hoechlin’s 16th birthday, Tom Hanks – who played his father in Road To Perdition – sent him $16 (£9).
• The Used singer Bert McCracken has a pet Chihuahua named David Bowie.
• Kate Winslet gave birth to baby son Joe with the music of Rufus Wainwright in the background.
• British heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles has launched his own range of shampoos and conditioners under his company Duchy Originals.
• US Rapper Fat Joe is building a specially designed wardrobe in his new Miami mansion to house his 5,000-plus pairs of running shoes.
• Kathy Richards Hilton, mother of hotel heiress Paris Hilton, went to school with pop singer Janet Jackson.
• Potential Oscar winners are told to keep acceptance speeches to 45 seconds – unlike Greer Garson, whose 1942 speech clocked in at seven minutes.
• British pop stars Busted helped cure a boy who was told he might never walk again. Seven-year-old Alex Harris had been wheelchair bound with a rare muscle-wasting disease, but tapped his toes after hearing the band for the first time – and now, four months on, he’s dancing again.
• Hollywood star Tom Hanks’s movies have amassed an impressive total in excess of £3 billion since his film career began in 1980.
• The average cost of making a Hollywood movie in 2003 was £57.2 million.
• Hollywood veterans Sophia Loren, Liz Taylor and Raquel Welch were all considered for the role of Dynasty TV bitch Alexis before Joan Collins landed the part.
• An English town is to name a street after The Darkness front man Justin Hawkins. The rock star’s home of Lowestoft, Suffolk is planning on a Hawkins Way or a Justin Avenue.
• Gleneagles Hotel, the original hotel that inspire John Cleese’s legendary sitcom Fawlty Towers, has been saved from demolition and is being turned into an official tourist landmark in Torquay, Devon, England.
• Cabaret star Liza Minnelli is the only Oscar winner with two Oscar-winning parents – her mum, Judy Garland, was a winner in 1939, and her dad, Vincente Minnelli, in 1958.
• Hotel heiress sisters Paris and Nicky Hilton are each expected to inherit £15.5 million.
• Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson promised two of his Oscars to his children, because they want to use them as bedside objects.
• Bosses at vacuum cleaner company Dyson have treated X Factor’s Sharon Osbourne to a brand new purple hoover, which they’ve created to pick up animal hair and excrement.
• US comedienne
