People

By Benjamin Nugent

COSTNER DOES CUBA, DANCES WITH DICTATORS

While KEVIN COSTNER's Cuban-missile-crisis thriller Thirteen Days may not have been box-office plutonium, the film has exploded on the world-leaders scene. First George W. Bush and Ted Kennedy attended a screening at the White House; then, last week, it was viewed and critiqued by none other than crisis participant FIDEL CASTRO. Costner met with Castro for seven hours and discussed how the film's depiction of the events jibed with the Cuban leader's memories of the real McCoy. "I shouldn't be speaking for [Castro], but he responded to the film very favorably, and we had a very interesting discussion afterward," said a spokesman for Costner, who was swarmed by enthusiastic fans in Havana. What's next? An invitation for the actor to visit with imprisoned ex-President Slobodan Milosevic for repeated screenings of 3,000 Miles to Graceland?

MICKEY MOUSE COUNTRY CLUB

On April 8 TIGER WOODS won his fourth consecutive major tournament and became, in the eyes of sportswriters, his generation's Bobby Jones. Two days later, when the Walt Disney Corp. asked him to be an official spokesman, he became his generation's Mickey Mouse. Woods, who earns $54 million a year, mostly from endorsements, is expected to appear in commercials for Disney theme parks, endorse Disney merchandise and work with the Disney-owned network ESPN. He will be the only flesh-and-blood celebrity in the pantheon of adorable creatures Disney uses to put a face on its entertainment empire. Why not? After all, Tiger has the innocent looks and sunny disposition of Disney's famous character. One might quibble, of course, with his immodest evaluation of his feat. "It will probably go down as one of the top moments in our sport," he said of his victory, after donning the green winner's jacket. Don't hold back your feelings, Tiger. No "I'm going to Disney World!"?

SHOCKER: RAPPER ARRESTED

"You see me with a bodyguard, that means police is watchin'/And I only use his waist to keep my Glock in," hip-hop star JAY-Z declared on his last album. That claim sounded eminently plausible last week, when police allegedly found a loaded Glock in the waistband of Jay-Z's bodyguard Hamza Hewitt after stopping a car containing the rapper, Hewitt and two other men. All four were arrested and charged with third-degree criminal possession of a weapon. Jay-Z's lawyer stated that his client was not guilty, helpfully adding that "other celebrities have often used armed security guards." Jay-Z's arrest came shortly before he was due to appear in court to face charges that he stabbed a record exec and only weeks after Shyne, protector of P. Diddy, was convicted of assault charges. It's a hard-knock life for those of us packing for business reasons.

The Faces of Frida

It's one thing to put on extra pounds for a role, as Renee Zellweger did in Bridget Jones's Diary; it's quite another to put on extra eyebrows. And yet the courageous SALMA HAYEK appears to be doing just that for her performance as the late Mexican painter Frida Kahlo in the upcoming biopic of the same name. Among museum goers, Kahlo is known as a bracingly personal artist; among most people, she's known as the chick with the unibrow. The usually multibrowed Hayek will star alongside Ed Norton, Ashley Judd, Antonio Banderas and Geoffrey Rush, and the presence of so many stars augurs well for the film, directed by Julie Taymor. Yet one wonders if it will be graced by the mustache conspicuous in Kahlo's self-portraits but imperceptible in photographs of Hayek in costume. Will make-up artists test Hollywood's capacity for realism by putting it in? Or will they test the tolerance of pesky intellectuals with a facial-hairless Hayek?