People

By Clayton Neuman

SCREEN TEST

It's that time again. Calculate your celebrity intelligence quotient with this week's quiz on Tinsel Town's crop of wheelers, dealers and charmingly irritating philanthropists:

George Clooney recently told Vanity Fair he had developed a plan to date a different Hollywood star every night for the next three months because:

A) He can

B) It might throw off the paparazzi

C) He wants to make that hussy Condi Rice jealous

D) He's window-shopping for a new cosmetic surgeon

Elton John recently announced a licensing deal with:

A) Zippo, to produce a Rocket Man brand of lighters

B) Mattel, to create a line of Tiny Dancer Little Person Barbies

C) Lacoste, to design Crocodile Rock boating shorts

D) Bath & Body Works, to create a line of Candle in the Wind scented candles

Regis Philbin will raise at least $25,000 for charity in November by:

A) Trying to eat 60 bananas in 60 seconds

B) Doing a televised debate with Noam Chomsky

C) Going head to head with brainiacs Nancy Grace and Carson Kressley on Jeopardy!

D) Taking pledges for how long he can go without SCREAMING ... IN SHORT ... BURSTS on his ABC morning TV show ANSWERS: 1) B; 2) D; 3) C

Q&A TINA FEY

Thinking man's sex symbol Tina Fey has a new show, 30 Rock, premiering on NBC Oct. 11.

30 Rock seems totally self-deprecating. Thank you--that's where I try to reside. Saying the embarrassing thing about yourself before someone else says it comes easy.

How is it having Saturday Night Live's Lorne Michaels as executive producer? It's great. He has all this experience with comedy, and he doesn't have any bad habits or fears about the half-hour show. No one's going to make us adopt a little black kid if the ratings start to go.

SAT question: Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip is to 30 Rock as... Schindler's List is to Hogan's Heroes.

You wrote the show for Alec Baldwin. What's your favorite Alec Baldwin SNL moment? The one where he's a soap actor and they're pronouncing all the medical terms wrong. "I'm glad to tell you that your tumor is benig."

What do you think of your title as the "Sexiest Geek on TV"? I am not a young woman, nor a fit woman, so I'll take whatever I can get.

How 'bout Maxim magazine listing you as one of TV's 10 least appealing ladies? Maxim talks a good game, but if Maxim and I were alone, and Maxim was drunk, they'd sleep with me.

A NOT-QUITE-IMMACULATE CONCEPTION

Talk about method acting. Just three months after wrapping her role as the pregnant unwed teenage Virgin Mary in Catherine Hardwicke's The Nativity Story, due out in December, unwed teenage KEISHA CASTLE-HUGHES, 16, is pregnant. No, this isn't the Second Coming; the New Zealander best known for her Oscar-nominated performance in 2002's Whale Rider is bearing the offspring of her boyfriend of three years, Bradley Hull, 19. After carrying the Son of God in her belly throughout 1st century Israel, Keisha should have no trouble with a regular pregnancy. And if she wants to skip the whole delivering-in-a-stable bit, that's fine with us.

KUNG FU MEETS SACRE BLEU!

Brett Ratner calls himself the "go-to guy for movies with threes at the end of their titles." With reason: having done the third installments of the X-Men and Hannibal Lecter movies, he's now directing his third threequel (stay with us here), Rush Hour 3. This incarnation rejoins odd-couple police detectives JACKIE CHAN and CHRIS TUCKER as they track down villainous Chinese triads running amuck in Paris--because where else would Chinese mobsters go? And to keep from being too fromage-y, it also stars an Academy Award winner: director Roman Polanski, playing a French police officer or, as we like to call it, a third wheel.