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When she became the first black woman to win the best actress Oscar, Halle Berry hoped she would be the first of many. Three years on, however, no woman has repeated her success. So Miss Berry, 38, has launched a savage attack on Hollywood producers and directors, accusing them of racial prejudice. "The struggle for a woman of colour to find good material is still very present, and it's a struggle I fight every day," she said. Miss Berry said there was such a shortage of decent roles on offer that she had resorted to buying the rights of books...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Skeeter Davis, who hit the top of the pop charts with "The End of the World" in 1963 and sang on the Grand Ole Opry radio show for more than 40 years, died Sunday of cancer. She was 72. Davis died at a Nashville hospice, said Grand Ole Opry publicist Jessie Schmidt. Davis had been diagnosed with breast cancer in 1988 and had a recurrence in 1996.

Forty-five seems like a little old for an adult to decide to grow up, but it's better than never. In an interview with ABC last week, fading pop star Madonna addressed the fact that she's been less than a role model in her career. She looks back on her provocative act over the last two decades and concedes it was meaningless. She told interviewer Cynthia McFadden: "I did spend at least a decade taking off my clothes, and being photographed; saying bad words on TV ... And I thought I was liberating mankind. But like I said, I wasn't really...

SORRY: How TSG cost 60 Minutes a Jacko exclusive FEBRUARY 5--It took almost three days, but the first lawsuit has been filed in connection with Janet Jackson's breast. A Tennessee woman yesterday filed a proposed class action lawsuit "on behalf of all Americans" who watched the Super Bowl halftime show and were somehow injured by Miss Jackson's adorned nipple. In the below federal complaint, Terri Carlin, a 47-year-old Knoxville bank employee, contends that Jackson's exposure and other "sexually explicit conduct" during halftime festivities caused viewers to "suffer outrage, anger, embarrassment and serious injury." Details of those supposed injuries were not...

After the news of Britney Spears's 55-hour marriage to her childhood friend Jason Allen Alexander, I got an e-mail from one of my many homosexual correspondents (you'd be surprised), one with whom I had previously had some friendly exchanges about same-sex marriage. The gist of it was: "This is the institution you are trying to save?" I take his point. I don't say I feel any better-disposed towards homosexual marriage than I was pre-Britney, but there is no denying the guy has a debating point. If a couple of likkered-up glitterati airheads can stumble into a wedding chapel, tie the...

Barbra Streisand recently appeared on "Oprah," and according to the NY Post, she insisted that the black microphone be spray-painted beige to match her outfit. Click here to see pictures.

SARANDON MOVIE ON CBS FINISHES LAST PLACE IN OVERNIGHTS

<p>LOS ANGELES — She's publishing a series of kiddie storybooks.</p> <p>She's working with scientists who have discovered how to neutralize radiation.</p> <p>She's plotting to make a documentary about Kabbalah, a religious philosophy based on Jewish mysticism.</p> <p>Who's that girl?</p> <p>These days, Madonna strives to be neither material nor immaterial. After straddling the heights of wealth and celebrity for two decades, the pop diva is on a quest for meaning. And in American Life, due Tuesday, that means questioning the impulses behind her own rise to riches.</p>

Excerpts from speach by Barbra Streisand Thank you, thank you all so much for inviting me here to speak tonight. I want to tell everyone what we face if we allow the mean-spirited, intolerant, racist, homophobic, gun toting, extremist Republicans to retake the Senate. If we don't keep the Senate in Democratic control, more people will wake up in bathtubs full of ice, missing one or more of their kidneys. If we lose the Senate, more adults will be stuck with AIDs infected needles left in theater seats and gas nozzles. And, more children will die from heroin overdoses from...