As a student at the National University of the Arts (NTUA) in Taipei, she specialized in computer design en started designing her first t-shirts. While adding radio and tv production to her curriculum, she produced the videos Supoman, Presto and Ego with motion graphics as a basis.She describes her all-round portfolio as ‘rock style’: ‘I feel free to choose from all kinds of influences, hence the term. Plus the fact that I’m friends with a lot of musicians and love rock bands such as Sigur Rós from Iceland.’

More and more Taiwanese bands such as Slimo, Tizzy Bac and Frida Li have approached Baw Lu to design their cd covers and music videos. Recently, she produced a concert video for Malaysian singer Fish Leong and designed the motion graphics for Asian superstar Jay Chou’s concert tour. ‘Together, we went through my sketches from which we made the definite choice. When I’m sketching, I play a lot of hardrock and alt rock to get inspired.’

Her t-shirt designs are characterized by a lively, eclectic style. ‘I combine all kinds of images and designs and thus create a new, fresh style,’ she explains. ‘I’d like to draw from pop culture and cartoons, urging people to think about the visual story I’ve created. I see the world as a funny place. Hopefully, I manage to make people laugh, with the themes in my work making them think as the same time. For instance, my popular design with the starry-eyed tiger refers to the dangerous reputation of the animal, but no one really knows what a tiger is thinking.’

Baw Lu grins when talking about the popularity of her t-shirt designs. ‘My t-shirts are popular with young and old that feels attracted to the orginal style, but the term ‘older’ is very relative in Taiwan. I mean, most girls feel old when they’re 22, claiming that their beauty is fading from that age on. At the same time, a lot of people say that ‘life starts at 70’. Typical Taiwanese, I suspect.’

In her hometown Taipei, specially designed murals by Lu can be seen at the Cama Café, a franchise with twelve locations whose employees wear corporate t-shirts from her hand as well. ‘In all these cafés, I’ve painted the murals myself, while my assistant worked on the t-shirt design. The walls of my studio in the centre of Taipei are plastered with designs for new assignments.’ And with sketches for the alphabet she designed. ‘The letters are read from left to right, not from the top down as we’re used to in Taiwan. Thanks to my Western inspired mindset.’

First off, the DBS definitely plays the part. Like many of the residents of Los Angeles, this car is a movie star, an eye-catching looker with drop dead good looks and bulging muscles. As I navigate the city for a day in the $262,000 sports car, I am greeted with looks of envy and awe from people of every ilk. Road maintenance workers give me the thumbs up as they direct me through one lane stoppages, business men in their BMWs stop talking on their Bluetooths momentarily as they size up my ride, and two young girls actually call out, “We like your car,” even though I’m passing them far too quickly to possibly respond.

The DBS’s timeless design could pass for sculpture. Its subtle exterior lines, ample use of carbon fiber, and an interior swathed in Alcantara and semi-aniline leather constitute a near perfect fusion of sexy cutting edge technology and traditionally sophisticated British styling. Aesthetic details abound, from the classic Aston Martin console chronograph and the red-flashing key ignition sequence to the precisely placed umbrella in the trunk (this is an English car after all). Even the gauges, laid out with a mirroring symmetry in which the tachometer actually ascends in an unusual counter-clockwise direction, attest to the highest level of aesthetic consideration.

And like a talented Hollywood actor, the DBS has the skills to pay the bills, matching its beauty with brawny performance. With just a touch of understeer, it effortlessly carves up the mansion studded Mulholland Drive, famed for its winding and meandering tour of the Hollywood Hills. This car does not, however, meander by any stretch of the means…it accelerates with purpose. It passes with ease my true test of its abilities, an even windier stretch of mountainous climb in the Malibu canyons, a twisting and narrow ascent to a peak in the Santa Monica Mountains that frequently involves thirty degree inclines.

On paper, the DBS is certainly up to these tasks. With a 6 liter V-12 engine that seems to give off more heat than the desert sun, this Aston Martin claims a 0 – 100 Km time of 4.3 seconds. It’s capable of 510 horsepower and 420 pound-feet of torque. Its polished alloy race pedals, with their weight saving perforations, respond evenly and willingly to input. Acceleration is thrilling and I’m comfortable exceeding freeway speeds in second gear as I enter the murky ocean of traffic. Unfortunately, Los Angeles’ crowded ribbons of concrete will not allow me to utilize the entirety of the 6 speed manual transmission, whose shifter operates with crisp, short throws. The brakes are astounding; powerful, smooth and evenly applied. Slaloming my way back down the Santa Monica Mountains, I rarely feel even a hint of body roll or lift.

It’s easy to see why James Bond would like this car. Aston Martin has always served the superspy well, though. In its film debut, in 1964’s Goldfinger, the brand new Aston Martin DB5 saved 007’s hide on more than one occasion, thanks to the handiwork of special effects whiz John Stears. Stears, who would win an Oscar years later with his work on Star Wars, took a development prototype DB5 in early 1963, before the car had even been seen by the public, and remade it with a host of gadgets and gizmos in a dizzying two month stretch that surely involved very little sleep. His efforts certainly paid off; the car is now regarded by many experts as the most famous car in the world.

Aston Martin would flow in and out of Bond’s periphery through the next forty odd years. The DB5 was featured again in the following film, 1965’s Thunderball, where it generated some more tricks. In 1969, for George Lazenby’s one-off appearance as 007, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Bond was outfitted with the first generation DBS. The car was used only as a driver and featured no tricks. Not originally very popular, that DBS can be bought today as a relative bargain, and its subtle looks improve each year. Timothy Dalton’s Bond got the benefit of AM V8 Vantages and Volantes for 1987’s The Living Daylights. Appropriately, the film and the cars are considered to be darker chapters in both franchise’s storied histories.

James Bond seemed to take a vacation when the Iron Curtain fell, but in 1995, with Pierce Brosnan on board for GoldenEye, both the spy and his beloved car were resuscitated. Brosnan was endowed with the classic DB5 as a personal car. In one scene, he famously races femme fatale Famke Janssen, who sports a new Ferrari F355. In Bond’s world, the 60s Aston is actually competitive with the technologically superior Italian thoroughbred. Said production designer Bruce Feirstein in an interview, “I felt we had to bring back the Aston Martin DB5. For me, the car spelled out: we know who we are.” Brosnan’s Bond would dabble with BMWs, but for the 40th anniversary of 007’s film debut, 2002’s Die Another Day, Bond would have the benefit of a weapons equipped Vanquish.

In 2006, Bond and Aston Martin got a reboot of sorts. Daniel Craig took the part of 007, and in Casino Royale, we see a Bond who is just starting his spy career, albeit in today’s modern world of terrorists and Texas Hold ‘Em. He drives two Aston Martins in the film. One is the storied DB5, which in a wink and nod sequence, he slyly wins from a villain over a game of poker. The other was the then unseen second generation DBS. Bond’s version had a few more options than the one I drove, of course. Mine did not come with an automatic pistol or defibrillator in the glove box, though perhaps it should have, as this is the kind of car that will make hearts stop.

The DBS has an Adaptive Damping System for safer handling that can be adjusted or switched off for either a day at the track or for the truly adventurous and skilled driver. As I momentarily disengage the safety measure, I wonder if it was in use during one of the car’s recent bits of notoriety. Due no doubt to some amount of operator error, a car bound for the filming of 007’s upcoming film Quantum of Solace, to be released on November 6, took a swim. It seems a driver charged with delivering the car to set last April got a little overzealous in challenging the Italian hills surrounding Lake Garda. It was raining heavily, apparently, and before he knew it, the driver had slid the car off the road and into the lake. The driver escaped with minor injuries…the DBS was not so lucky and was famously depicted in newscasts and internet sites being fished out of the lake by a large crane. Maybe the driver thought this car shared the capabilities of the submarine morphing Lotus of The Spy Who Loved Me. Surely he knew the DBS is a three-piece suit, not a wet suit.

Specifications: Price as tested: $269,000 (including $3,000 gas guzzler tax)
Body: front-engine, rear-wheel drive, 2-door coupe with 2+0 seating
Engine: Quad overhead camshaft, 48-valve, 5,935 cc V-12
Transmission: 6-speed manual
Suspension: Independent double wishbone
Wheels and tires: 20” graphite wheels
-front: 8.5” x 20” Pirelli P Zero 245/35
-rear: 11” x 20” Pirelli P Zero 295/30

Dimensions: -length: 4721 mm
-width: 1905 mm
-height: 1280 mm
-wheelbase: 2740 mm
-weight: 1,695 kg

Fuel: -tank capacity: 78 liters
-U.S. EPA mileage estimate: -City – 11 mile per gallon
-Highway – 17 miles per gallon

Power: 380 kW (510 bhp) at 6500 rpm
Torque: 570 Nm (420 lb-ft) at 5750 rpm
Acceleration: 0-100 km/h in 4.3 seconds
Top speed: 302 km/h (191 mph)

Q. At the moment, the Lakers are beating everybody in this league, no matter if they play other title contenders or teams with a losing record. Do you find any problems with motivation for opponents like – with all due respect – the Sacramento Kings or the Clippers?
A. No, not at all. In the first three years of my career we had [ motivational ] stuff like that and we were losing to teams which were under five hundred. I think the Charlotte Bobcats still have a winning record against us since I started playing for the Lakers in 2005. We never carried this type of focus. Plus everybody on the team still has that taste of last year, when we lost the NBA Finals. Phil Jackson always says “We are taking one game at the time”. It almost sounds like a mantra, but it’s so true. We shoot around in the morning, go over what the team has to offer and then get through the training”.

Q. You’re currently beating other teams with an average of more than 10 points. Is it getting repetitive?
A.What do you mean by repetitive? That it feels easy? No, it’s definitely not getting easy. It’s just a pattern that we have to run. Right now, we are not even doing so great defensively; we have to fix some things, like preventing the opponent to drive inward and getting easy baskets in the paint.

Q.Phil Jackson joked that he’s hoping you’re not starting to bore the customers…
A.We definitely do care about our customers. In the big games, the competition will be tougher for us, so probably they will enjoy those games a bit more. I’m just kidding.

Q. Do you feel that you are getting into a pretty good rhythm? You did have a couple of double-doubles in last few games…
A.Yeah, I’m getting more comfortable day by day. I’ve been sidelined for a long time, so it takes a while, but hopefully at the end of the season I will play even better than I did last year.

Q.Is it hard sometimes to build up this rhythm because you have now some many guys on the team who can get down there with so many different weapons?
A. That’s a major difference. We can share the ball and we’ll beat anybody with this kind of passing, but you might go to stretches like five minutes without even once touching the ball. It’s all because we have so many options in our game plan and getting used to it is different.

Q Is there something of a confidence issue?
A.The confidence is always there because I never lost any of my skills. I’m trusting my leg and it’s been fun so far.

Q. How are you doing as far as establishing a strong post position? That’s something that Phil Jackson always emphasizes…
A.I think I’m doing allright. Sometimes I catch the ball too deep and try to shoot jump hooks, but my understanding of the post game is getting better.

Q.How do you find yourself playing together with Pau Gasol? It’s a brand new experience for you and something the Lakers fans were waiting for for months…
A. It’s all fine. Whoever gets the block first, keeps the low position. Other teams have trouble with that because they’re going to have to double team and we can take advantage of that. Beside that, I can go and play with the second unit and so does Pau. So there are plenty of options.

Q. Do you think you can supplement each other while playing together at the same time?

A. Yes, because it’s hard to double team either one of us. It will result in easy baskets.

Q. Is watching Kobe Bryant playing at such a high energy level after spending his summer with the national team inspiring for the rest of the team?
A. Most definitely. Kobe’s a machine. He always goes in first and is the last one to leave the training, so he’s absolutely prepared for it.

Q. You’ve just signed a new contract with the Lakers for the next four year which means you will stay in L.A for a while…
A. I’m very happy with it. This deal gives me and my family financial security and I enjoy every moment in the Lakers uniform. It’s a perfect situation. I hope I will win many championships with this team and I’m ready to take on the revenge. It was so painful watching my team lose the NBA Finals to the Celtics, knowing that I could help to fill in some gaps, provided I had been healthy. Hopefully there will be a lot of great moments for this organization in the nearest future.

BEVERLY HILLS – For the first time in many years, shops on swanky Rodeo Drive advertise discounts up to 80 percent while others are quietly going out of business. Established fashion brands such as Lisa Kline and Rock & Republic are looking for retailers to take over their expensive leases. And jittery sales assistants confide that at least two luxury brand boutiques have handed out pink slips in recent months.

Business is ultraslow, also caused by the absence of many well-heeled tourists. To the general public, the consequences of the worldwide recession seem relative: hair stylist Katie Ittner who works in a high-end salon on Robertson Boulevard, said she had a client who called in tears because she could no longer afford to spend 190 euro to get her hair colored and had no idea how to do the job herself.

For more information on the sale of the full article plus additional photography, please contact the back office by email or phone.

“I first met Percy in February 2008 when I was looking for a dress for the Academy Awards Gala”, Suzie Templeton tells. “When I was visiting his studio, he asked me which colour I had in mind. When I answered ‘red’, he suddenly showed excitement in his eyes, rushed over to the rack with dresses and handed me a red creation. When I tried it on, it fitted me perfectly. I was so impressed by the design that I didn’t try on any other dress. Percy was happy and relieved at the same time. He told me that he would have designed a dress especially for me had I not been able to choose. The only problem was that I had to leave for Los Angeles in two days. He was ecstatic that one of his creations would be seen on the red carpet at the Oscar Gala. Afterwards he told me that when my name was announced, it felt as if he had won the golden statuette himself”.

Templeton has special memories of the ‘real Irasquin’ she wore at the gala. “I felt beautiful in Percy’s dress, as if I were an actress from the Fourties era. I flew with Dutch airline KLM to Los Angeles and the crew treated me like a movie star because I carried a real Irasquin bag. During the gala at the Kodak Theatre many people came up to me , telling me that they loved my dress”. The director, writer and animator returned the couture dress afterwards, but cherishes the many pictures of the Gala Night which form an unforgettable memory. She remembers Percy Irasquin as an ‘absolute sweetheart’. “He was a warm and generous personality who was full of life. I prefer to remember him the way I saw him at work in his studio. He was working on his new collection and had a very intuitive way of designing that reminded me of sculpting: he pushed, folded and shaped the cloth around a body in a manner I’ve never seen before. I found him inspiring because of his artistic gift and will always remember him that way”.

Interest in the book isn’t confined to the twelve European countries where Garson purchased photos from private collections as the book is in great demand in the United States as well.“Many Americans think that America has won the Second World War, but in fact, American troups only landed in May 1944 at the European continent when the war had been raging for five years”, Garson remarks. “Something else many Americans are oblivious of is how heavily the Russians have fought the German troups. Because of all the research I have conducted, I got to see the war from a different perspective. I’ve learned about ‘the war in the war’, meaning the structural extinction of the Jews in Europe. Plus the information that the Germans were supported by allies in Austria, Italy, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania and didn’t operate just on their own.”

The American photographer and journalist purchased over four hundred photos from commercial vendors as well as private parties. “Sometimes I was dealing with the grandchildren of soldiers who had passed on; they were interested in making a fast buck. And sometimes I dealt with vendors who had travelled through Germany, Poland and the Ukrain where they had bought albums with private photo collections. My aim is to make these amazing pictures available to a large audience.”

MORE INTERVIEWS:

British actor Alan Rickman embraces his artistic freedom Hollywood’s notorious bad guy is pure British. His iconic roles as Hans Gruber in Die Hard, the Nottingham Sheriff in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and as Severus Snape in the Harry Potter series have made him a media darling. “All that newly found fame has given me the artistic freedom to participate in a comedy like Love Actually, the movie version of Sweeney Todd and many theatrical roles in England”.

For more details, please contact the back office.

“When I go to a concert I like to hear a song they way I learned to love it on the radio. I think you have a responsibility as a performer to give people what they want to see. I didn’t worry about if people were going to accept me. I had the support of Mick (Jones) and the guys”

Being accepted hasn’t been a problem for the Foreigner of late. With nearly 400 tour dates under his belt with the band and a new album being tooled and set for release the band has hit its sweet spot.

Still, Hansen is fronting a band in 2008 that carved out its own spot in Rock History in the 80’s Original lead singer Lou Gramm’s voice lent power and substance to hugely popular songs like “Juke Box Hero” and “Double Vision”. After Gramm left the band and after one more lead vocalist change, Hansen hooked up with the rest of the musicians, auditioned, and got the gig.

“I was on the internet reading an article and read about this charity show the guys from Foreigner were doing. I started making some calls, got in touch with management and found out behind the scenes they were really thinking of revamping Foreigner. They sent me some music without vocals, I cut a demo, they heard the demo, they invited me to jam with them, we did and they called and asked if I wanted to start rehearsing and that’s basically how it happened.” But he says Foreigner’s success and staying power has less to do with who is singing, and more to do with what’s being sung.

“In Foreigners case, first you have the songs. You had a band that was a little bit different in their style. Foreigner was one of the first bands to sell over a million albums. They stayed up top in the charts more than a lot of the bands of that day.

In fact, their popularity in terms of chart success rivals bands like the Eagles and The Rolling Stones. And Hansen says that popularity came from Foreigner’s willingness to play quality music in an era when a lot of bands were hit-and-miss.

“ There was a desire to maintain a level of quality that a lot of bands didn’t seem to be able to keep up with.”

It’s a work ethic that he subscribes to. Their 2008 dates were all stateside so they could cater to their U.S. fans and work on the new album. With 2009 kicking off and Tulsa on the calendar, the Foreigner you see at the Osage Million Dollar Elm Casino will be a blend of classic Foreigner and fresh new tracks.

At a show you wait for the popular songs and then you hear songs you didn’t realize Foreigner did. Then you’re thinking ‘Oooo, I didn’t know they did that one’”.

As for fans who are a little worried about Foreigner without Lou Gramm, Hansen suggests giving it a try.

Aero Mock-ups founder and former pilot Richard Chan bought his airplane interior in 1987, and managed to acquire two from the “747 stage” at Universal Studios, including the cockpit from the classic spoof Airplane! which sits by the front gate:

Celebrity romances have long intrigued the wide-eyed, curious and often gullible public. The links, though, have sometimes been frayed, loose, even broken. You may want to sit down before you read this. The truth is: some celebrity romances have been, well, faked. Phony. Made up. Conjured, if you will. Why? Because that’s the way we like it.

The practice of inventing mutually beneficial romances is ancient. We could go through a dirty laundry list of royal figures in world history whose marriages and courtships were faked to hide more titillating truths – sometimes for the good of the sovereignty, sometimes to avoid the guillotine.

And, let’s not forget the 1863 marriage between midget Gen. Tom Thumb and minuscule Lavinia Warren, staged by P.T. Barnum to promote his circus. But Hollywood wrote the book on modern fake relationships. A kinky combination of the strict moral codes of the 1930s, the advent of gossip columns and people’s curiosity about who’s sleeping with whom fueled press agents’ invention of romances. Rock Hudson and Doris Day, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello, Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland – a slew of fake relationships were bred in Hollywood to hide truth, to get someone’s name in print or to simply arouse the curiosity of a celebrity-hungry public whose appetite for gossip is insatiable.

Jeanette Walls, celebrity reporter for MSNBC, details the history of Hollywood gossip and follows its evolution to the modern era in her book, Dish. ‘Fake romances were absolutely commonplace,’ she says. ‘It was very important for sex symbols to be paired up. Reporters weren’t duped. They were aware of the whole game.’ The studios got publicity, and the journalists got ‘hot scoops.’ ‘America doesn’t have royalty, so celebrities are the closest we get,’ says Walls. ‘There’s a type of person in this country, a type of movie fan, who wants a specialized person in the role of celebrity, an idealized, perfected view of reality, and that’s what they were given with some of these perfectly phony romances. Then there are some of us who are fascinated by the seamy underside of things.’

Driving the love machine The trick in the early days of Hollywood was to establish the romance as hot but wholesome, steamy but acceptable – even if barely so. ‘Press agents were very good at calling the gossip columnists and telling them who had a candlelight dinner the night before,’ says Johnny Grant, a former broadcaster and television personality who now presides over the Hollywood Walk of Fame. ‘Or they would tip somebody off to the name of the restaurant; then the reporter could go and watch the action. More than half the time, the people having dinner together barely knew each other.’

Romances staged by studio publicity machines indicated ultimate studio control. Studio publicists were often forced to outwit columnists such as Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons, not to mention the dozens of Hollywood gossip magazines, including the notorious Confidential, by inventing relationships to divert attention and cover up other information.

‘Confidential broke the silence and made The National Enquirer look tame,’ Walls says. ‘That thing was raunchy. It went after people who violated the taboos of the ’50s, all sorts of items on interracial marriages and Commies. ‘He’s a Red!’ That kind of thing.’

‘Studios took control back then,’ says Harry Clein, a Hollywood publicist for nearly 40 years, and co-founder of Clein + White, a Hollywood PR firm. ‘A friend of mine who was a publicist during that era told me she would walk around at parties and take the cigarettes and drinks out of clients’ hands whenever a photographer walked in the room. So if they wanted a romance rumor planted, it happened.’

Judy Garland endured the practice early and often, such as when she was linked to fellow child star Freddie Bartholomew. ‘Oh, that was one of those studio publicity romances,’ Garland told Screenland magazine in late 1939. ‘They were in vogue at the time. Sonja Henie and Tyrone Power, and Wayne Morris and Priscilla Lane. It really didn’t mean a thing.’ Then there was Loretta Young, who at 20, was reportedly head-over-heels in love with the 33-year-old, married Spencer Tracy. Later, publicists advertised Young as paramour to Power, one of the true kings of staged romances. That one was fake, but Young’s love for James Stewart was real, according to her daughter, Judy Lewis. ‘She wanted Jimmy to ask her to marry her, and he never did,’ Lewis writes in her mother’s biography.

Things changed when the studio system broke down, and more independent and intelligent stars such as Stewart hired their own publicity agents, with instructions to keep things more truthful – or at least invent lies that had nothing to do with romantic liaisons.

‘By the ’50s, pretend romances had changed,’ Clein said. ‘The public had become slightly more aware, and the reasons for concocting a pretend romance became more complicated.’

Perhaps the most celebrated 1950s example is Rock Hudson, who was secretly gay and constantly matched with eligible women. ‘The idea of outing Rock was unthinkable,’ Walls said. ‘Everybody in journalism knew what was going on, just as they know now. The difference is: back then, everybody went along.’ Through the ’60s and ’70s, the sexual revolution made the invention of celebrity romances almost inconsequential. But, by the mid-1980s, things had changed again. People magazine was introduced, and tabloid popularity increased dramatically. Once perfect, though phony, romances were no longer trumpeted by publicists. In fact, publicists often avoided the subject altogether. When magazines focused on celebrity romances, the public surmised that the media were planting stories. As public media-awareness grew, celebs and their publicists began to close ranks. The balance had shifted; celebrity PR was on the defensive.

Cat becomes mouse

By the ’90s, publicists were mostly tight-lipped, unless the client was an up-and-comer who needed press no matter the content. For the most part, less was more. ‘We never even considered inventing a romance for the good of a film,’ says Alan Amman, an SVP of publicity at Fox during the early 1990s. ‘Those things were usually planted by the press. If something did come up, we let the personal publicists for the stars handle it.’

‘There is so much access today that publicists are wary,’ Grant said.’It’s funny, because stars used to complain about the control of studio publicists. But they were protected. The studio would come up with a bio of their lives, and that was the story forever. Of course, it caused problems when a bio said you were the star quarterback in high school, and somebody discovers you were the third-string center.’

That doesn’t mean, Amman says, that studios panicked when some of the lighter rumors about star romances surface.’I don’t think studios necessarily frowned on some of those rumors,’ Amman said. ‘There were films that needed publicity, and that was one form of publicity, however useful. But at the same time, such things also made publicists more reticent with certain press outlets.’ Arranged marriages between gay and straight actors remain an intriguing topic. ‘Homosexuality remains taboo, though not nearly as strong as when some of these romances were arranged early on in Hollywood,’ Walls said. ‘The journalists know about it, but they won’t write about it. By not writing or talking about these marriages, are we perpetuating a myth, engaging in intellectual dishonesty? If we out people, though, we are seen as gay bashing. In these terms, celebrity journalism is still an oxymoron.’

Privacy issues aside, does the public really want to know? ‘If you tell, some people get angry and upset,’ Walls said. ‘The star is somebody people want to fantasize about. If they can’t fantasize, the celebrity loses appeal.’ Today, film fans still wonder about the validity of many Hollywood romances, though in the era of instant Internet gossip, publicists are sometimes out of the game before it starts, left only to confirm, deny or remain mute. Rumors are often launched by fans, who spot cooing lovebirds, send a well-placed e-mail and watch modern technology do the rest. Take Leonardo DiCaprio, whose romance with Brazilian model Gisele Bundchen has gone through many unofficial confirmations and denials. Today, Leo and new girlfriend Bar Refaeli spottings make the Web rounds faster than a bad virus.

Tempted to tease

So while the game has changed, the practice remains – in new form with new rules, which are in many ways more vague than ever. ‘The handlers have more limited access than they did in the studio days, but they are also insistent – as much as ever – that the stars don’t pour their hearts out to the press,’ Walls said. ‘In a way, the stars have gone back to the top of Mount Olympus.’ So when Kevin Spacey and Helen Hunt are linked during filming or Matt Damon and Penelope Cruz or George Clooney and Ellen Barkin, the pairings may have little to do with reality. Just how much do these purported liaisons have to do with publicity and publicists?

‘Too close to call,’ Walls said. ‘Many of these things, for various reasons, aren’t even close to truth. But do you think that maybe the industry is happy to let fans think the sex scenes were so hot, they boiled over into real life? It may not be as innocent as it once was in Hollywood, but romance still sells.’