Friday's Gossip

Ryan Phillippe hasn’t exactly offered a warm welcome to ex Reese Witherspoon’s off-again, on-again guy, Jake Gyllenhaal, 26.

“Ryan is ****** about Jake,” a Phillippe insider tells Us Weekly, adding that Phillippe, 32, told Witherspoon, 31, “he didn’t want ‘that guy’ around their kids [son Deacon, 3, and daughter Ava, 7] and then made some crude Brokeback Mountain remark.”

However, a Gyllenspoon source tells Us that "Reese doesn't have Jake spend the night when the kids are around." And though the actor may be angry that Witherspoon is moving on, his feelings for Aussie actress Abbie Cornish, 25, are less conflicted.

Phillippe was seeing his Stop Loss costar at the time of his split from Witherspoon last October (his rep denied any relationship), and while the twosome seemed to cool after his marriage broke up, a source close to the couple tells Us, “They have been hanging out [again] since June.”

On August 5, the pair were seen strolling together in L.A.’s Franklin Canyon Park.

“They were laughing,” says an onlooker, “and obviously enjoying themselves.”

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Critics and bloggers are hearing echoes of Nicole Kidman's marriage to Scientologist Tom Cruise in her new sci-fi thriller, "The Invasion." Newark Star-Ledger critic Stephen Whitty notes that Kidman plays "an ambitious working woman [who] had a really ugly divorce from her dark, narcissistic husband." Now he's back in her life with an "entourage of humorless, robotic friends." Whitty notes that, in defiance of the teachings of L. Ron Hubbard, Kidman's character is a psychiatrist who prescribes mood-altering drugs to her own child. Hollywood-elsewhere.com's Jeffrey Wells observes that director Oliver Hirschbiegel comes from Germany, where Scientology is suspect. Kidman's rep, Catherine Olim, dismisses the subtext-reading as "so silly."

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Hmmm, wonder what went on before the show. Yankees star A-Rod stayed a few steps behind his less-than-happy-looking wife, Cynthia, as they arrived at Justin Timberlake 's MSG concert Wednesday.




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OPRAH Winfrey may employ lots of hard workers, but staffers at Harpo Inc. are grumbling that the star's production company allowed one well-connected assistant to rake in astounding, nearly impossible-to-accumulate overtime - worth a whopping $65,000 - in just 16 weeks.

According to one Harpo employee, Carla Bird, the girl Friday to Oprah's TV co-executive producer Lisa Erspamer, filed for 800 hours of overtime from January through April of this year.

"Several weeks ago, it was discovered by accounting and human resources," our source said. "Most employees would have been walked right out the door. Well, that's just not the case for good ol' 'Birdie.' "

Lisa Halliday, chief of communications at Harpo, insisted the story was false and said Bird's claims were totally legit.

"Many of our employees contribute significant hours of overtime during our production season. This is quite common within the television industry," she told Page Six.

"From January to April 2007, this employee legitimately accumulated approximately 800 hours of overtime."

If that's true, then Bird's performance at the company that produces Winfrey's daily chatfest was truly superhuman. Assuming that she worked a regular, five-day week, Bird would have clocked an astounding 18.5 hours of work a day.

Even if she was toiling over a seven-day workweek, she would still have to have been on the job for a backbreaking 13.2 hours a day. That's based on a 16-week period (with Winfrey's staffers traditionally getting the first week of January off).

Halliday responded, "Our employees' schedules vary. Some of our staff does work the first week of January - as Carla did this year. Based on 800 hours of OT, for the 17-week period, with a seven-day work week - she would average just under 12.5 hours a day." Whew!

Asked if she were indeed getting special favors from Harpo, Bird told us: "I'm not allowed to comment. Thank you."

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JACK Nicholson has been drinking a lot - and we mean a lot - of water lately due to a serious case of dry mouth. A friend of the legendary actor told us, "Jack's saliva glands stopped working, so he has to continually drink water to swallow anything." A spokesperson for the superstar didn't return calls for comment. Nicholson was hospitalized with a mystery ailment last year.

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CHRISTIE Brinkley's cheating ex has finally found someone who will date him. Peter Cook , who stepped out on the supermodel with 19-year-old Diana Bianchi, was kryptonite to East End females for about a year. But the cad is now dating "a young blonde," spies said. Cook brought the babe to Wei Fun in East Hampton on a romantic dinner date Wednesday and "were engrossed in conversation the entire evening. They came in around 9 p.m. and enjoyed each other's company throughout a relaxed meal until about 10:30. He barely looked away from his date and focused his attention on her 100 percent of the time."

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NICOLE Richie knows how rumors get started, so she's nipping in the bud any chance of wicked whispers about her and boyfriend Joel Madden being on the outs. Wednesday night, Madden went to celebrate the first anniversary of the Village Pourhouse on Third Avenue, and all was well until a party promoter wanted to take a picture of him with a cute young woman. Our spy reports, "He said he couldn't, as Nicole gave him strict orders not to take pictures with other celebrities or girls for rumor purposes."

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HER first self-titled album bombed, but Carmen Electra still has music in her heart. She's been secretly working on a new album in between modeling gigs, and it's just about ready. On Sunday, Electra showed up to the Diesel BBQ party at the Polaroid House in Malibu and, after several cocktails, finally worked up the nerve to slip the DJ the disc, which he dutifully played. We hear it didn't suck - at least not too bad.

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POSH Spice is going to be telling Americans how to dress. Victoria Beckham, known for her style-setting ways more than anything else, has signed a deal with HarperEntertainment to publish "That Extra Half Inch: Hair, Heels and Everything in Between." The "handbag-size style guide" will help women "learn how to dress for special occasions, shop for everyday wear and where to look for it, define the accessory look for you," as well as "helpful hints for the holidays, making the most of your wardrobe and how to feel confident and great every time you leave the house."

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Despite increasingly shrill gossip that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are heading for a split, "The rumors are totally and completely false," a source close to the family tells PEOPLE in its new issue, on newsstands Friday.

"There are no problems whatsoever," the source adds. "Things are really good."

In fact, those who know the couple best say their only problem at the moment is the rumors themselves: that Jolie is fighting with Pitt, suffers from an eating disorder and is feuding with Pitt's parents, Bill and Jane.

Pitt's brother Doug, 40, who joined his parents and sister Julie at nephew Maddox's sixth-birthday party in early August in Santa Barbara, Calif., dismisses the speculation with a chuckle – and Jolie, 32, has apparently done her best to brush off the more frivolous claims, including one that she angrily threw wine at Pitt, 43, while on vacation in France.

"Ridiculous," says a Jolie-Pitt source.


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The seemingly interminable divorce battle between Lindsay Lohan's parents Michael and Dina is finally and officially over.

A Long Island judge just minutes ago issued his final judgment in the divorce proceedings between the Lohans, granting Dina the split she wanted. We're told that the judge actually complimented the couple for doing the right thing for the kids, and for working "through the night" to get the final details ironed out. No financial details were disclosed.

No mention was made in court of Lindsay or the other children and Michael's ability to see them, but custody is a very different battlefield -- and one that remains to be fought, next month.


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TMZ has learned that Hulk Hogan's Miami Beach home was robbed of a reported $100,000 worth of jewelry just last night. Damn!

The Hulkster and his family were in the process of moving out of their home, when the jewelry was reportedly taken from right under their nose. Some of the pricey gems that have gone missing include a diamond-encrusted watch and two gold chains.

Sources close to the Hogans tell TMZ that the family was in the middle of moving to a new Hulk-palace when they discovered that the jewelry was gone.

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