Liza Minnelli is a familiar sight shopping in the East 60s, but someone at the neighborhood Gap could use a refresher course in recognizing local legends.

A Gatecrasher pal reports this recent sighting of her at the E. 66th and Third Ave. store, where she was being helped by a sales assistant.

"The employee asked her, 'Has anyone ever told you you look like Judy Garland?'" says the snitch. "She coldly answered, 'No!'"

You'd leave it alone after that, right?

"The confused employee went on to say, 'Oh my God! You're her! You are Judy Garland!'"

Oh. No. She. Didn't.

"Ms. Minnelli looked up with fire in her eyes and snapped back, 'Judy Garland is dead!'"

She then grabbed the pants she had been trying on "and stated to no one in particular, 'I've gotta get out of here!' She made a mad dash to the registers and then out the door."

Personally, I always thought she looked more like her dad.

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If your physician has a "Rent" poster in her office, maybe you should back out the door, quietly.

Original cast members Anthony Rapp and Adam Pascal returned to Broadway on Thursday night for a six-week run in the East Village musical that made them famous.

The audience, clearly stocked with die-hard fans, whooped so loudly when the duo took the stage that the cast struggled to repress smirks.

I asked Rapp whether he had any nutty-fan stories.

"There was this one woman who befriended us," he said. "This person had a debilitating illness, she told us. She needed surgery. Then her mother e-mailed us to say she was in a coma."

But after the cast and the fan community rallied around her, it turned out she wasn't sick at all and was posing as her own mother in e-mails.

"It was all a lie to get close to the cast," said Rapp.

Gosh. What happened to her?

"She was a med student. She's a doctor now."

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Vanessa Williams says she's going to record a spot for an ID microchip manufacturer called HomeAgain, whose technology helped her recover the family pooch.

Enzo, their Yorkshire terrier, was dognapped on Memorial Day for just over a week.

"It was a gorgeous, hot day and my son was marching in the parade," she tells Hamptons magazine.

"All of a sudden, we went from doing something that was the epitome of summer into hell for eight days. But I'm so happy he's back. Since we felt this way over our beloved dog, now every time I see any kind of missing person it's that much more devastating. I'll never take anything for granted anymore."

Celebrities feel things so deeply, don't they?

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CELEBS will go to great lengths to keep their skin looking young - Gwyneth Paltrow even uses snake venom to de- wrinkle. A spy at Sonya Dakkar spa in Beverly Hills said Pal trow, a frequent customer, walked out with a line of Ultra Lux 9 products - including a cream that contains the spit of a snake. "It's not Botox," said one insider. "Just a cream that has the venom in it . . . [the cream] is part of the facials."

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DIRECTOR Brett Ratner based a scene in "Rush Hour 3" on a sexual encounter he had with a transvestite. Asked by The Advocate about the sequence "when the girl takes off her wig and Chris Tucker becomes angry and accuses her of being a man," Ratner responded, "That's from my personal experience. My first [oral sex] was from a man, but I didn't know it was a man . . . I'm not homophobic or uptight about it. That happens to a lot of heterosexuals. You meet a girl in a bar, and it turns out she's not a girl."

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BRACE yourselves, we've got another Lohan behind the wheel. This time it's Lindsay's little sister, Ali, who was spotted over the weekend driving a golf cart around her Long Island neighborhood (left, with girlfriends). Ali was with her big sis when she hopped a plane from Los Angeles to New York late Friday night to be with her family. She's been lying low at mom Dina's house in Merrick since landing. Meanwhile, dad Michael weighed in, saying he's "ecstatic" that his troubled daughter is here. "She's here and in a good place, and I hope our family is reunited to bring Lindsay back the stability she needs," Michael said. "Dina just needs to keep the wrong people away from her." Michael adds that he knows the nervousness his daughter must be feeling when she thinks about her upcoming court date to face the charges she racked up in L.A. "Anyone would be afraid to face this situation. I feel responsible for what happened. I led by the wrong example."

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"Pursuit of Happyness" star Thandie Newton battled bulimia for a year.

The tiny actress told People that her eating disorder started when she was a teen ballet dancer, and that she ate "nothing but cottage cheese" in order to stay thin.

Years later, after a string of emotionally abusive relationships, Newton had an eating disorder relapse. Her bulimia was so severe that she has "scars on my knuckles from where I put my fingers down my throat."

It wasn't until she went to a therapist years later that she "made the connection between shame and self abuse."

Newton has been married for the last nine years and has two daughters, Ripley, 6, and Nico.

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Nearly a year after blonde power pair Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Philippe split up, the pair may coupling up again. Last week, Reese and Ryan were spotted having lunch at L.A. eatery A Votre Sante, one of Reese's favorite spots. And, a source tells Page Six, the pair have been taking morning runs together down at the posh Brentwood Country Club.

Says a friend of Witherspoon's, "Reese and Ryan are trying to work it out. They are still close."

A rep for Philippe denies a reconciliation.