It’s only an imaginary birthday, one that was never meant to happen, but the celebrations say a lot about Hollywood’s eternal myth‑making. This Monday, June 1, Marilyn Monroe would have turned 100. And although she died more than 60 years ago, the world remains utterly fascinated by that perfectly imperfect blonde screen icon.
© Julien Sauctions
A life without imagination is not a life. Without fantasy, without creation, without daydreams or fairy tales. But how are we going to develop our imagination if we do not do so from childhood, playing with our toys, if we are instead dazzled by the bright screens of our phones? Thirty years ago in November 1995, when Toy Story premiered, that question was unthinkable. Today, after three sequels, half a dozen shorts, a handful of mini-shorts, a series and television specials, and with Toy Story 5 about to open in movie theaters, the question is unavoidable.
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James Handy, an 81-year-old New York actor who had small roles in films such as Jumanji and the more recent Top Gun: Maverick, was killed outside his Los Angeles home. The confessed killer is his girlfriend’s son, a 44-year-old man named Michael Gledhill, who remains jailed on $2 million bail.
When Emma Heming Willis walked into a neurologist’s office nearly four years ago, she left with a whirlwind of emotions. Fear, surprise, anxiety, disorientation. But to cope with them, she left with just one thing: a piece of paper. A single brochure, a single printed sheet, was all the former model — who turns 48 on June 18 — took with her from that medical center. She was drowning in medical jargon and technical terms but was lost as to how to proceed. Because she had just been told that her husband, superstar Bruce Willis, the kind-hearted action hero admired around the world, not only had aphasia — as they had known for months — but also frontotemporal dementia, an incurable and irreversible condition. And there she was, a small piece of paper in her hand, the world crumbling beneath her feet. Perhaps that was the spark that led Heming to become, in addition to a wife, mother, caregiver, and patient advocate, an author.
© Cortesía de Emma Heming Willis
Javier Bardem is now part of Hollywood history. On Tuesday, the 57-year-old actor took part in one of those ceremonies so beloved by the U.S. celebrity world that cemented his status as the star that he is: he left his hand and footprints at the TCL Chinese Theatre on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He is the first Spaniard to do so. The Oscar winner — with four nominations during his career, as well as seven Golden Globe nominations — signed his name (accompanied by a drawing of a sun), and pressed his hands, feet and even nose into the wet cement outside the famous L.A. theater, where more than 200 celebrities, from Marilyn Monroe to Kobe Bryant, have also left their marks over the past century.
© Mike Blake (REUTERS)
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