– Rosie O’Donnell has a powerful ally in her feud with Donald Trump: her close friend Madonna. “People are giving Rosie a hard time,” Madonna, who starred with O’Donnell in 1992’s “A League of Their Own,” said Thursday on NBC’s “Today” show. “I wish they’d stop. I don’t think it’s fair.” She said she’d first heard about the flare-up while vacationing “in the middle of the Indian Ocean” and quickly e-mailed O’Donnell.
– British film director Stephen Frears will lead the jury at the 60th Cannes Film Festival in May. Frears–whose latest movie is “The Queen,” starring Helen Mirren–first came to public attention in 1985 with the offbeat film “My Beautiful Laundrette,” which was followed three years later by “Dangerous Liaisons.”
– Steve Martin is writing a memoir, “Born Standing Up,” billed by publisher Scribner as “his first work of narrative non-fiction,” a “riveting chronicle of his early years as a stand-up comedian and a fascinating portrait of an era.” Scribner is hoping to publish it by early 2008, but no date has been set.
– It’s a girl for former “Married With Children” TV mom Katey Sagal. The 49-year-old actress and her writer-producer husband Kurt Sutter, 43, welcomed their first child together on Wednesday. Sagal’s publicist said daughter Esme Louise Sutter was born via a surrogate in Los Angeles.
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The Personals page was compiled by Alan Leo from Tribune news services and staff reports.
