People - Here, There and Everywhere
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Cruise screens new film to the converted
NEVER HAVE so many Scientologists been spotted at New York's Museum of Modern Art. The occasion was a private screening on Sunday evening hosted by Tom Cruise for his new movie, Lions for Lambs.
While co-stars Meryl Streep and Robert Redford (who also directed
the film) invited family and friends, nearly all
of Cruise's entourage came from the Church of Scientology. Recognisable to other guests by the gold pins in their lapels, they included the president of the New York 
chapter, Lori Alpers, and the Church's New York
lawyer, Eric Lieberman.
Cruise arrived with his wife Katie Holmes, who earlier the same day had run the New York City Marathon - having entered under an alias - in 5 hours and 29 minutes. She appeared "robotic" according to one guest: "Maybe she was tired."
Cruise's proselytising about Scientology may have cost him at the box office during the promotion of his last movie, Mission: Impossible 3, and it definitely cost him his job with Paramount. But now that he is running his own studio - MGM/UA - with producing partner Paula Wagner, he doesn't seem too bothered about keeping his religion to himself.
Macca and the lawyer's wife
WHILE HIS estranged wife Heather Mills has been waging war with tabloid journalists, Paul McCartney has been enjoying an autumn break in the Hamptons with a mega-rich lawyer's wife.
His latest companion, Nancy Shevell (below), is married to Bruce Blakeman, a commissioner of the New York Port Authority and partner in a top New York law firm. The couple are active Republicans who donated 
money to George Bush's 2004 presidential campaign and were both friends of Paul and his first wife Linda, before her death in 1998.
After being spotted together several times in August, the pair spent this weekend together on Long Island, where they own mansions six miles apart.
On Friday night they drank cocktails together until 3am. On Saturday, Paul went shopping at the Top Drawer lingerie shop in East Hampton before having dinner with Nancy at the well-known Mount Fuji sushi restaurant at Amagansett. Finally on Sunday they were spotted having breakfast and going for a walk on the windswept beach.
Sir Paul's friend used to be known as Nancy Shevell Blakeman but recently dropped her husband's surname. According to sharp-eyed Hamptons observers, she's also stopped wearing her wedding ring.
Sarkozy goes stateside - with a glamorous minister in tow
THE LAST time President Bush met his French opposite number Nicolas Sarkozy on American soil was for a barbecue lunch during Sarko's summer holiday in New Hampshire. Then the newly anointed French president was accompanied by his wife Cecilia and (continued below ad)
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(continued from above ad) her good friend, the interior minister Rachida Dati.
Today, just divorced, he arrives at the White House as one of Europe's most eligible bachelors - with the glamorous, unmarried Rachida in his official party.
Unusually for a Frenchman, Sarkozy professes a love of America and all things American. Before leaving France for the two-day visit, he had to counter opposition taunts that he has taken Tony Blair's place as Bush's 'poodle'. "Here is a country, one of the few across the world apart from Poland, with which we have never been at war," he said. "It is really not a reason for us to hate each other."
To help him prove his point, Bush is to hold one of his meetings with Sarkozy at the Mount Vernon home of George Washington - who used French military might to help defeat the British in the War of Independence.
Sainsbury's bid collapse hits property's Genghis
THE COLLAPSE yesterday of the Qataris' £10.6bn takeover bid for Sainsbury's has moved one multi-millionaire marginally closer to the poor house.
Robert Tchenguiz, a property entrepreneur, had built up a £1bn stake in the supermarket group. Yesterday's collapse in the share price of Sainsbury's wiped £200m off his holding.
Mr Tchenguiz, who lives in an £18m mansion - complete with its own ballroom - next door to the Royal Albert Hall, started dealing in the London property market with his brother Vincent in 1983. Their father, Victor, who moved from Iran to Britain after the fall of the Shah in 1979, changed his surname from Kedorie to Tchenguiz, which is Persian for Genghis.
Robert lives a flamboyant life with his Harley Street 'anti-ageing visionary' wife Heather Bird (above). His 40th birthday party had a Louis XIV theme, complete with costumes, orchestra and acrobats.
His loss comes at a bad time for the super rich, who are suffering from a relentless rise in the cost of luxury living. New figures from the wealth management advisors, the Stonehage group, show that while mere mortals have had to contend with inflation of 7.2 per cent over the last five years, the wealthy have suffered inflation of 13.7 per cent. The price of a kilo of Beluga caviar has increased by 18 per cent in only a year.
Nigerian name too difficult for Donmar theatre-goers
THE TICKET phone line at London's Donmar Warehouse theatre announces: "There are currently no tickets for Othello starring Ewan McGregor."
The prospect of Ewan McGregor blacking up, like Laurence Olivier, for the role of Shakespeare's Moor seems unlikely in this day and age - and on closer inspection it turns out he's not playing Othello but Iago.
The actual star of the show is a 33-year-old British actor of Nigerian descent called Chiwetel Ejiofor (above) - whose name is "very difficult" according to a Donmar spokesman. And, of course, McGregor has more star appeal.
Yet Ejiofor's own star is rising. Having made his screen debut for Steven Spielberg in Amistad, he went on to win best actor at the British Independent Film Awards for his first leading film role in Dirty Pretty Things. Now Hollywood parts are coming in, including a turn in the biopic of black heroin lord Super Fly, American Gangster, which opens in Britain on November 16. Ewan McGregor watch out.
Comedy stars man the pickets
SEVERAL well-known faces were seen on picket-lines in Los Angeles and New York as the first screenwriters' strike since 1988 got underway yesterday. Outside the Rockefeller Centre in New York, Tina Fey, writer and star of 30 Rock, was showing solidarity with members of the Writers Guild of America.
In LA, Seinfeld actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus - now with her own show, The New Adventures of Old Christine - was on the line at Warner Bros while talk show host Jay Leno rode his motorcycle down to the NBC studios to pass out doughnuts to the strikers. Only one picket-line accident has been reported so far - a Fox TV writer struck by a sedan entering Sunset-Gower Studios in Hollywood. The LA police are investigating.
Memo to Dick Cheney (should he find himself sitting opposite the visiting French President Nicolas Sarkozy over the next two days - see main story):
France is the big country just to the right of England. During a foreign policy speech the other day, the VP proved himself even less proficient at geography than his boss, George Bush. Criticising the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, Cheney said: "The people of Peru deserve better."
Comedy actor Ricky Gervais has marked his move into his new home in Hampstead by saying he'll never marry his live-in girlfriend, TV producer Jane Fallon, who he's been with for 20 years. The Extras star said: "It's not that we don't believe in marriage, we just don't see the point. We've got the will, the deed - we just don't have the toaster."
The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh are due to open St Pancras International station later today. A quick flit across the channel for a royal dinner at the Crillon is not an option: Eurostar trains don't start running from the newly refurbished station until November 14.
Lily Allen is to replace Kate Moss as the face of lingerie label Agent Provocateur in a six-figure deal. An 'insider' says, "They feel her natural, voluptuous curves will appeal to a lot of women," before revealing rather confusingly she's "down from a size 14 to an eight".
Sir Alex Ferguson is renowned for his 'hairdryer' tantrums in the dressing room. Sports minister Gerry Sutcliffe is his latest victim, after he criticised Man Utd's latest hike in ticket prices. On being told the minister is a Man Utd fan, Fergie ranted, "He is a United fan is he? He will not be coming back again. He can go and watch that mob FC United." The mob he refers to are the lower league Manchester club formed by disaffected fans after Malcolm Glazer bought the Old Trafford club.
