George Foreman didn’t mind that younger generations knew him more for his culinary grill than his heavyweight boxing championship.
In an interviewed a few years ago with Chaunce Hayden, author of “Was It Something YOU Said,” Foreman, who died last week at the age of 76, said:
“I was walking the streets in Memphis recently and a group of young children were walking down the street with their teacher. The teacher spotted me and introduced me to her students as George Foreman the Olympic Champion and World Champion. And one little kid looked up at me and said, ‘That’s the cooking man!’ So I guess I’m the cooking man.”
Hayden asked, “And you’re okay with that?”
Foreman said, “I don’t have any problem with that. I just want to help those who are behind me become something great one day. But I always remind them that I also used to box.”
When Hayden asked if Foreman would try to make a comeback in the ring, he replied with a laugh, “Are you kidding, my wife would kill me!”
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A day after Eva Longoria attended her star-studded 50th birthday party earlier this month, she seamlessly switched into mommy-mode to attend the Miami premiere of her new Disney+ movie, “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Road Trip.”
Before the screening, the audience was treated to a special bilingual Q&A with film stars Longoria, Cheech Marin, Paulina Chávez and director Marvin Lemus, reports Hampton Sheet magazine publisher Joan Jedell.
Alternating between Spanish and English, 50-year old Longoria told the crowd that, during her time, her family would travel in a beaten-down RV (like the one from the movie) for 14 hours from San Antonio to Orlando just to go to Disney World — calling the trip, “muy fancy.”
The legendary Cheech Marin, 78, who played a motorcycle-riding grandpa, drew roaring laughter when he revealed: “The scenes I like the most for me is when I was riding the motorcycle because it was usually my stunt double. And I’d be back in the trailer staying cool.”
Also in attendance were Jessica Alba, Yvette Shearer and Hampton Sheet’s Bobby Love, who called the movie “even funnier than ‘National Lampoon’s Vacation’ — but with a supernatural twist.”
The family film is now streaming on Disney+.
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Cuba Gooding Jr.’s 28-year-old son, Mason Gooding, is following in his Oscar-winning father’s footsteps in Hollywood.
Cuba, whose own career has stalled lately after a string of criminal and civil sexual abuse accusations, has talked proudly about his ex-wife Sara Kapfer and their three children, saying, “We raised real good kids that navigate life in the spotlight pretty well.”
Now his son Mason is co-starring in the rom-com horror movie “Heart Eyes” with Olivia Holt, of Disney’s TV show “Kickin’ It.”
The film’s plot revolves around a masked killer who murders couples on Valentine’s Day.
Mason and Olivia’s characters are targeted next, but they fight back, and the action kicks into high gear. The movie opened in theaters nationwide in February and is now streaming on Amazon. Holt can also be seen on Hulu’s show “Cruel Summer.”
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Private detective Nils Grevillius has been sleuthing around Los Angeles for decades, investigating errant spouses, tracking stolen diamonds and sometimes defying death.
In his about-to-be published memoir “The Last Lawman,” he tells the tale of how he found himself surrounded by gunmen while working in Watts.
“What is popularly called the Mexican Stand-Off is a dynamic tension: if I drop my guard, quail even a moment, I’m a dead man,” Grevillius told me.
“I may be a dead man, anyway. But my only line of success, of survival, is in standing up and facing them down.”
He’s still breathing.
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Mick Jagger might not remember skinny-dipping at dawn in Montauk 50 years ago. But Bob Belber does.
Belber — who became a top exec for SMG, the largest facility management company in the world — was a 10-year-old fishing with his father on a boat close to the shore in Ditch Plains.
His father passed him a set of binoculars and said, “Take a look at those people on the beach.” He said they were members of the Rolling Stones.
“I was amazed to see a group of men and women fully naked running around on the beach acting crazy,” Belber told me. The band had rented a cottage on the beach in Ditch Plains.
“One guy came forward and started throwing rocks at us,” Belber said.
In 2005 when Belber met Jagger backstage at a concert in Albany, he said, “You’re probably not going to remember this,” and told him the story.
Jagger replied, “You’re right. I don’t remember that.”
Belber has written a memoir “Life With the Stars” with other stories about Lil Wayne, Rodney Dangerfield, Michael Buble and many more.
Check it out at lifewiththestars.com.
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Dr. Audrey Evans, the trailblazing pediatric oncologist behind the 600 Ronald McDonald Houses, is the inspiration for “Audrey’s Children.”
The biopic that opened Friday stars Natalie Dormer, of “Game of Thrones” fame, as Dr. Evans, who supported the film before she died in 2022 at the age of 97.
“The filmmakers spent seven years trying to make the movie,” said one source.
Ben Chase plays Dr. Jeremy Lewis, an antagonist to Dr. Evans at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
“Jeremy has a very set idea of how things should work in the hospital that Audrey upsets,” my source said.
All the actors — including Jimmi Simpson who plays Dr. Dan D’Angio and Clancy Brown who plays future surgeon general Dr. C. Everett Coop — spent time with doctors to prepare.
“There’s a kind of frontline mentality in oncology. Everyone is so smart,” Chase said. “Dr. Evans brought so much heart to the work. Sometimes maverick people who do something incredible have those two things together.” Brains with a heart.
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Out & about: Art collectors Jonathan and Wilson Rockefeller unveiled their Upper East Side home featuring works by Warhol and Picasso. The apartment was designed by architect TC Chou, whose projects include Christian Dior Parfums, the Ritz-Carlton Condos in Los Angeles, and the Peppa Pig Entertainment Center in Beijing … Paul Shaffer joined Roxy Hotel resident pianist Michael Garin for an impromptu jam on Miriam Makeba’s classic hit “Pata Pata” … Blanche Baker dined at Trattoria Dell’Arte prior to attending a Tibet House concert at Carnegie Hall.
