Wild thing: Scarlett Johansson stars opposite Matt Damon in ‘We Bought a Zoo.’

Just don’t call her “ScarJo.”

“Oh, it’s awful,” Scarlett Johansson says about the nickname that’s become as much of a gossip magazine mainstay as “J.Lo.” (So don’t expect her to slap it on any perfume bottles.)

“It’s a laziness,” says Johansson, 27, her black ankle boot propped up on one of the Ritz-Carlton Central Park’s gilded coffee tables. “People can’t actually say the whole name? It’s just bizarre.” She tries shorthand sobriquets on other stars. How come Daniel Day-Lewis isn’t subjected to, “like, ‘DaDay’? So Cate Blanchett is not, like, ‘CaBla’? Why is that? Why do I have to get stuck with” a mangled moniker? (Yes, call her funny and frank, as Damon and Crowe, her colleagues in her latest movie, We Bought a Zoo, do.)

Johansson is regularly singled out — by paparazzi keen to catch her in a new relationship since her split from Ryan Reynolds just over a year ago; for an IMDB page that’s longer than those of many actors twice her age; for her throaty, scratchy cackle; as Marilyn Monroe’s heiress apparent for the comely comedienne crown.

But then she just as frequently defies easy expectations — to wit: She plays a zookeeper in Zoo (out Dec. 23). Johansson’s quasi-signature cleavage and come-hither looks are all but absent from her role as the “can-do” (as director Crowe puts it), roll-up-her-plaid-sleeves plucky Kelly Foster.

“The highlight of her wardrobe is the walkie-talkie on her hip,” says Crowe.

In the family-friendly flick, the lid on Johansson’s simmering sexpot persona is nearly sealed.

“I was just happy that Matt and I spent about the same amount of time in the makeup chair,” says Johansson, who this evening isn’t all that much more glammed up: black blazer, cream blouse, skinny charcoal jeans, a couple of gold chains and a simple French twist. “It’s the only time that’s ever happened in my life, that my leading man and I came out at the same time.” (Indeed, Damon, who plays Kelly’s boss, Benjamin Mee, an accidental owner of a Southern California menagerie, maintains that she beat him out of the chair, on account of his character’s shaggy mane.)

“The image projected from those magazine covers is an absolute bombshell and unbelievably glamorous person, so I was really impressed with how real and unadorned” she can be, says Damon. “It’s a very believable and grounded performance.”

No ‘ravishing girl skills’

Crowe, whom Johansson had auditioned for before, for Almost Famous and Elizabethtown, says it was “certainly brave” of her to consider a smallish part where she’s using none of her “ravishing girl skills.”

Johansson seems to delight in the departure. “The roles that are really available for young women most of the time are the ingenue, the other woman, the girlfriend of someone, and as I’ve gotten older, it’s nice to be able to move into territory where the characters that I’m playing and looking at are women who are established,” she says, man or no. “It’s nice to be kind of transitioning into that phase of my career.”

This new phase taps into “a different part of her appeal because the raw Scarlett, without any of the fireworks attached, is just as attractive, sometimes even more so,” Crowe continues. Forget the blond bob and the bombshell body for a minute: Her appeal is “all in her face and in her attitude. She has a kind of a wry look at the world. She’s wise beyond her years, yet extremely enthusiastic.”

Even when it comes to handling reptiles. There’s an escaped-snakes-on-a-front-lawn scene that Johansson was far more, uh, game to undertake than her scale-squeamish co-star. Once privy to Damon’s phobia, she “started rubbing it in,” Damon says. “She grabbed the snakes and started wrapping them around her forearm and shoulders and then got the kids (who play Benjamin’s children) involved and basically forced me to fish or cut bait.” Or, scoop snakes or run.

Johansson was also happy to hoist cattle carcasses. “It’s a heavy thing!” she says about the slabs of beef she slung on set. Fortunately, at the time of shooting she was training — at times for five hours a day — for her fight-heavy role as the Black Widow in May’s The Avengers. “So I had a lot of oomph in my step and was I just like, ‘I got it. That’s all good.’ But obviously, on the inside it was like, ‘Oh, man. Threw my back out.’ ” Her castmates wondered: ” ‘Why are you walking funny?’ I’m like, ‘I’ve been hauling a carcass all day.’ ” She reconsiders her word choice: “That sounds wrong.”

Close encounters with large and writhing animals dead or alive — she spent a total of about an hour 25 feet from a lion, separated only by a hot wire and a moat — weren’t Zoo’s only complication. “This film is challenging in the sense that the character has a lot of conviction,” Johansson says. “And I think to play a character with conviction, you have to have it yourself.”

Life in the public eye

If Johansson had an intense year of work, her personal life was also put under pressure. There was her very public divorce from Reynolds — a two-year marriage she managed to keep under the radar. There was her relationship with Sean Penn, during which wildly erroneous rumors swirled that “ScarJo” was pregnant. (Indeed, her nemesis of a nickname has become a kind of test: “If I hear somebody say that, I know I don’t know them at all.”) And then there were the nude pictures that went viral after her cellphone was hacked.

“The hardest part is actually going through whatever hardship you’re facing. Going through it in public is the added unfortunate thing,” says Johansson, who nonetheless seems resigned to the fact that details about her private life will likely always play out on newsstands. It’s part of the gig. “There’s nothing you can do about that.”

Except avoid it. “One of the best things I learned this year was to not read any tabloid, gossipy, you know, garbage,” Johansson says. “It really keeps you on the straight and narrow. And while some it kind of leaks in occasionally, it’s really nice to not know what crazy stories” are circulating. Mention recent rumored romances —Kieran Culkin, Kate Moss’s ex Jefferson Hack — “and I’m like, ‘What? Really? When did that come out?’ It’s just nice to have kind of a blinder up in that regard. It helps keeps you sane. I can’t follow all that stuff. It’s too exhausting.”

And she doesn’t waste her time correcting the record. “Unless it’s something that’s violently awful, I think it’s better to just let it go,” she says. “You just have to kind of let it slide. Otherwise, you’re like, in the midst of it, like a frenzy.”

Despite her hectic 12 months, “it’d be silly to say, ‘Oh, God, I can’t wait for this year to end.’ Why wish your time away?”

Johansson recently peeled back a little of her famously guarded privacy and revealed that marrying Reynolds was the best thing she ever did.

So would she marry again? “I have no idea,” she says. “I don’t X things off. I don’t know. Life is long.” What does seem to be in her future: a family for when she’s older and, ideally, doing what she’s wanted to do since she was 12 — direct.

That said, “right now, my biggest relationship is with my job,” the acting kind, says Johansson. Her current project, an allegorical indie, Under the Skin, in which she plays an alien manhunter and eater, is “just so all-encompassing that I’m happy to commit myself completely to it. And it’s been nice to just focus on that and to focus on myself. … There’s something quite refreshing about it.” She’s been holed up in the Scottish wilderness. “It’s nice to just kind of be like, I don’t know, in the middle of nowhere.”

She’s not a subway girl

Here in the thick of things, her hometown, she says she roams surprisingly free. “What do I have to lose? It’s not like I get attacked by hordes of angry fans.” (Not that you’ll see her underground: “For me, it’s like, I used up all my subway tokens. It’s a privilege to not have to take the subway. I like the subway, it gets you places fast, but I’d much rather hail a cab. Or walk.”)

“The city is very kind to me,” she says, looking out the window at the bustle two stories below. “It wraps its big, warm arms around me and keeps me safe. I feel good here.”

Two years ago, Johansson made her Tony-winning Broadway debut a neighborhood away in A View from the Bridge by Arthur Miller, the former husband, of course, of the icon she’s constantly held up against, Monroe.

And though her View part, Catherine Carbone, is legendarily loosely based on Miller’s ex-wife, don’t expect Johansson to become the next in the line of blondes (and one redhead) who have lately channeled the quintessential celluloid siren on screen and in magazine pages.

“There’s a lot there to explore and I like to watch other people do it, but I have no interest in” joining the Monroe biopic brigade. “It’s lovely to be compared to somebody as sort of effervescent and charming and fragile and I think kind of an underrated actor, really,” says Johansson. And “you know, beautiful and everything. But it’s never been one for me.”

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The FBI just released the grand jury indictment of a man who allegedly hacked into the email accounts of 50 victims, including dozens of celebrities.

The indictment was issued against 35-year-old Christopher Chaney of Jacksonville, Florida.  He was arrested this morning by FBI agents, on charges of identity theft, wiretapping and other charges.

According to federal officials, Chaney would use public information to access email accounts of his alleged victims, and then access computers and cell phones under the control of his victims.

Some of the alleged victims include Christina Aguilera, Scarlett Johansson, Mila Kunis, and celebrity stylist Simone Harouche. Some of the ill-gotten materials included naked photos.

As TMZ first reported, law enforcement sources tell us Chaney allegedly acted alone, and got no money for his alleged misdeeds — rather, he did it for the thrill.

Chaney faces 121 years in federal prison if convicted on all counts.

Wow I dont think that was worth it!  Scary that he could do that though with such big celebrities. He better have a top criminal lawyer on his side.

Source: TMZ

Will Smith looks set to revive his rap career.

The actor-and-singer – whose last album, ‘Lost and Found’, was released in 2005 – is thought to be in line to begin work on a comeback album with producer La Mar ‘Mars’ Edwards, who is hoping to start up the Hollywood star’s music career again.

Mars told XXLMag.com: “We’re working on Will Smith, bringing him back. That’s actually him on the other line right now.”

The 42-year-old hunk – who shot to fame during his time in 1990s TV comedy ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’ – has released four studio albums, including 1997 hit ‘Big Willie Style’, which featured US Billboard Hot 100 chart number one single ‘Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It’.

Since the release of his last album, Will – who has been married to actress Jada Pinkett Smith since 1997 and has two children with her, Jaden, 13, and 10-year-old daughter Willow, who are both music stars – has featured in major films including ‘I Am Legend’, ‘Hancock’ and ‘Seven Pounds’.

Willow appears to have been inspired by her father’s rap music interest as last year she explained Tupac – who was shot dead in 1996 – is her number one hip-hop star.

She said: “On my iPod I have Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga, Beyonce, Billy Idol, B.O.B. Eminem, Tupac – he was my mom’s best friend.”

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Spears, 29, summoned Pauly D, who is also her tour deejay, to the stage during the Circus track ‘Leather and Lace’, and he was handcuffed to a pole in the back of a pink Mini Cooper and surrounded by half-naked dancers.

She then wrapped him in a pink feather boa and proceeded to climb
behind him and dance seductively while her dancers flanked him and did their own grinding.

An excited Pauly D took to his Twitter page and tweeted about the event as soon as it happened. “Wow Just Got A Lap Dance On Stage From @britneyspears!!!” the New York Daily News quoted him as writing.

Even Spears seemed pleased with the turnout, and she let Pauly D know about it. “Hope you enjoyed your dance! Was tough getting my legs around that big blowout,” she wrote.

The video:

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The “Catch Me If You Can” star beat out last year’s winner, Johnny Depp, while pulling in $77 million in 2010 thanks to the success of “Shutter Island” and “Inception.”

DiCaprio is showing no signs of slowing down either, as the studly actor is set to star in upcoming flicks such as “J. Edgar,” “The Great Gatsby,” and “Django Unchained.”

Falling behind Leo were Depp, who slipped to the runner-up slot, while third place was clinched by “Jack n’ Jill” funnyman Adam Sandler.

The list is compiled by Forbes based on earnings made during the period between May 1, 2010, and May 1, 2011. According to Forbes magazine, the estimations are made based on interviews with agents, lawyers, producers and other industry insiders.

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The Mean Girls star, who was caught tripping and falling in New York recently, took another spill while out on the town with party pals Paris and Nicky Hilton in Malibu Friday night.

And who did she blame for the embarrassing tumble?

“Omg, I’m so embarrassed, paparazzi just blinded me with flashes again, as I was walking into dinner,” Lohan tweeted Friday night. “They pushed me and I tripped, hurt.”

This isn’t the second—or even third—time the 25-year-old actress has fallen, though, so we’re on the fence about her pap-pushing explanation.

And now that former frenemies Linds and Paris have officially reunited, something tells us there will be more shenanigans and spills to come.

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Jennifer Aniston seems to have found love again with Justin Theroux — but back in 2005, she was still smarting from her devastating divorce from Brad Pitt.

She dusted herself off by signing on for, ironically, The Break Up, the hit 2006 romantic comedy costarrng Vince Vaughn.

“It was a beautiful human story about a couple breaking up…You know, I was slightly familiar on the topic and the issue,” Aniston, 42, confessed during her chat with James Lipton for her Inside the Actor’s Studio appearance.

“I honestly felt like, what a great way to sort of exorcise some of that,” she said of doing the film after the end of her five-year marriage to Pitt, 47, who famously paired up with Angelina Jolie afterwards.

Even The Break Up’s producers balked at asking Aniston to sign on for the flick given its sensitive subject matter, she revealed.

“I was like, why not? Turn the page, let’s move on.”

Her romantic heartache made the role “easier” to do, she said. “I enjoyed it! You’d think otherwise.”

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Six months after Green Lantern’s Reynolds filed for divorce from his wife of two years, the couple’s marriage has dissolved.

The papers were filed by Reynolds’ attorney, Laura Wasser, Friday in Los Angeles, Us Weekly has confirmed.

Johansson, 26, began dating Reynolds, 34, in 2007; the stars announced their engagement in May 2008 and tied the knot that September in a remote wilderness retreat in Vancouver, B.C. They confirmed their split in December 2010, shortly after Us Weekly broke the news that the couple was going their separate ways.

Johansson (who recently split from Sean Penn) told Glamour in 2009 that she’s no expert on relationships. “I don’t profess to know anything about marriage that anybody else doesn’t know, or how to make it right,” she told the mag.

Reynolds, meanwhile, admitted things had “changed” since they got married. “I’m a little more guarded, I think,” he told GQ. “I’m a little bit more wary of having my relationship turning into a soap opera.”

Still, he gushed at the time that marriage was the “best part” of his life.

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Rainford, 36, is accused of violating a January court order to stay 200 yards away from any property of the heiress. The restraining order came after Rainford made it past property guards on his bike and pounded on Hilton’s door. He pleaded no contest in January, and was given three years probation.

Rainford is being held in leiu of $20,000 bail after being taken into custody on a tip from a passerby on a Malibu beach near Hilton’s home. “He was hanging around on the beach while Paris was inside,” a witness told The Daily Mail. “Someone recognized him as being the man who had given her trouble in the past and the cops arrived pretty quickly.”

“Deputies identified the suspect as James Rainford and determined a valid restraining order prohibiting him from being within 200 yards of Miss Hilton or her residence was in effect,” the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement.

Rainford was sentenced to jail in April after pleading no contest to assaulting Cy Waits, Hilton’s former boyfriend, outside a Los Angeles courtroom. He served 24 days of a 227 sentence.

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According to MTV, the resident bad boy has completed his run with robots. He’s starred in all three of the franchise’s films, which have all proved to be blockbuster hits, but when asked at the MTV Movie Awards last week if this would be his last, he said “For sure, I’m not coming back to do another one. I don’t think [director, Michael Bay] will either.”

Yet, the ever-so-confident star is not foolish enough to think that if he and Bay walk away from the film that the whole franchise will call it quits.

“It still is a hot property, I think, especially coming out of the third one. So I imagine they’ll reboot it at some point with someone else.” But LaBeouf won’t walk away and never look back, “You have an onus in it. I’ll enjoy it. I’ll go [see it] opening night, I’ll be there. But there is a disconnect. It’s mine, dude.”

LaBeouf’s take on the third film is nothing short of spectacular. He gushed about how ‘Dark of the Moon’ is the best movie they’ve made.

“It’s not a joke. I’m dead honest, man. I get myself in trouble all the time, but this is our best installment. It’s our best movie.” He continued, “It’s the best action, in terms of the geography. In the second one, you get confused as to who’s fighting who and where you are, because it’s such a big landscape. This one is ‘Black Hawk Down’-ish. It’s one location, and the geography is simple to understand.”

LaBeouf is joined by Tyrese Gibson, John Malkovich and Ken Jeong in the third ‘Transformers’ installment, set for release on June 29.

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