“I’m not able to drink alcohol. My body cannot handle it.  Some people can handle a drink or a line of cocaine, but I’ve come to realize that, for me, it’s all or nothing – and it has to be nothing!” This is Naomi Campbell talking with the English columnist Mandrake about finding ways to control her volatile temper. (Who can forget Naomi — grand, imperious and glamorous — as she left a New York correction facility having done penance by “cleaning streets” after one of her various temper tantrums?) 

Now, Naomi credits her newfound sobriety to “The Program,” a lifestyle system that combines living on seaweed crisps and cleansing drinks. 

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On the Broadway stage, people lucky enough to snag tickets to “God of Carnage” get the chance to see the award-winning Marcia Gay Harden playing the wife of James “The Sopranos” Gandolfini in a work of high comedy that is a smash hit. 


Harden, Gandolfini, Davis and Daniels © Getty Images

I spoke to Marcia Gay, my University of Texas alumna pal, and asked if she and her distinguished cast would extend their run past the July 19 cutoff date. She sighed: “We are trying to figure it out. If we can all go on, we will, happily. We are such a team.” (This includes actors Jeff Daniels and Hope Davis.) But Marcia really wanted to talk about a little indie movie she made with her own little girl, Eulala Scheel. “Home” was filmed in the Amish countryside several years ago and has won attention in England, Montreal, Boston and Houston. It tells of an alcoholic mother who repeats circumstances of her own childhood when she becomes a mother herself.

There will be a benefit screening of this acclaimed film at the Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater, 5 West 63rd St. in NYC on April 27 at 6:30 PM. (The Norma F. Pfriem Breast Cancer Center benefits.) Call (212) 352-3101 or (866) 811-4111.

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Marcia Gay, who won the Oscar for “Pollock” and was nominated for “Mystic River,” is not just the mother of the talented natural actress Eulala, now ten years old, but also of younger twins. She laughed at how busy she has been. “Liz, I haven’t crossed my legs in private life!” (Marcia Gay is wed to a man who builds houses, edits videos and “knows how to do an awful lot,” according to his actress wife. They are living now in Harlem during her Broadway run but call a large spread in the Catskills “home.”)

I asked the actress if she had read the rave review I gave to her and “God of Carnage.” She said, “Honestly, I haven’t. Our director, Matthew Warchus, asked us not to read the reviews. He is afraid we will begin to perform the play according to what the reviewers said and not the way we originally conceived it.” 

So, hey, people – the cast of “God of Carnage” doesn’t even know they are in Broadway’s biggest hit! 

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I love stories about women who grasp the bull by the horns, pull up their own bootstraps and other trite cliché versions of “doing the right thing” for themselves.

This includes our sisters in the porn racket. New York magazine last week offered us a story about Sasha Grey, who went from porn to star in Steven Soderbergh’s “largely improvised film ‘The Girlfriend Experience’ … about a Manhattan call girl and the many men who want a piece of her.”

When Sasha appeared in her first mainstream movie, she found herself largely listening to wealthy johns who were complaining about the plunging Dow. (The movie was actually made during one week in October 2008 when that was exactly what was going on.)