John Cusack Fan Gets a Doctor’s Appointment

John Cusack

The doctor is in.

Not quite convinced that she’s fit to stand trial, a judge has ordered that the woman accused of stalking John Cusack be examined by a psychiatrist before the case proceeds.

Emily Leatherman was charged with felony stalking and two misdemeanor counts of disobeying a restraining order and petty theft after being arrested March 30 when police found her too close to Cusack’s Malibu home for comfort.

The complaint against her alleges she has been making untoward attempts to contact the High Fidelity star since February 2007.

L.A. Superior Court Judge Susan M. Speer ordered both sides back in court July 11.

Leatherman, who has pleaded not guilty to all of the above and has been behind bars since her arrest, is facing up to four years in prison if convicted.

Harry Potter Gets Carded

Harry Potter

The prelude to Harry Potter’s life at Hogwarts is, if not exactly sweet, then at least very short.

A prequel to the billion-dollar fantasy franchise, handwritten by J.K. Rowling on both sides of a piece of paper barely bigger than a postcard, is one of 13 similarly crafted works being auctioned off for charity June 10 at a London bookstore.

Waterstone’s Booksellers Ltd. doled out pieces of A5 paper (measuring about 4 inches by 6 inches) to Rowling, playwright Tom Stoppard, 2007 Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing, Canadian feminist writer Margaret Atwood, High Fidelity scribe Nick Hornby and eight other writers and artists, asking for stories, essays or any other form of artistic expression that could be squeezed into the limited space.

Rowling, who has vowed not to write any continuation of the Harry Potter saga, nevertheless said she had “fun” penning the prequel.

Proceeds from the What’s Your Story? auction at Waterstone’s flagship store in central London will go toward the writers’ association English PEN and Dyslexia Action, a British charityboth of which have reason to dream big. The last piece of Rowling’s “extracurricular” work to wind up on the auction blocka leather-bound collection of fairy taleswent for $4 million.

Lisa Bonet Biography

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A slender, pretty, sleepy-eyed black former juvenile player, Lisa Bonet came to the fore as Denise Huxtable Kendall, the eldest child on the hugely popular family sitcom “The Cosby Show” (NBC). With her luxuriant hair, seductive charm and relaxed manner, she was chosen to star in a successful spin-off series, “A Different World”, with which she stayed for a year before returning to “The Cosby Show”. Bonet attracted media attention for her on-the-set tiffs with co-star Bill Cosby as well as her role as a voodoo princess in Alan Parker’s “Angel Heart” (1987). Her steamy love scenes with Mickey Rourke had to be trimmed down so the initially X-rated feature could be reclassified and released with studio support.

Bonet began taking acting lessons at age 13 and guest-starred in an episode of “St. Elsewhere”. She soon landed a recurring role on the CBS sitcom “The Two of Us” (1982) which led to her casting as Denise Huxtable. After a post-”Cosby” sojourn, she returned to acting as Patrick Dempsey’s love interest in the low-budget feature “Bank Robber” (1993). Subsequently, Bonet appeared in the direct-to-video release “Dead Connection” (1994), as a vindictive woman posing as a journalist to track a serial killer. She was also a single mother living on a barren planet in the SciFi Channel’s “New Eden” (1995). The actress returned to the big screen in the thriller “Enemy of the State” (1998) and appeared as one of the former girlfriends of John Cusack’s character in “High Fidelity” (2000). In 2003, Bonet was cast in the much anticipated action feature “Biker Boyz,” which co-starred Laurence Fishburne and Derek Luke. Bonet also has occasionally directed music videos, most notably “Whatever It Takes” for Gardner Cole in 1991.

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