Performing with suspended, comatose bodies is a tough assignment for any actress. No wonder Genevieve Bujold read the script of Coma, based on Robin Cook's bestselling chiller, and said, "Oh, my God, I don't know about this!" But her doctor-writer friend Michael Crichton (The Andromeda Strain), author of the screenplay and the director, cajoled her into accepting the part. Bujold plays a surgical resident in a large Boston hospital who wonders why certain patients never regain consciousness after routine operations--and unravels a diabolical traffic in human organs. To inject as much realism as possible into the film, Director Crichton used live actors for the bodies. He could only keep them dangling from wires for a few minutes, which was just fine with Bujold. Says she: "It kept things from getting too eerie."

Now that he is out of the diplomatic game, Henry Kissinger likes being on the sidelines of a different match. The former Secretary of State and his son David, 16, a prep-school student in New England, were in the record crowd of 77,691 watching the New York Cosmos rip the Fort Lauderdale Strikers, 8-3, last week in East Rutherford, N.J. An ardent soccer enthusiast since his boyhood in Germany, Kissinger later chatted in German with Cosmos Stars Franz Beckenbauer and Werner Roth as the players relaxed in the whirlpool. He also shook the hand of the mighty Pele and introduced him to a delighted David. Was Kissinger a Cosmos rooter? Said he: "If you know anything about the passions aroused by soccer, you'd know no professional diplomat would ever admit what his favorite team was. It would take more courage than I have."

The lady needed the money, and the offer of $825,000 wasn't bad. But Janet Auchincloss, Jacqueline Onassis' mother, was especially impressed with the plans of Edward Sughrue, an attorney from Whitinsville, Mass., and eight business partners to turn the family estate in Newport, R.I., into a Kennedy museum. After all, the greatest days at Hammersmith Farm were when the Honey Fitz tied up at the dock or the presidential helicopter settled on the lawns. An Irishman who cast his first vote ever for J.F.K., Sughrue plans to open the house to tourists next spring and charge admission. Visitors will see Hammersmith just as it was furnished at the time of the 1953 Bouvier-Kennedy wedding and glimpse the desk where a vacationing President signed several bills into law. "It would have been a terrible shame if they had concreted it and put in a music shell or something," says Sughrue. Nevertheless, he is planning to build seven luxury homes on the property--not to mention a concrete parking lot for the tour buses.

The world's consummate amateur, George Plimpton, has called signals for the Detroit Lions, played tennis with Pancho Gonzales, boxed with Archie Moore and pitched to Willie Mays--all in the name of journalistic curiosity and publishable profit. "Ernest Hemingway once said that my daydreams were the dark side of the moon of Walter Mitty," says Plimpton, 50. "I agree. It's nightmarish, these sports. They are painful, not joyful." Plimpton's latest joyless endeavor is race-car driving. He is revving up a book about the track and plans to get the feel of the pit by competing in the Toyota Pro Celebrity Match Race in Watkins Glen, N.Y., on Oct. 2. Does he think he has any talent at the wheel? "You need to have enormous concentration to be a great driver," says Plimpton. "I daydream."

Just a few days earlier, Margaret Trudeau had been sparkling at a Hollywood party with a beau, Bruce Nevins, head of the company set up to make America fizz with French Perrier water. Husband Pierre seemed the farthest thing from her mind. Not so. Last week she turned up at her parents' home in Vancouver and announced that she was "very optimistic" about a reconciliation with Canada's Prime Minister. "It's what we have always wanted," said Margaret. "We've been working in this direction, and are praying it will now work out. I am very happy, but I'm not setting any time limit." The couple, according to Margaret, planned to meet in Vancouver this week and then return to the capital. Said she: "We will be staying together in Ottawa for a while as father and mother, not husband and wife at the moment. We are a family."

Actor Jean-Paul Belmondo swings from a chandelier, escapes from menacing samurai and dresses up as a gorilla--all in the line of duty. He plays a professional stunt man in the French film L 'Animal and performs all his feats himself. Co-Star Raquel Welch, 36, portrays his daredevil partner, but relied on a stand-in stunt woman. Awed by Belmondo, Welch says: "He's the embodiment of all the best qualities of the French male."

Even kings need friends, and Jordan's Hussein and Greece's deposed monarch, Constantine, are the best of buddies. When he is not at home with his wife, Queen Anne-Marie, in their ten-bedroom London abode, Constantine, 37, is often in Jordan or off traveling around the world with Hussein. The two kings visited Florida's Sea World during a trip to the U.S. last May. While in Amman, where Hussein, 41, is celebrating his 25th year on the throne, they enjoyed one of their favorite royal pastimes: practicing at Hussein's private shooting range--and laying bets on the outcome. So far, they are at a draw, but Constantine is rounding into top form. During one match, he pumped six rounds into the bull's-eye, which prompted Hussein to fire off a shot of his own. Asked he: "Are you sure your name isn't Dirty Harry?"

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.