PEOPLE

By David E. Thigpen

MYSTERY OF A FALLING STAR

In the movies, Superman would have been there to catch the falling Lois Lane. But this was not celluloid, and actress MARGOT KIDDER, left, in 1992, has crash-landed. Due in Phoenix to teach an acting class, the once fast-living co-star of the Superman movies inexplicably turned up in the backyard of a suburban L.A. home, bedraggled and hysterical. Police took her to a psychiatric hospital. For a time in the early '90s, the thrice-divorced Kidder had been wheelchair-bound after a car crash. Her career faded. Recently she's been holed up in Montana, writing her autobiography: Calamities. THE TRIAL OF GEORGE CLOONEY

Is he a leading man with enough juice to light up the big screen, or does he just play one on TV? A lot is riding on E.R. star GEORGE CLOONEY's first foray into the minefield of Hollywood romantic comedy. (One false move and he may be making From Dusk to Dawn vampire sequels from here to eternity.) One Fine Day, due out later this year, pairs the roguishly charming newcomer with that gleaming icon of glamour MICHELLE PFEIFFER. Clooney plays an Oscar Madison-like newspaper columnist and single father; Pfeiffer is an architect and single mother. They meet and immediately fall in loathe. What do you think will come to pass? In any case, plot turns are one thing, chemistry another. Seasoned superstars--including Al Pacino and Robert Redford--have failed to ignite the screen when paired with the ultracool Pfeiffer. Clooney will at least have this advantage: much of the mating ritual in the movie is conducted via cell phone.

MASKING THE TRUTH?

There was no mistaking the face, despite the mask. Clad in surgical blues, PRINCESS DIANA stood in the operating room of a Middlesex hospital, observing heart surgery on an impoverished child who had been flown in from West Africa. Di denied it was a publicity ploy, insisting it was just charity, a kind of anatomy lesson to "gather information." Critics, however, chided her for self-indulgent behavior and for wearing earrings and mascara in the O.R. SEEN & HEARD

Birdcage director Mike Nichols is trying a different perch: he made his British stage debut, performing in the Wallace Shawn- penned upper-crust satire The Designated Mourner. Critics gave a thumbs-down to the stream-of-consciousness chatter running through the play but praised the former Nichols-and-May star's "meticulous performance" as the cultivated cynic.

Culkin family values were on display as Macaulay Culkin, 15 and last seen onscreen in the bomb Richie Rich, was slapped by his father Kit Culkin for reportedly refusing to do homework. Pat Brentrup, Kit's estranged companion and Mac's mom, then marched in with the cops. The trio headed for family court, where a truce was patched up--for now.