PEOPLE

By Belinda Luscombe

THE PEOPLE VS. WOODY H.

Some stars are host to fund raisers. Others make speeches at the Oscars. When WOODY HARRELSON has a cause, he gets arrested. In June, Harrelson was nabbed for planting four hemp seeds in Kentucky to promote hemp's usefulness as a crop. Last week he hung from the Golden Gate Bridge with other environmentalists, snarling traffic and doing interviews by phone to protest the logging of a redwood grove in Northern California. "I just lately learned about climbing," the actor told the San Francisco Examiner. "I didn't get much sleep last night." Back on earth, he was arrested (again) and faces a $10,000 fine.

SEEN & HEARD

Mothers across the nation can uncross their fingers. Chris O'Donnell, the sort of movie star most moms would want their daughters to bring home, is engaged. His intended is longtime girlfriend Caroline Fentress, a teacher and the sister of O'Donnell's roommate from back in the days when he was a fresh-faced marketing major at Boston College who happened to act in movies.

Will Mr. Television become Mr. Magazine? Milton Berle, having done everything from silent films to Beverly Hills, 90210, is launching Milton, a magazine about gambling, smoking and drinking. "We'll cover everything you can do in public, whether or not it's politically correct," says Berle's daughter and editor in chief Susan Moll. Berle will contribute a column.

DIANE BAGS ANOTHER ONE

First comes the transgression, then the confession. In ROBERT DOWNEY JR.'s case, the confessor is DIANE SAWYER, who taped an interview with the troubled actor in his rehabilitation center for PrimeTime Live. Apart from admitting he "was under the influence when doing most all" of Home for the Holidays, a movie for which he got some creditable reviews, Downey says that after he was first put in jail on drug-possession charges, he called his wife, who refused to bail him out. "That's when I started realizing: my God, people are really happy that I'm in jail," says the actor. "I get it now." Downey also says he started taking drugs before he was eight, with his parents and their friends. (His father is underground filmmaker Robert Downey Sr.) "It was as casual as it would be having white wine with Thanksgiving, at least in my household."

LOOK WHO'S SPLITTING UP

The big one is no longer enough. KIRSTIE ALLEY, who took risque spousal innuendoes to a new level when she thanked her husband PARKER STEVENSON "for giving me the big one for the last eight years" in her 1991 Emmy acceptance speech, is leaving it all behind. The two have announced the end of their almost 13-year marriage with a terse statement: "We intend to remain the best of friends and devoted parents to our children." Alley and Stevenson, both of whom are best known for signature TV roles--she in Cheers and he in The Hardy Boys Mysteries--have two adopted children, William True, 4, and Lillie Price, 2. No reason for the split was given.