People

By Rebecca Winters Keegan

A LAUREATE'S CHEERLEADERS Nothing says peace in our time like two Oscar-nominated actresses sharing the stage without a hint of diva behavior. SALMA HAYEK and JULIANNE MOORE served as co-hosts of the Nobel Peace Prize concert, which airs this week in the U.S. The event, held last month in Norway, honored Nobel laureate Mohamed el-Baradei and his International Atomic Energy Agency with performances by Duran Duran and Gladys Knight. Hayek knows viewers may tune in to see her and Moore, not the honoree. "Why do we only pay attention to important issues if people from an unimportant sector--entertainment--talk about them?" the Frida star asks. "We want to be distracted from thinking."

Q&A EMILY MORTIMER Emily Mortimer's got game in Match Point, Woody Allen's new adultery thriller, and The Pink Panther, with Steve Martin, due in February.

Was Allen out of his element filming in London? He loved it 'cause there was no sunshine. He's sort of allergic to sunshine. He just seemed happy and twinkly and unstressed, and you kept thinking, This can't be good. He's so hands-off as a director that it feels like you're left to your own devices.

Did it take a guy from Brooklyn, N.Y., to make a good film about class in England? I think so. We're so neurotic about class in England that I don't think we've got the distance to make perceptive movies about it. It's taken the foreign eyes of these great directors like Woody and Robert Altman with Gosford Park and Ang Lee with Sense and Sensibility.

Was it hard playing the happy character in a dark film? A lot of good dialogue in films is the lies people tell to cover up what they're really feeling. In this case, what she says is what she means. She's not a typical Woody Allen heroine. I played that girl in Lovely & Amazing.

In which you stood naked while Dermot Mulroney critiqued your body. You're always told as an actor, "Be in the moment," and at that moment, I was as vulnerable, stupid, brave, adorable as the girl I was playing, and I was definitely in the moment. Although I hope it doesn't always take my taking off my clothes to feel that way.

Did trying comedy in The Pink Panther make you feel as exposed? Pink Panther was much more scary. To tell a joke that no one laughs at in a movie is so potentially embarrassing on a kind of international platform.

Any New Year's resolutions? I'm giving up smoking. I had a terrible incident in a Mommy and Me class. Sam, my son, had got a pack of Marlboro Lights out of my handbag and was carrying them through the class. Had he been carrying a small shotgun, it would have been less shocking.

SHE'S STILL JENNY WITH THE TAPE Thanks to the New York City police department, the world may never have to see JENNIFER LOPEZ and MARC ANTHONY shoving wedding cake into each other's mouths. Officials arrested two men for allegedly trying to extort as much as $1 million for the couple's stolen wedding videos. Police say after Tito Moses and Steven Wortman failed to sell footage of the 2004 nuptials to the press, the men tried to ransom it to officers posing as Anthony's associates. The singer-actors are currently filming a biopic of salsa star Hector Lavoe. Unfortunately, authorities could do nothing about Lopez's other incriminating video: her 2003 film Gigli.

WHAT I DID OVER CHRISTMAS BREAK Most teenagers would consider sneaking off to a party enough excitement for the holidays. FARRIS HASSAN, 16, of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., stole away to a war zone. Hassan, the U.S.-born son of Iraqi Americans, wanted to travel to Baghdad to better understand the plight of Iraq's citizens. "I thought I'd go the extra mile for that or, rather, a few thousand miles," says Hassan, who left the U.S. Dec. 11, notifying his family in an e-mail from the road. The teen bought a $900 plane ticket to Kuwait with money his parents had given him earlier. He took a taxi to the Iraq border but couldn't enter because of pre-election security. Undeterred, he flew to Lebanon, stayed with family friends and flew to Baghdad on Christmas. After a day in Iraq, he contacted the Associated Press there, which alerted the U.S. embassy. It sent Hassan home and warned other Americans against such a trip. Now, after facing the dangers of Iraq, Hassan must endure the wrath of Mom.