People talk 03/22/03

Crow among headliners for Memphis festival

MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- Sheryl Crow, ZZ Top, Jerry Lee Lewis and LL Cool J are among the headliners scheduled for the Beale Street Music Festival.

The May 2-4 festival along the Memphis riverfront will feature more than 60 acts, including Willie Nelson, Nappy Roots, Susan Tedeschi and Steve Winwood, promoters said this week.

The outdoor show is one of the main events of the monthlong Memphis in May International Festival.

"This is the 'Year of the Blues,'" said George Hunt, who designed the concert's promotional poster. "And I think that this festival will give you that kind of feel where this music really came from."

The park will be limited to a crowd of 55,000 fans each day, officials said.

Liz Taylor giving up show business

NEW YORK -- Elizabeth Taylor is giving up show business for good, saying raising money to fight AIDS is more important to her than acting.

Taylor said when she goes to the Academy Awards Sunday, in honor of the ceremony's 75th anniversary, it will be her last entertainment appearance.

"At the end of the broadcast, all the past winners are going to walk across the stage. So that will be my swan song on the stage," she told "Access Hollywood" this week. "I've retired from acting; it doesn't really interest me much anymore. It seems kind of superficial because now my life is AIDS, not acting."

Taylor, who won best-actress Oscars for 1966's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and 1960's "Butterfield 8," said she's glad the red carpet arrival has been scrapped this year in deference to the war in Iraq.

"I think it's frivolous. I've never done it. I've always avoided it because you get pushed around so," the 71-year-old said, adding that she may have walked the red carpet once with then-husband Mike Todd, "because he wanted to."

Judd: Relationship still 'awkward' with J.Lo

NEW YORK -- A chocolate Labrador retriever named Buster is one of the few things Cris Judd has left from his brief marriage to Jennifer Lopez.

The dog was a gift from Lopez to Judd, her second husband, to whom she was married for nine months.

She and the choreographer split up in June, and Lopez, 32, is now engaged to her "Jersey Girl" and "Gigli" co-star, Ben Affleck.

"I still love her," Judd tells Us Weekly magazine for its March 31 issue. "And I will always have a special place in my heart for her. I will always be there for her if she ever needs me for anything."

But Judd, 33, acknowledges that it's difficult seeing Lopez and Affleck's highly publicized romance.

He said he doesn't talk to the singer-actress anymore, and hasn't seen her latest movie, "Maid in Manhattan," or Affleck's new action film, "Daredevil."

"It's always awkward," said Judd, the recent winner on the reality series "I'm a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here!" on ABC. "I mean, how would you feel if you saw your wife with some guy on the TV every day?"

-- From wire reports