People talk 11/26/02

Churchill named greatest Brit of all time

LONDON -- Winston Churchill, the resolute prime minister who led Britain to victory in World War II, has been named the greatest Briton of all time in a popular vote conducted by the British Broadcasting Corp.

Churchill edged out Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel on Sunday to win the "Great Britons" contest, which attracted more than 1 million phone and Internet votes. Princess Diana came in third.

Over the last month, the BBC has run documentaries profiling its 10 greatest Britons, whittled down from a list of 100 released in August. The winner was selected after a live televised debate.

Churchill spent more than a half century in British politics, with frequent changes of position and party.

But he's best remembered for his staunch opposition to Adolf Hitler and resolute wartime leadership -- particularly the gruff, determined radio broadcasts with which he rallied British resolve during the Blitz.

"He was the greatest Briton because he showed the determination and courage to protect Britain from invasion and without his inspiring leadership the outcome of World War II may have been very different," said former Northern Ireland Secretary Mo Mowlam, who presented the program on Churchill for the BBC.

Jolie pledges money to children's hospital

LIVERPOOL, England -- Angelina Jolie has pledged $79,000 to a children's hospital that treated her son for minor burns earlier this year, hospital officials said Monday.

The actress' adopted 1-year-old, Maddox, spent three days at Alder Hey Children's Hospital in Liverpool while she was filming a sequel to "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" in Wales last September.

The boy suffered minor burns, hospital spokeswoman Jacqui Goulden said. It was unclear how he was injured.

Jolie's donation will help build a new $15.8 million cancer unit at the hospital. Officials said they'd raised $13.75 million before her contribution.

The 27-year-old actress, who recently donated $100,000 to provide food for Western Sahara refugees, won a supporting-actress Oscar in 2000 for "Girl, Interrupted."

Clooney says latest role is his toughest

NEW YORK -- George Clooney said his latest role in Steven Soderbergh's "Solaris" has been his toughest acting job to date.

But the 41-year-old star is afraid it's his derriere that will get all the attention.

"Fox leaked the story about the MPAA rating on 'Solaris,' how we got an R because I showed my (behind), but I think they're having trouble selling this film. They don't know what to do with it," he said in an interview from Los Angeles with Newsday. (The rating was later challenged, and changed to PG-13.)

Clooney anticipates that the most-often asked question during interviews promoting the film will be: "So you're naked. Did you work out?"

"I find it funny because we're trying to talk about things on a much grander scale, with a story that contains questions about the cosmos and it'll come down to a 30-second sound bite where I say, "Yeah, I worked out."

The film, which opens this week, is a remake of Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 sci-fi epic. In Soderbergh's version, Clooney plays the role of a psychologist sent to investigate the mental state of the crew of a space station -- and winds up having hallucinations of his dead wife who committed suicide.

Van Der Beek keeps trying to expand imageNEW YORK -- "Dawson's Creek" star James Van Der Beek is working hard to expand the image he projects as the wholesome film student Dawson Leery in the hit television series.

And though the 25-year-old former National Merit Scholar and English major probably has a lot more in common with Dawson than Sean Bateman, the manipulative, drug-dealing undergraduate he plays in the film "The Rules of Attraction," he managed to bring something of himself to the role.

"You know, I was interviewed on CNN for this movie and I was ready with this dissertation on the state of American youth, and they asked me about the nose-picking," he said of one improvised moment in the movie.

"Nose-picking was not in the script," he told Newsday. "That was me. It was a tight shot, and I thought, this would make it more interesting. ... I remember at the time thinking, this is how honest we can be."

Van Der Beek is a Connecticut native who now lives in Los Angeles with his fiancee, actress Heather McComb.

"The Rules of Attraction" opened last month.

-- From wire reports