Cut out to be cartoons

Posh Spice and David Beckham are to follow in the footsteps of animated double acts such as Tom and Jerry by being turned into cartoon characters.

The couple have been brought to life for ITV1's new comedy series 2DTV, with Victoria Beckham as a stick-thin bully who is constantly hectoring husband David.

The show will see a string of celebrities and politicians brought to life in animated form this autumn. 

Other victims in the series will include caricatures of Prince William, Geri Halliwell and Tony Blair. Hollywood couple Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Doublas also get the treatment.

Posh and Becks will be seen at home in their mansion, dubbed Beckingham Palace in a cheeky swipe at Victoria's website that gives fans a tour of the house.

An ITV spokesman said: "They're constantly getting lost in their palatial home and she is constantly bullying him. It's very good and it's got a very big future."

Satirical show 2DTV, which will give a comic take on the news and current affairs, has been created by Have I Got New For You? producer Giles Pilbrow, who was also behind Spitting Image.

The series springs from a £1 million pot of cash set aside by ITV to develop new comedy series.

Other comic creations from the fund unveiled as part of ITV1's autumn season include The Sketch Show, which was created by Steve Coogan and features impressionist Ronni Ancona - Alistair McGowan's sidekick.

David Liddiment, ITV controller of channels, said: "We're seeing the first fruits of the drive to reinvigorate ITV comedy with a strong lineup of new shows."

ITV also hopes to prove there is life left in the reality show phenomenon-and has unveiled several new ideas.

The station will bring Pop Idol, similar to Popstars but with two differences - the audience will choose who wins and the winner will be a solo artist rather than a band. 

It is described by station bosses as "the search for the new Robbie or Kylie", and the victor will get a contract from RCA records.

Soapstars, meanwhile, is the search for would-be actors to make up a new family for the soap Emmerdale.

-Evening Standard

Acne and heredity

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Director ordered to chop 4hr film in half

Director Chris Columbus was so determined to stay faithful to JK Rowling's first book that 'Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone' is currently four hours long.

Now bosses at Warner Bros have told him: "You'll have to Quidditch half of it!"

They reckon even the most devoted young followers of the 11-year-old hero will be unable to sit through what would be one of the longest movies ever.

Warners spent £100 million on making it and a sequel is already on the drawing board. They want the massive cuts to safeguard box office takings. A company insider said: "No kid is going to sit through a four-hour movie-however lovingly it's made."

Columbus-who directed Mrs. Doubtfire and Home Alone-now has a huge job on his hands to prepare the film for its world premiere in London on November 4.

A lot of the plot and many of the 500 special effects will have to go. Robbie Coltrane, who plays Harry's chum Hagrid, admitted: "I don't envy Chris. Children know everything about this book.

"They're going to ask, where Mrs. Whatsername does so and so?"

Author JK Rowling said: "The makers have been gracious in allowing me input-but the control is not mine."

The all-British film is expected to make a superstar of schoolboy Daniel Radcliffe, 12, who plays the trainee wizard. The cast includes John Cleese, Maggie Smith, Alan Rickman and Richard Griffiths. Let's hope Columbus is as good as Harry at making things vanish!

Oh, oh, Antonio

For all the talk of His-panic actors breaking through in Hollywood, few actually have. Penélope Cruz might be a fixture in the media, but that has more to do with her relationship with Tom Cruise than the lacklustre box-office performance of Captain Corelli's Mandolin. Jennifer Lopez remains the only Latino actor who commands a salary equivalent to that of her Anglo contemporaries, and she's more American than anything else; she was born in the Bronx and her Spanish is rudimentary.

Nobody knows this better than Antonio Banderas. Ten years after he arrived in Hollywood, he's still looking for the movie that will guarantee him the A-list status he deserves. Banderas could be forgiven for feeling a little jinxed, because even when 1998's The Mask of Zorro became a worldwide hit, it was his co-star Catherine Zeta-Jones who benefited rather more than he did.

It must be frustrating for him. Not only does he have matinée-idol looks, but he has an impeccable acting pedigree. Five years with the National Theatre of Spain, a string of high-class art-house movies with Pedro Almodóvar, and a versatility that means he's as effective in a musical like Evita as he is as a gun-wielding mariachi in Desperado. Then there's the fact that, in between the 57 films he has appeared in, he also found time to make his directorial debut with 1999's Crazy in Alabama.

But if Banderas is disappointed by his failure to reach the highest echelons of Hollywood, he certainly doesn't show it. On the contrary, with his back-slapping bonhomie, relaxed manner and willingness to speak his mind, he couldn't be more upbeat. And while he might now be 41, with his long hair in a ponytail and a greying goatee, it's clear from his progress through the Beverly Hills hotel in which we meet that he's still catnip to the ladies, whether they're his simpering assistants, members of the public, or wide-eyed hotel staff.

His latest film, Original Sin, won't be the one significantly to alter his status, despite some steamy scenes with its leading lady, Angelina Jolie. A wildly uneven adaptation of Cornell Woolrich's noir thriller Waltz into Darkness, it is marred by poor direction and some extreme overacting from Banderas's co-stars. None of that seems to concern him, though, in part because he's been obsessed with the story - of a rich and vain man whose mail-order bride turns out to be a black widow - ever since he saw Truffaut's version of the novel, Mississippi Mermaid, back in 1969.

"What's weird is that stars don't seem to do love scenes any more," points out Banderas. "When you see stars doing love scenes, what you see is their face and a little piece of an arm that you might confuse with their butt. They won't do it. If you do see a butt, it's somebody else's, a double. They're not used to being in bed with a camera, with a wide angle on them. In this, that's my butt, for good or bad." He says he was a little uncomfortable doing the sex scenes - "I was a bit embarrassed, at the beginning especially" - and so he was not happy when they were toned down for the puritanical American censors by a nervous studio. "I said, 'Come on, I've done stronger things than this, let's punch a bit heavier, break the limits,' but the studio still cut it. I think the version you'll see in London won't be trimmed."

His attitude is telling, and it might be one of the reasons why he hasn't made the breakthrough to mega-stardom in America - because not only are American stars unwilling to strip off for the camera, they are also reluctant to take on roles that might affect their carefully nurtured public personas. In Original Sin, Banderas goes from a confident, macho character to a man totally dominated by Jolie's femme fatale, and few A-list stars would want to be seen playing someone who is more vulnerable than the leading lady.

Such posturing is anathema to Banderas. "Don't you think there's a certain narcissism in that kind of thinking? 'I can't do this because the audience might not like it.' All that stuff, 'Will it affect my career?', that's narcissism. It's trying to control your career and giving the audience what you think they should see of you. To hell with that. I overcame all that a long time ago."

Nor does he let outside pressures, such as media speculation about whether his wife, Melanie Griffith, was best pleased to have him romping around with Jolie, affect his choices. "She's a professional too," says Banderas. "She knows I come home to her every night, she's my woman. I'm not having second thoughts because I've been in bed with Angelina Jolie for two hours. Come on, I'm not that silly. Angelina is beautiful, but Melanie is too, and I love her."

Apart from his refusal to play by Hollywood's rules, Banderas has had two other obstacles to overcome in his quest to become a bona fide movie star in the States. The first is practical: the language. When he made his American film debut in 1992's The Mambo Kings, he couldn't speak any English and had to learn his lines by rote. Now his English is fast and fluent, even if the accent is still thick and his every gesture screams "Spanish".

Far harder, though, has been coping with America's insidious attitude to Hispanics in general. Latinos might be on the verge of becoming the majority in California, and parts of LA may seem more like neighbourhoods in Central or South American cities, but that doesn't mean the Anglo population has been very welcoming. It's the opposite: many of them still regard Latinos as the people who cut their grass or valet-park their cars.

"They don't care if you're Argentinian or Spanish or from Guatemala," says Banderas, with a shake of his head. "You know, this is the first country where I realised that I wasn't white. I put white under race on the immigration papers, and they said: "Oh, you're not white, you're Latino.' I'm treated like a Hispanic guy and I'm very proud of that, and I'll defend it."

But he's cautiously optimistic about the future for Hispanic actors. "There are a number of Spanish-speaking actors who've gone beyond their own community now: Jennifer Lopez is one, Benicio Del Toro is another. Penélope Cruz is getting there. Then there's Salma Hayek and Andy Garcia, so there are more and more of them now, and I don't think it's a fashion thing. Hollywood understands that they're here to stay," he insists.

Despite the struggles, Banderas doesn't regret moving to the States. "No. Listen, all the actors who were working with me in Spain criticised me when I left, but 99% of those actors are doing soap operas now. I mean, how long can you keep a career up in such a small country? How many movies can you do?' 

Whether he'll ever make the final leap to superstardom is uncertain, and depends as much on American attitudes as it does on the roles he picks. But Banderas seems happy enough with his position right now. "In America, they have a tendency to put labels on everyone, and so once I did Desperado and Zorro, they said: 'This is the new action guy.' I reject that. I want to do musicals and comedies and dramas and horror movies. I like that, because I think part of being an actor is the possibility of change." Let's hope Hollywood changes, too.

Original Sin opened on September 21. (The Sunday Times, London)