angelina jolie (12 posts)

Jennifer Buhl, PacificCoastNews.com

Please mail me a list of Nick Cannon's exes.
—Tweety

Honestly, wouldn't you rather share with the class? He was briefly engaged to Victoria's Secret model Selita Ebanks and also boasts previous affairs with Kim Kardashian and Christina Milian. Onward with more of your Burning Questions, eh?

So Angelina finally confirmed that she was having twins. But if celebs make their minions sign confidentiality agreements, how did every gossip outlet already know this?
—Carrie

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Seth Browarnik/WireImage.com

How many people does an A-list celebrity typically employ?
—J.S.

The care and feeding of celebrities requires two breeds of minion. The household help—cooks, nannies, butlers—usually work directly for the star. The satellite people—lawyers, nutritionists, trainers, publicists, agents—work for themselves and charge an hourly or monthly rate.

But exactly how much assistance a star needs depends on how rich and fabulous—or fertile—he or she is. Brangelina and their We-Are-the-World peanut gallery have different needs than, say, Beyoncé and Jay-Z, who have only two—albeit hefty—egos to feed.

Follow me past the jump, and I'll tell you exactly how many lackeys are required in both kinds of households—plus the minion count for a third, mystery diva.

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INFDaily.com

I've got a question for you: How much do the paparazzi really make?
—Taylor, Minnesota

The biggest money comes from exclusive shots of international stars—Brangelina, Johnny Depp—going about their everyday A-list business. Good photos can sell over and over again, from South America to Australia, earning a smart paparazzo up to $500,000 yearly.

Mediocre paparazzi, however, make about as much as a school guidance counselor. They scrape along on common, $250-a-pop photos of Britney or Lauren Conrad. They're the guys always "chasing" Heidi Montag, snapping away as she grimaces through "romances" and "feuds."

On very rare occasions, there's a jackpot photo, a six-figure photo, one that every paparazzo wants. Right now, that one superphoto is...can you guess?

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James Devaney/WireImage.com

How come Angelina Jolie got a place in France? Doesn't she usually go to New Orleans or Third World countries?
—Alek, Brussels

The British Sun has reported that La Jolie would like to raise her new child in France to honor her late French-Canadian mother. What the Sun maybe forgot to report is that France is not in Canada. That fact has led your Answer B!tch toward a different theory, one that involves flattening the paparazzi.

Listen.

The last time Jolie gave birth, she flew to a country so restrictive that no paparazzo was allowed to leave Namibia without a jackboot firmly installed in his bunghole. Anyone who dared to snap the pregnant actress risked deportation or jail.

Now, it seems, Jolie is pregnant again. And it so happens that the privacy laws in France are almost as tight as Namibia's.

French law is kind of murky when it comes to celebrity photography, but in general, it goes like this: No snapping a star, even in public, and then selling it in France without the celeb's say-so. And photos of celebrity kids? Forget it. Their faces are tiled out completely in magazines, unless the parent says otherwise.

That isn't to say that France isn't rife with paparazzi. It has them. In fact, French paparazzi are respected in the industry as being some of the best in the business. But the laws there being what they are, many photographers there are cautious.

And paparazzi in France have been punished for breaking the privacy laws. In 2006, three snappers were convicted of breaching those very laws when they took pictures of Princess Diana and her boyfriend on the night they died. They got a symbolic fine of 1 euro, but still. They got nailed.

"I would have second thoughts on taking any pictures there until the law is defined," says Brad Elterman of BuzzFoto.com. "I would think twice."

He continues: "You will never have a situation in France like you have had with, say, Britney Spears. A few paparazzi? Maybe. But a train of 30 cars following someone? The French are never going to tolerate that. They would find it incredibly vulgar."

As vulgar as a Namibian jackboot up one's bunghole? Mais, bien sûr!

INFphoto.com

Do you think the paparazzi and even legit news coverage of Brangelina's second pregnancy will be as crazy as the first?
—Hannah, Tampa, Florida

You'd think people would have learned by now: All newborn babies look like a cross between giant moth larvae and Ming the Merciless. Every single newborn. But apparently America has yet to catch on.

So to answer your question, yes. The coverage will, almost certainly, be just as nuts. Of all the celebrity spawn debuting right around now and in the near future—J. Lo's twins, Xtina's son, Jessica Alba's unborn child, Cate Blanchett's proto-Oscar winner—the highest interest remains with Brangelina's newest bump.

Now, the frenzy surrounding Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt may seem hard to beat—the birth in Namibia, the first photos selling for a reported $4 million—but baby-gossip watchers seem sure of another windfall.

According to an Us Weekly editor who recently spoke with Matt Lauer on the Today show, the impending Shiloh II will probably fetch the highest price for a magazine cover photo, when compared with all the others currently gestating or recently sprung. And given that Xtina's new son fetched a reported $1.5 million from People, that's no small feat.

"Seeing the little brother or sister of Shiloh is something that millions and millions of Americans will still pay money for," Janice Min told Lauer earlier this month.

(And oh, obligatory caveat: La Jolie hasn't officially confirmed a second pregnancy yet. So in the interests of responsible reporting, Jolie may just be sporting an oddly placed goiter.)

As far as what the "fuss" is, you'll have to ask someone more maternal. Here's Min's take on it: "Women sit around, and when you find out someone had a baby, the first thing anyone asks is, What does the baby look like? Can I see a picture?"

I'd rather look at photos of, well, pretty much anything else, I suppose. But I guess that's just me. And you.

Lisa O'Connor/ZUMAPress.com

Many stars, such as Angelina Jolie, are covered in tattoos. How do they deal with these for films? Are they covered with makeup, or are they removed digitally afterward? If the latter, that sounds like a lot of expensive extra work.
—Ron, Toronto

You have every reason to suspect digital retouching, given how besotted filmmakers are with it these days. Those Beowulf people had the real Angelina Jolie willing to appear in their movie, and they turned her into a rubber doll with a tail instead, just because they could. (There are guys out there who have played perfect games of Halo 3. Oddball, too. Doesn't mean I need to see it.)

The answer to your question usually involves no computers but rather good, old-fashioned movie makeup. The kind so thick neither light nor single-celled organisms may find hope of escape.

Lord forbid that Travis Barker go ahead and make a movie, but, say, Jessica Alba's Sanskrit wrist tattoo, which, I believe, was nowhere to be found in Good Luck Chuck? Or the disappearances of La Jolie's superdetailed arm tats for The Good Shepherd? That's pretty typical work, I am told.

"The darker the tattoo, the more difficult it is to cover," explains Leonard Engelman, director of education at the Cinema Makeup School in Los Angeles, as well as the governor of the makeup branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Still, he says, "two types of makeup we might use are made by Dermablend or Kryolan. They have so much pigment you can use a very thin amount and it would easily cover it."

Digital retouching is still too expensive to be considered for most films, he says.

A good makeup artist knows how to blend those formulas on the spot during a shoot to make the cosmetics exactly match the skin.

However, to give the makeup artists extra time, actors often come in before shooting starts for what's known as a makeup test. The actors get made up and do some test shots to see how things look, and artists can adjust their formulas accordingly—before a single frame gets shot.

"Most of your larger movies have film tests like that," says Engelman, who has worked on movies ranging from The Princess Diaries to Batman Forever.

So, go ahead, Angie, get a full set of sleeves. The makeup people have your back. And your front. And your arms. And your legs.