Steven Tyler has urged fans not to read too much into online video footage of him buying booze from a liquor store.

The sober rocker insists the alcohol he was caught buying was not for him.

The clip aired on TMZ.com and other websites as allegations suggesting Tyler was drunk when he slipped and fell from the stage at a South Dakota gig started circulating.

Tyler has denied he had been drinking before the accident on August 6th, which left him with a broken collarbone and head injuries – and prompted Aerosmith to cancel the remainder of their summer tour.

Of the liquor store footage, Tyler says, “A good friend of mine… the brother of the guy who works on my house, my housekeeper, passed away. I was at the funeral. After the funeral – they’re Italian and had a feast at the house – (there was) a wake, and I stopped at the liquor store and paid for the booze. I did not buy any for myself. It was never proven that I did. Some kid whipped out a phone and took a picture. Anything to sell papers. It was for the wake. I would do it over and over a million times.”

Source, Bauer-Griffin

Lily Allen dreams of being a “suburban mum”.

The ‘Fear’ singer gets so nervous before she appears on stage she is already thinking about the end of her career.

She said: “People think I’m this super confident person who’s all for female empowerment but it’s not true. I have every intention of becoming a suburban mum. I want to get married and have children. Being followed by the paparazzi is not a life I want.”

While Lily – who was most recently romantically linked to painter and decorator Sam Cooper and The Virgins guitarist Wade Oates – dreams of settling down and quitting the music industry, she has previously vowed to continue until she attracts a wealthy boyfriend.

She said: “I just hope I can stay famous enough for a little bit so someone rich will marry me. That’s all I really care about these days.”

However, the 24-year-old singer – who has dated a string of older men including Chemical Brothers star Ed Simons and art dealer Jay Jopling – doesn’t have long left to fulfill her dream, having once claimed she wants to retire before she turns 25.

She said: “It’s a great job, but it doesn’t leave time for what’s important. Like having a family. I’d like to live in the country and have a walled garden, and chickens and pigs.”

Source, Bauer-Griffin

Women’s rights campaigners have blasted the sentence handed to Chris Brown for his attack on Rihanna, insisting the R&B star should have been jailed.

Brown was given six months hard community labor, five years probation, and ordered to stay away from the singer after pleading guilty to felony assault.

He threatened to kill the singer and repeatedly punched, bit, and slapped her during the horrifying attack in his car after a pre-Grammy Awards party in Los Angeles in February.

Brown admitted the assault in June and was sentenced at an L.A. court on Tuesday after striking a deal with prosecutors.

But campaigners have criticized his punishment, insisting it sends the wrong message to perpetrators of domestic abuse.
U.S. Women’s Institute chief Roslyn Muraskin says, “I think it is terrible. Here is a guy that beat up his girlfriend – he deserves to see some prison time.”

Source, Bauer-Griffin

Liev Schreiber “became giddy” when he donned a dress for a new movie role.

The 41-year-old actor was surprised at how concerned he became over his appearance after taking on the role of a tough ex-Marine transvestite in ‘Taking Woodstock’ but admits he didn’t enjoy the experience at first.

He said: “It was exhilaratingly humiliating. But I completely became giddy in a strange way the moment I put on the dress. Vanity quickly set in, and I thought to myself, ‘I wish my belly was flatter. Let’s face it, I don’t look great in a dress, but it’s nice to hear I have nice legs.”

Liev’s discomfort was made worse by the reaction of his long-term girlfriend Naomi Watts – with who he raises two children, Alexander, two, and eight-month-old Samuel – who was stunned by his transformation.

He explained to People magazine: “She was horrified! It flipped her out. She was in shock for 30 seconds. Then she started to crack jokes.”

The actor says the transformation he underwent to get into character has given him a lot more appreciation of the effort women make to look good – but he insists it was worse for him.

He added: “The shoes are awful. But for a 6ft 3in tall man, to walk around in stilettos is nearly impossible. But women have no idea what it’s like for a grown hairy man to remove all of his hair from his body. Now that hurts!”

Source, Bauer-Griffin

The custody battle is on: Kate Gosselin will use footage from Jon & Kate Plus 8 to prove she should get full custody of the children she shares with soon-to-be ex Jon, 32. A source says Kate, 34, planned to split custody 50/50, but she reconsidered when her kids called while an unapproved babysitter, Stephanie Santoro, was on duty on Aug. 13.

“She doesn’t feel comfortable allowing Jon to have custody when she can’t trust him to keep them safe,” the insider says. The source says the two oldest girls, Cara and Mady, both 8, may choose which parent’s house they call home. The insider says, “When Jon starts acting like an adult, she’ll reconsider.”

Perhaps that explains why the ladies’ man — scared into staying in now that he could lose custody — canceled his plans to party at Shrine at the MGM Grand at Foxwoods in Connecticut on Aug. 22.

Source, Bauer-Griffin

While Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt headed to France to work on their relationship — after all, it’s where they shacked up when Angie was expecting their twins, Knox and Vivienne — a Jolie-Pitt insider reveals that the couple’s retreat has gotten off to a very rough start. “Brad has been adamant that Angie spend time with the family and focus on them with as much passion and energy as she does all her projects,” the source explains to OK!.

However, “right after they got to France, Brad found a box of scripts that Angie had said she wanted to read. She and Brad got into a fight over it. Angie stormed out of the room and went into the bedroom.”

In fact, the Wanted star was so mad that she demanded Brad sleep on the couch! Angie walked away from the fight to keep the kids from witnessing it — Maddox, Pax and Shiloh were there while Zahara and the twins napped in another room — while Brad did his part to downplay the spat.

“He played video games with the boys all night and made breakfast for the family in the morning, including fresh grapefruit juice for Angie,” says the source. While reconciliation isn’t always easy, the two seem to be doing their best to make their kids feel that all is well, including taking Maddox and Pax to the pet store the next day, Aug. 20, to expand their brood with gerbils and goldfish.

Source, Bauer-Griffin

Melanie Griffith knows all too well the challenges of getting – and staying – sober.

The actress, who underwent treatment twice for substance abuse in 1988 and 2000, checked into a rehab facility, her rep said Monday, to “reinforce her commitment to stay healthy.”

Her third stint in rehab marks what has been an on-again, off-again battle with addiction for the past three decades.

Admitting she has “an addictive personality,” Griffith, 52, once told Australian magazine New Idea four years after her first trip to rehab that she’s “lucky to be alive. I was never as bad as some people I knew, shooting heroin and stuff. But I did do a lot of drinking and cocaine. I just thought I was having a good time.”

Her problems first got out of control when the then 18-year-old Griffith was “living in a real wild ‘sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll’ lifestyle” with actor Don Johnson, whom she first married and divorced in 1976 (they later remarried). “I wasn’t very concerned about my future,” she told Parade in August 2000.

Five years later, Griffith married actor Steven Bauer. After the couple split in 1985, Griffith admitted, she turned to alcohol. Her wake-up call came on the set of Working Girl in 1988 when director Mike Nichols pulled her aside after she showed up to the set drunk. Three weeks after the shoot, Griffith entered the Hazelden Foundation in Minnesota.

The daughter of a Hollywood legend – her mother is actress Tippi Hedren – Griffith said she turned to drugs to quell her anxieties and to fill a void starting at a young age.

Replacing Love with Drugs
“I was never loved unconditionally,” she told Vanity Fair in 1994. “Coke, booze give you a feeling, a physical sensation … a buzz inside your body that takes the place of something you should have had when you were a child.” Griffith also admitted that when she was 10 she would drink wine “like a soft drink. I was medicating myself so I could escape my pain and insecurities.”

Ironically it was Johnson who helped her get sober. “The turning point,” says Griffith, was when the actor, who had been drug-free for five years, reconnected with his ex in 1989 during her stay at Hazelden and told her he would support her.

Almost a decade later in 2000, when the actress checked into another facility in California for a prescription painkiller addiction, another man stood by her side: husband Antonio Banderas.

The couple, in a joint interview for Primetime in 2002, told Diane Sawyer that they fought while she struggled with her abuse, which stemmed from a neck injury.

“Without seeing the will in her to repair, you know, yeah,” he admitted when asked if he would’ve left in order to get her to clean up. “It’s a tough thing and she confronted it … she spent time [at rehab] and things became much better.”

Overcoming Addiction
For now, Griffith’s latest trip back to rehab will be an uphill climb, according to addiction specialist Dr. David Sack, who runs Promises Treatment Center in Malibu, Calif.

“What’s true for anyone who’s been in recovery for a while, sometimes they take their situation for granted,” Sack, who is not treating Griffith, tells People. “When you have been doing well, it’s easy to minimize and you forget. You don’t want to believe you are still vulnerable … It requires strategy.”

“Overcoming addiction is tough but it can be made easier if you have someone that can offer support,” Griffith once wrote on her Web site. “My husband and family supported me so much through this journey and continue to do so.”

Source, Bauer-Griffin