Walgreens won’t pursue charges against LaBeouf

Walgreens won’t pursue
charges against LaBeouf

CHICAGO — Shia LaBeouf is no longer facing criminal charges for refusing to leave a downtown Chicago drugstore last month. The 21-year-old “Transformers” star was in a Chicago courtroom for only minutes Wednesday before prosecutors read a letter from the Walgreens Co. and a security company saying they don’t want to continue the case. LaBeouf, of Glendale, Calif., didn’t speak but smiled at the news. He was charged with misdemeanor criminal trespassing after his Nov. 4 arrest. Police said a security guard told LaBeouf he needed to leave the Walgreens store because he appeared to be drunk, but LaBeouf refused to leave. Police didn’t administer a sobriety test because LaBeouf wasn’t driving a vehicle. LaBeouf co-stars with Harrison Ford in “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” due in theaters next year.

Gauguin sculpture is
a forgery, says museum

CHICAGO — A half-man, half-goat ceramic figure supposedly sculpted by 19th century French artist Paul Gauguin has delighted aficionados visiting the Art Institute of Chicago for a decade, but now the museum says “The Faun” is a fake. “No one could think of any other instance in which anything like this happened here,” the director of public affairs at the institute, Erin Hogan, told the Chicago Tribune for a story posted Tuesday on its Web site. “So we don’t have experience in this area.” The museum said the sculpture is among scores of forgeries produced by the Greenhalgh family, which has been under investigation by authorities in Great Britain for nearly two years. A private dealer bought the piece at Sotheby’s in 1994 and the Art Institute purchased it from the dealer three years later. A British judge sentenced Shaun Greenhalgh, 47, to four years and eight months in prison last month. His mother, Olive, 83, received a suspended term of 12 months, and his father, George, 84, was to be sentenced later. Shaun Greenhalgh created the fakes, while his parents handled most of the sales. All three pleaded guilty earlier this year to defrauding art institutions and other buyers over 17 years. They had also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to laundering the proceeds from the sale of a fake Egyptian statuette.

Johnny Depp opens up
in magazine interview

LOS ANGELES — To Johnny Depp, freedom means simplicity and anonymity. “I’m sure it will be a possibility someday again. Maybe when I get old. They get tired of you,” the actor tells Esquire magazine in its January issue, available Friday. “‘Didn’t you used to be Johnny Depp?’ That will be the clincher.” The 44-year-old star of “Sweeney Todd,” which opens Christmas Day, talked with the magazine about the lessons he’s learned over his two decades in Hollywood. His friend and mentor Marlon Brando taught Depp to keep his private life private. “That’s your world and it’s nobody else’s business,” he recalls Brando saying. “It’s not anybody’s entertainment.” A self-described people-watcher, Depp says he’s learned to enter restaurants through the kitchen and hotels through the parking garage. “It’ll definitely make you a little weird if you’re constantly being stared at,” he says.

Today’s birthdays

Former Secretary of State George P. Shultz is 87. Actor-comedian Dick Van Dyke is 82. Actor Christopher Plummer is 80. Actor Robert Prosky is 77. Country singer Buck White is 77. Music/film producer Lou Adler is 74. Movie producer Richard Zanuck is 73. Singer John Davidson is 66. Singer Ted Nugent is 59. Rock musician Jeff “Skunk” Baxter is 59. Country musician Ron Getman is 59. Actor Robert Lindsay is 58. Country singer-musician Randy Owen is 58. Actress Wendie Malick is 57. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is 54. Country singer John Anderson is 53. Singer-songwriter Steve Forbert is 53. Singer-actor Morris Day is 51. Actor Steve Buscemi is 50. Actor Johnny Whitaker is 48. Actor-comedian Jamie Foxx is 40. Rock singer-musician Thomas Delonge is 32. Actress Chelsea Hertford is 26. Rock singer Amy Lee (Evanescence) is 26. Country singer Taylor Swift is 18.