NEWSMAKERS

NEWSMAKERS

George Michael thanks hospital for saving life

LONDON

George Michael appeared outside his North London home Friday and acknowledged that he had nearly died during his monthlong battle with pneumonia.

“It was touch and go for a while,” said the singer, who appeared to have lost weight during his month in a hospital in Vienna. He fought back tears and seemed short of breath.

“They spent three weeks keeping me alive basically. I don’t want to take you through all of it because some of it I want to protect my family from and I’m sure I’ll get it all written down, but it was by far the worst month of my life.”

The solo star and former “Wham!” frontman said his staff had downplayed the severity of his illness to avoid alarming his fans.

Rapper is arrested on vandalism charge

WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif.

The rapper known as “Tyler, the Creator” was arrested after authorities say he got rowdy after a show at the Roxy Theatre in West Hollywood.

Los Angeles County sheriff’s Sgt. Arthur Famble Jr. said the rapper was arrested Thursday night after he appeared in a show by his group, Odd Future, and destroyed the Sunset Strip nightclub’s electronic soundboard.

The sergeant said Roxy security guards called deputies, and the 20-year-old rapper, whose real name is Tyler Gregory Okonma, was booked for investigation of felony vandalism. He was released early Friday on $20,000 bail.

As Okonma was being led to a squad car, the crowd leaving the Roxy became angry and rushed toward deputies, Famble said.

Role got Bullock back into acting

NEW YORK

Sandra Bullock wasn’t looking to return to acting when Stephen Daldry called about “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.”

Bullock’s last film, 2009’s “The Blind Side,” was the kind of career apogee of which most actresses dream, winning her a best actress Academy Award in what essentially amounted to a coronation of Bullock as America’s most beloved female movie star.

But the accomplishment — which would normally be followed by a wave of projects to capitalize on the momentum — was soon marred by public scandal. Bullock’s husband, “Monster Garage” host Jesse James, was revealed to have been unfaithful. The fallout, which led to divorce, was covered relentlessly by the tabloids. Bullock still went ahead and adopted a baby boy.

When Daldry, the director of “The Hours” and “The Reader,” approached her about “Extremely Loud,” Bullock wasn’t sure she would return to acting at all.

“I honestly didn’t think I was in a place where I wanted to work or wanted to step out of where I was,” she says. “I wasn’t prepared. But the opportunity was louder than my head.”

The chance was to play a supporting but key role in Daldry’s adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel. In it, Bullock plays the mother of an uncommonly bright, precocious child (Thomas Horn), whose father (Tom Hanks) dies on Sept. 11. It’s a particularly wrenching story about grief and reconciliation.

Gere earns award for humanitarian work

ROCHESTER, N.Y.

Richard Gere is getting a George Eastman Award in upstate New York for his contributions to movies and humanitarian causes.

The star of such films as “An Officer and a Gentleman” and “Pretty Woman” will be honored Feb. 16 during a ceremony at Rochester’s George Eastman House, the restored home of the founder of photography pioneer Eastman Kodak Co.

Gere has appeared in more than 40 films. In 1991, he founded the Gere Foundation, which gives grants for public health, education and emergency relief in Tibet. He has long been prominent in the fight against HIV-AIDS.

Past recipients of the George Eastman Award include Lauren Bacall, Martin Scorsese and Meryl Streep.

Associated Press