Presenting the A-list of celebrity putdowns

HOLLYWOOD has always been a competitive place, so it is no surprise that some of its most memorable products are not films but withering putdowns, bitchy comments and bon-mots that positively drip bile.

So colossal, and at the same time so fragile, are the egos of studio bosses, directors and actors, that even the slightest perceived injustice can lead to a verbal exchange of the vilest proportions. And they have long memories, too.

What, for example, did Alan Parker - the director of Angela's Ashes and Midnight Express - have to say about the celebrated New Yorker critic Pauline Kael? He is on record as calling her "a demented bag-lady".

Perhaps she didn't like one of his films.

And that is one of the milder quotes.

Aficionados of such grade-A bitchiness should pick up next month's edition of Empire magazine, which has assembled 50 of the most gloriously cruel and nasty Hollywood quotes. Like the newly single Nicole Kidman on life after Tom: "Now I can wear heels..."

On the same subject, the extravagant producer Don Simpson, who died in 1996, said: "I would never put Tom Cruise down.

He's already kinda short."

Some have become classics; others are freshly minted. Here is Gosford Park director Robert Altman on the Hollywood stars who refused to fly after 11 September: "They're so swell-headed they think they're actually targets, which they should be."

Others go wincingly straight to the point.

Director Peter Bogdanovich, reflecting on working with Cher, said: "It was like being in a blender with an alligator."

Walter Matthau said of a certain Funny Girl: "I'm number 10 at the box office.

Right under Barbra Streisand. Can you imagine being under Barbra Streisand?

Get me a bag. I may throw up."

And director Don Siegel said of working with Bette Midler: "I'd let my wife, children and animals starve before I'd subject myself to something like that again."

Some manage a little self-deprecation a rare commodity in Hollywood. On working with ET, Steven Spielberg said: "Oh, torture. My pubic hairs went grey."

And some remain anonymous, like the mystery person who viewed the streets being packed for the funeral of a movie mogul and said: "You see! Give the public what they want and they'll come!"

Copyright 2002
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