How do you know when it's been a slow news week in Hollywood? And what fills the void when no celebutante of ill repute has been caught drink-driving/publicly stripping/indulging in a catfight with a co-celebutante at a dubiously 'hot' nightspot?
Rumours of A-list break-ups, as it turns out. During a week when not much was going on - unless you count Amy Winehouse's crack cocaine-fuelled emphysema, or boffo box office takings from animated films such as Wall-E -
the blogosphere has been ablaze with talk of the imminent break-up of two mega-couples.
It all started with Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner, truly Hollywood's young golden couple in that they are nice-looking, nice to each other, have a cute daughter whom they seem to adore, solid careers and have not been tainted by scandal. News reports began surfacing that the couple is on the verge of splitting, because they have rarely been seen together, and have been photographed with their two-year-old daughter Violet individually. Be that as it may, what's wrong anyway with a parent wanting some one-on-one time with a child, allowing the other spouse to get a manicure/have a massage/sleep in? The reasoning was flimsy enough - after all, there were no adulterous affairs lurking in the background, no skanky exes showing up on the scene.
So just as soon as the gossip began to surface, it was swatted down by a publicist, who said the reports were '100 per cent fabricated'. As, hopefully, they should be - although my cynical side likes to recall how Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston insisted they were solid as a rock about five minutes before they announced they were splitting.
Still, I doubt such a thing will happen here. There is something uniquely nice and 'normal' about Affleck and Garner; they do their own thing, live their own lives, don't court the beast that is the tabloid media in this town. I remember talking to Garner not that long ago, when she was promoting The Kingdom and recalling how down-to-earth and pleasant she was, saying things were going well on the home front, and that's all she wanted to say about it because, by the looks of things, she didn't want to jinx it. You have to admire a little healthy superstition in a famous actress. But it was more than that: she seemed genuinely happy and at ease, and as anybody who has ever been in an established relationship knows, if things are crumby at home, it's going to show up all over your face. Even if you're an actor.
