Table of contents for December 16, 2024 in Globe

PRESSING BUSINESS CHIPS hunk ERIK ESTRADA gets taken to the cleaners — to fetch his laundry in Burbank HOW FLABULOUS! Country fat cat GARTH BROOKS throws his weight around in Music City at the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame Gala SNOW WAY! Wayne’s World funnyman MIKE MYERS has said so long to his gnarly movie mullet — and his hair color! SHE’S GUN-HO! REGINA KING is hot as a pistol on the New York City set of the upcoming thriller Caught Stealing SOUR GRAPES Former Naked Gun beauty PRISCILLA PRESLEY is not aging like fine wine! THAR SHE BLOWS! MELISSA GORGA — star of The Real Housewives of New Jersey — takes the easy way out to tidy up her leaf-strewn yard…

HARD-driving Blake Shelton is saddling up with ubersuccessful Yellowstone producer Taylor Sheridan, and sources sing he hopes their singing competition show The Road will be an even bigger success than his old show, The Voice! The project, which is set to premiere next fall on CBS, will follow a country star who takes aspiring singers on tour to see how they fare with local fans before picking the “king” of The Road. “Nothing would please him more than to make this the biggest music competition show on the air!” snitches a TV insider — even though Blake’s wife, Gwen Stefani, is still a coach on The Voice. Blake, 48, says the old show changed his life and he’s learned from his experience on it — and thinks a fresh format will…

DISGRUNTLED diva Cher claims her late ex and music partner Sonny Bono swindled her out of her fair share of dough made during the duo’s singing and TV heyday! “He took all my money,” Cher gripes. “I just thought, ‘We’re husband and wife. Half the things are his, half the things are mine.’ It didn’t occur to me that there was another way.” But the superstar blabs that Bono secretly set up a company called Cher Enterprises — and even though the entity bore her name, Sonny owned 95 percent of the biz and the remainder went to his lawyer! Cher met the nasal-voiced crooner in 1962 when she was 16 and he was 27 — and the unlikely couple got hitched two years later. The singing spouses released a…

MARTHA: HOME OF THE WHOPPERS! Domestic diva MARTHA STEWART’s takedown of harsh conditions during her infamous five-month stay at a country-club prison has been exposed by a former cellmate as a pack of lies — just like the insider-trading fibs that got Martha thrown in the clink in the first place! The 83-year-old self-made billionaire says in a new Netflix documentary that she had a “terrible” time at FPC Alderson — a minimum-security women’s prison in West Virginia that goes by the moniker Camp Cupcake. “I was dragged into solitary for touching an officer,” she whines. “No food or water for a day … It was not a cupcake.” But Stewart’s “best friend” from lockup, ex-inmate LISA GUARINO, 62, hoots that it’s hogwash! “I’m not a fan of the federal…

ELLA PURNELL The Arcane villain could have cranked up her steampunk look with Victorian boots KATIE HOLMES The former Dawson’s Creek tomboy is girlish and glam in an elegant color-block gown JODIE SWEETIN The Full House alum channels a 1960s go-go girl — but her style isn’t groovy today TAMRON HALL With more precise finishing, the TV gabber’s gown would’ve earned more applause HALSEY The Castle singer comes off as cartoonish in clashing separates and cutesy knee-highs…

TRUE love is still written in the stars for Tinseltown types! Here are the celebs who happily waltzed down the aisle in 2024. JANUARY How I Met Your Mother alum JOSH RADNOR, 49, married headshrinker JORDANA JACOBS, 36, amid a snow storm in Hudson Valley, N.Y., Jan. 6. It’s the first marriage for the actor, who played Ted Mosby on the long-running sitcom. Actor DONALD GLOVER, 41, revealed in January he secretly wed 35-year-old MICHELLE WHITE, the mother of his three sons, one morning while filming his new TV series Mr. & Mrs. Smith — then returned to the set that same day! FEBRUARY Country singer LAUREN ALAINA, 30, wed businessman CAM ARNOLD, 35, in Nashville, Feb. 4. He popped the question at the American Idol alum’s fave place, the Grand…

AGING former President Bill Clinton is shamelessly trying to salvage his scandal-scarred image with a sanitized memoir that includes apologies to ex-White House intern Monica Lewinsky and others, according to insiders — who say they aren’t buying the smooth talker’s crocodile tears! The married Commander in Cheat is being bashed for halfheartedly addressing his 18-month affair with the then-22-year-old staffer in the 1990s — and moaning about being grilled over the fling in 2018! “I had apologized to [Lewinsky] and everybody else I wronged,” Clinton, 78, writes in Citizen, while recalling how Today’s Craig Melvin questioned his version of events. Presidential expert Leon Wagener calls the book Clinton’s “deathbed confession” and a desperate bid to rewrite history by glossing over his predatory past! “This is his remorseful plea to be…

A SHAKING Valerie Bertinelli shared a video showing her hands trembling and glistening with sweat, the aftereffects of a panic attack! “I had a really bad anxiety attack today. I haven’t had one like this in a very, very long time,” explained Valerie, 64. To regain her serenity, the Valerie’s Home Cooking star meditated and did EMDR — eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy. She said she posted about her experience because “none of us want to feel like we’re alone in that.” The scary episode came just weeks after she split from Mike Goodnough after 10 months of dating. As GLOBE previously reported, Valerie is still haunted by the ghost of her dead first husband, rocker Eddie Van Halen — who was also behind her split from second hubby…

SCREEN hunk Ben Affleck’s old flame Ana de Armas has had a secret crush on Bradley Cooper for years — and now the Cuban beauty is ready to pounce, squeal sources! Actress Ana, 36, who has recently been linked to the son of Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, was all smiles when she and Bradley, 49, got together at a Louis Vuitton store opening in New York City on Nov. 14. The two first met when they made the 2016 comedy flick War Dogs. “She was intimidated because War Dogs was one of her first English-language movies, and Bradley was already a big star,” says a source. “But they kept in touch, and she wouldn’t mind if sparks continued to fly!” Sources say Ana’s amorous feelings are not sitting pretty…

NAUGHTY Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor were at the center of scandalous affair rumors when they filmed Moulin Rouge nearly 25 years ago, and sources spill it’s still a sticking point for her then-hubby Tom Cruise — who has hated the Scottish actor ever since! “I suppose Tom’s philosophy is, where there’s smoke there’s fire,” spills a spy. “While he has never publicly acknowledged that Ewan and Nicole’s closeness is what killed his marriage, Tom has utterly frozen Ewan out of his wide-reaching filmmaking network and hasn’t relented in two and a half decades. “It’s absolutely reflective of his dark side. He holds grudges. You just can’t be friends with both of these guys at the same time!” Tom and Nicole divorced in 2001 after 11 years of marriage, and…

THE tragic findings in the drug-linked deaths of One Direction crooner Liam Payne and Friends star Matthew Perry are so similar it’s mind-boggling. In both cases, cops have busted people surrounding the stars, accusing them of being enablers — and, guess what, they weren’t even close friends or family! No, they were opportunistic hangers-on and people familiar with the drug scene. Perry, 54, was found dead in the hot tub of his L.A. home on Oct. 28 last year. He was pumped full of the often-lethal drug ketamine, which coroners determined he’d shot up TWICE that day! Cops arrested five people — two doctors, an accused drug dealer, Perry’s personal aide and an alleged drug supplier, a gal known as the Ketamine Queen — on a variety of charges of…

WHEELIN’ dealin’ Ryan Seacrest is in line for a head-spinning pay bump and a new and improved contract going into 2025 — thanks to his bumper crop ratings on Wheel of Fortune — but bosses aren’t being total pushovers and want him to jump through some really high hoops before ponying up the moolah, sources squeal. “Ryan and his team are playing it cool and not gloating but there’s no question he has electrified the Wheel franchise and brought in new fans with his cheerful, high-energy presentation of the game,” spills an insider. “That success is going to translate into a longer-term deal than his current two-year contract — and we’re talking BIG. Ryan could be the first game show host to make $50 million a year!” Sources say Ryan…

AUSTRALIA is big — in fact, the Down Under continent is wider than the moon! Its diameter of nearly 4,000 kilometers tops the big bright ball of green cheese by 600 kilometers. GOOGLE IMAGES, a search engine for looking up photos online, was created after Jennifer Lopez broke the internet by wearing a green Versace silk chiffon dress to the 2000 Grammys. The frock left little to the imagination. WHAT says Paris better than the Eiffel Tower? But architect Gustave Eiffel initially offered the iconic design to the Spanish city of Barcelona, which told him, “No, gracias!” Even France had its doubts at first, with 300 prominent intellectuals and artists calling it an eyesore. HISTORY-making Apollo astronaut Neil Armstrong wanted his hair back! He threatened to sue a barbershop owner…

A DEVASTATED Dolly Parton is reeling from the loss of another beloved brother — and his death has the 78-year-old country queen fearing for her own mortality! The Jolene hitmaker’s older brother David Parton, 82, a Marine veteran and retired construction company superintendent, passed away on Nov. 15, Dolly’s sister Stella shared on social media. “It’s never easy to say goodbye to a loved one but he got his angel wings and is now at peace,” she added. David is the fourth of Dolly’s six brothers to pass away — Larry died four days after his birth in 1955, she lost Floyd in 2018, and her country musician brother Randy passed away in 2021. “Dolly has taken all these family tragedies very hard,” a source tells GLOBE. “Her big brother David…

NEARLY 45 years after Richard Gere’s breakout performance in American Gigolo, he reunites with the noir drama’s director Paul Schrader in Oh, Canada. In the brandnew flick, Gere, 75, portrays a Vietnam War dissenter who fled to the Great White North — but attempts to tell his story decades later during his dying days. Here are 10 things you don’t know about the An Officer and a Gentleman hunk. 1 His family’s surname was originally Geer — but his paternal greatgrandfather changed its spelling. 2 Both of Richard’s parents were Mayflower descendants, and his ancestors include the Pilgrims John Billington, William Brewster, Francis Eaton, Francis Cooke, Degory Priest, George Soule and Richard Warren. 3 He earned a gymnastics scholarship to the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he briefly studied philosophy…

MASKED menace Stephan Stowe attempted to snatch a 6-year-old boy from his father during a brazen Big Apple attack in broad daylight, police charge. Surveillance video captured a man — identified by cops as Stowe — trying to rip the child from his dad’s grip in Brooklyn’s largely Jewish neighborhood of Crown Heights. The suspected kidnapper lifted the youngster off the ground. But the protective pop refused to let go of his little one’s hand and pulled him back to safety, while also bravely protecting his other son! Lawmen say Stowe, who was promptly arrested, lives on the same block as the targeted family, whose identity was not released. He is facing charges of kidnapping, harassment, and acting in a manner injurious to a child. A pal swears Stowe, 28,…

CELEBRITIES are just like everyone, dodging when life throws them curveballs and rejoicing at home runs — and GLOBE can reveal that 2024 was a doozy of emotional highs and lows for Hollywood! From the joy of new babies to the promise of happily ever after to the crushing heartbreak of failed love, a who’s who of showbiz faced it all. This special report spotlights the milestones that Tinseltown’s stars will never forget!…

HAPPY endings unraveled for a host of celebrities — even on the second time around for Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez! See all the stars whose love-ins crashed and burned in 2024. JANUARY The music died for Backstreet Boys’ AJ MCLEAN, 46, who revealed Jan. 1 he and wife ROCHELLE KARIDIS, 43, were divorcing following 11 years of marriage and two daughters. Former Cosby Show kid LISA BONET, 57, filed for divorce from Aquaman hunk JASON MOMOA, 45, Jan. 8, two years after separating. They share two children, LOLA, 17, and NAKOA-WOLF, 15. FEBRUARY The duet ended after four years of marriage for singer ELLIE GOULDING, 37, and art dealer CASPAR JOPLING, 32, they announced Feb. 23. They share son ARTHUR, 3. MARCH Selling Sunset’s CHELSEA LAZKANI, 31, rang up “no…

TODAY top dog Savannah Guthrie is celebrating Craig Melvin being named the replacement for outgoing cohost Hoda Kotb because the promotion of her handpicked yes-man cements the power-hungry diva’s control over the morning show, tipsters tell GLOBE. “Savannah has worked a long time for this moment,” an insider dishes. “She’s been patient — and maybe even a little ruthless — but she got what she wanted. It’s a testament to how smart she is!” As GLOBE previously reported, sources snitch that savvy Savannah, 52, and fellow Today mean girl Jenna Bush Hager, 43, gave on-air rival Hoda the cold shoulder for years to drive the fan favorite out the door! And now that the 60-year-old single mom is leaving to spend more time with her kids — Haley, 7, and…

TEEN American Idol sensation Triston Harper’s bombshell mic-drop is flummoxing fans — he recently revealed that at the tender age of 16, he has married his 17-year-old girlfriend Paris Reed, and they’re already expecting a baby! Now sources say some worry that he may be growing up a little too fast. “Triston had a fantastic run on Idol and he should be capitalizing on that, lining up high-profile gigs and a recording contract,” sings a source. “Instead, he’s got to worry about being a kid raising a kid and starting a family. He’s gonna have his hands full — and it might be more than he can handle!” Harper, a Native American who became one of the youngest Top 5 finishers in American Idol history this past season, proudly dropped…

DESPERATE to leave his mark on history, bumbling Joe Biden is hurtling America toward World War III during the final days of his disastrous presidency, top security and defense experts warn. In a shocking lame-duck decision, the clueless commander in chief recently authorized Ukraine to strike inside Russian territory with U.S.-made long-range missiles as its fight against their neighboring nation’s invasion drags on for its 33rd month. But the alarming act has led Russia’s ruthless president, Vladimir Putin, to send 50,000 more troops — bolstered by an additional 15,000 North Korean soldiers — to the front lines in retaliation! Now, sources say the reckless maneuver has motivated incoming President-elect Donald Trump, 78, to exercise his Art of the Deal! “With just 60 days to go before Trump takes over, we…

Hope JIMMY KIMMEL enjoyed hosting the Oscars last year, ’cause he’s been replaced. Rival latenight host CONAN O’BRIEN has been tapped to emcee this year’s Academy Awards. Kimmel has hosted the Oscars four times. JOHN STAMOS got whacked with fan backlash for donning a false bald-head cap to show his solidarity with cancer-battling Full House pal DAVE COULIER. Dave, 65, thought the cap was funny. Never say never. Salesgal CHRISHELL STAUSE is returning to Selling Sunset after saying she’d quit if rival NICOLE YOUNG was hired. She reportedly backed down after bigwigs refused to budge on Nicole. Two drummers who played with the iconic Bee Gees died within days of each other. Saturday Night Fever stickman DENNIS BRYON, 76, passed Nov. 14, followed by COLIN “SMILEY” PETERSEN, 78, Nov. 18. Poor…

PETRIFIED Princess Kate and her horrified hubby, Prince William, are reeling after masked intruders breached the Windsor Castle estate where they reside with their three young children — and concerned courtiers and lawmen are convinced the caper was a new attempt to kidnap the couple’s kids and hold them for a king’s ransom, tipsters tell GLOBE! The disturbing incident at the sprawling 15,800-acre property, which contains Kate and William’s home Adelaide Cottage, is being publicly called a simple burglary by U.K. police. But sources whisper that investigators have reason to believe the two unidentified culprits — who scaled a six-foot fence during the nighttime raid — may have been targeting royal offspring Prince George, 11, Princess Charlotte, 9, and Prince Louis, 6! “Scotland Yard is characteristically playing it close to…

BIZARRE Billy Bob Thornton has done a lot of weird things in his time — including swapping vials of blood with ex-wife Angelina Jolie — and now he admits he shops the women’s department for size 6 jeans because he has scrawny little “bird legs!” “The reason I don’t like to wear men’s jeans is because they’re all too baggy,” thuds Thornton. “I’ve got bird legs and it just feels like I’m in a tent. I like a nice fit and they fit great with boots!”…

SPACE case Corey Lizette Burke fatally whacked her pop with an ice pickax in Seattle after melting down over Donald Trump’s presidential victory — and the blood-spattered butcher was found smiling and clapping gleefully not far from her father’s corpse, lawmen say. According to charging documents, Burke believed her election night rampage at the $800,000 home she shared with her now-dead dad, Timothy Burke, was an “act of liberation!” The 33-year-old suspect is a training program manager at the spacecraft company Blue Origin and is married to transgender writer Samantha Leigh Allen, author of Real Queer America: LGBT Stories from Red States. Authorities allege Burke was “overwhelmed” by Republican Trump’s landslide win over Democrat Kamala Harris and snapped when Timothy, 67, refused to turn off the lights! Investigators charge the…

IN A year dominated by politics, many in Hollywood elected to turn out a new generation of voters! Here’s a rundown of 2024’s celebrity baby brigade. JANUARY It was a boy, SHEPHERD, for actor JOSH DUHAMEL, 52, and his model wife, AUDRA MARI, 30, on Jan. 11. Duhamel also has a son, AXL, 11, with former wife FERGIE. Olympic superstar swimmer MICHAEL PHELPS, 39, and his model wife, NICOLE JOHNSON, 39, welcomed their fourth son, NICO, Jan. 16, joining BOOMER, 8, BECKETT, 6, and MAVERICK, 5. FEBRUARY Former Bachelor NICK VIALL, 44, and fiancée NATALIE JOY, 26, announced the arrival of daughter RIVER ROSE on Feb. 5, three days after her birth. Country singer JESSIE JAMES DECKER, 36, delivered her fourth child with former NFL star ERIC DECKER, 37, Feb.…

FORMER child actor Frankie Muniz’s determination to be a NASCAR star is driving wife Paige Price crackers, according to sources — who say the former model wants him to put the brakes on his budding Truck Series racing career after he was injured in a scary crash! The 39-year-old Malcolm in the Middle alum was caught in a nasty pileup at Phoenix Raceway Nov. 8 when his Ford F-150 was smacked from behind and he slammed into a truck in front, forcing him to be rushed to a hospital. While Muniz wasn’t seriously hurt and vowed, “We’re going to be better next year,” his wife of five years and mom of his son Mauz, 3, was deeply shaken by the close call! “Frankie has a burning ambition to become a…

1. In It Takes a Thief, what job was master cat burglar Alexander Mundy — played by Robert Wagner — recruited from prison to do? 2. What sophisticated classic film star played his father, Alistair? 3. What famous pop group performed their chart-topping hit on the show in 1970? A: 1. Government-authorized thief; 2. Fred Astaire; 3. The 5th Dimension sang One Less Bell to Answer “I want my children to have all the things I couldn’t afford. Then I want to move in with them.”—Phyllis Diller…

THE musical Cats ran on Broadway for 18 long years —but the 2019 movie adaptation slunk away from view almost immediately after vicious reviews clawed it to bits and made audiences allergic to it! Such big names as TAYLOR SWIFT, IDRIS ELBA, JUDI DENCH and JENNIFER HUDSON got stuck up a tree playing furballs in this combo of live action, animation and such awful CGI effects that the movie had to be retooled after opening in wide release — a startling Hail Mary move that was called “unheard of!”…