Sex and the City star Chris Noth recently popped in to Sciuscià, the new restaurant in the Hotel Giraffe, and asked owner Gianfranco Sorrentino if there were any bartending jobs available. No, he’s not looking to make some extra cash. He was asking on behalf of his girlfriend, actress Tara Wilson. Sure enough, Sorrentino told Noth to fax over her résumé. No decision has been made yet, but our tipster tells us that Noth has been in three times since then to ask about Wilson’s chances.
It appears New York Daily News and U.S. News & World Report publisher Mort Zuckerman is looking to settle down again. We hear that Zuckerman, 65, has been dating model-actress Marisa Berenson, 56. A spy at the recent Whitney Museum of American Art’s Black White + Whitney party overheard Zuckerman tell a pal, “I want to start another family.” Zuckerman – who was once linked to Patricia Duff – divorced his wife of five years, Marla Prather, in May 2001. They have a 5-year-old daughter, Abigail. Berenson has been married twice and has one daughter, 25-year-old Starlite Melody. A rep for Zuckerman denies there’s any romance between his boss and Berenson: “Mr. Zuckerman thinks Ms. Berenson is a wonderful woman, but they are just friends.”
Tyson Beckford has woman trouble. Well, at least with the two who keep showing up at his weekly party at Noel Ashman’s Veruka. The drama started about a month ago when two twentysomethings – a chunky brunette and a lithe redhead – showed up at Beckford’s Tuesday-night “Saint-Tropez” party and wouldn’t leave his side. “They were following him around everywhere, talking to him about getting him a part in their movie,” an insider told us, “but after they followed him to the bathroom, he told security they had to go.” But even after a guard escorted the wacky duo outside, they stayed put – screaming and crying – by the curb until 5 a.m. “They were acting so crazy, security escorted Tyson to his car,” one reveler told us. The pair has shown up every Tuesday since, trying to dupe security by wearing disguises. “I’ve seen them standing at the door, wearing different hats,” says our spy, “but they never get in.”
It appears Billy Joel and former flame Carolyn Beegan may be rekindling their romance. Not only did she accompany him to the opening of his Broadway show, Movin’ Out, but we hear that he recently caused near-pandemonium in the East Hampton restaurant Bamboo when he surprised the towering redhead – who was celebrating her birthday with twenty friends – with a ten-week-old pug to replace Lola, Beegan’s pet who passed away last spring. During their six-year relationship – which ended in 2000 – Joel became so enamored of Lola that he penned “Waltz #3 (For Lola)” on his first classical album, Billy Joel: Fantasies & Delusions. Beegan named the new pup Isabelle. Joel’s rep insists the two are just “very good friends.”
Ted Baker provides the uniforms for the managers at DB Bistro Moderne and the waitstaff at Butter; Club Monaco outfits Cafeteria; English haberdashery Thomas Pink dresses them at Washington Park; and now the buzz among staff at the legendary Magnolia Bakery on Bleecker Street is that they’re getting free shirts from Marc Jacobs, who has two stores across the street. But this isn’t simply another case of the designer promoting himself. The shirts are the ones that Jacobs specifically designed to raise money for Cancer Care. He hopes to boost sales by dressing the bakery workers.
Jay McInerney’s been hanging out at the Flatiron-district offices of Lot 47 Films, but he’s not working on a movie deal, at least not at the moment. He’s shadowing the independent film company’s CEO, Greg Williams, while researching his novel-in-progress. McInerney – whose last novel, Model Behavior, was published four years ago – is said to be basing a character on Williams, a former investment banker who left Wall Street for moviemaking three years ago.
Robert De Niro is the latest celebrity to entertain our troops. We hear he’ll be at Tampa’s MacDill Air Force Base – headquarters for the U.S. Central Command – on December 4 for a special screening for 1,500 troops of Analyze That, the upcoming sequel to his and Billy Crystal’s 1999 comedy hit Analyze This.
With Catherine Townsend.