Scarlett Johansson, Ryan Reynolds past resurfaces amid Blake vs Justin
Scarlett Johansson and Ryan Reynolds are back in the news years after their quiet divorce, as the actor’s current wife Blake Lively deals with a legal fight with her co-star Justin Baldoni.
While Ryan and Lively are now seen as one of Hollywood’s most stable couples, some fans are revisiting his past with Johansson.
The two actors were once married, though their time together was short and mostly kept away from the spotlight.
The Jurassic World actress and the Deadpool & Wolverine actor began dating in 2007, not long after Reynolds ended his engagement to singer Alanis Morissette.
And by May 2008, the former couple were engaged and later held a private wedding ceremony in Vancouver Canada.
But the marriage did not last as work kept them away too often and that became too much to handle.
However, Scarlett was the one who ended things in 2010 and their divorce was finalised in 2011.
Years later, the actress said that she was only 23 and Ryan was 31 at the time and did not really know what marriage meant back then.
An insider revealed at that time: “They are being very civil about it. The big problem with their relationship is the distance. They spent a lot of time apart when they are working… She’s been unhappy for a while.”
Scarlett and Ryan are back in the buzz as Blake Lively sues Justin Baldoni. She claims he entered her trailer while she was topless and crossed the line during a kiss scene in their film It Ends With Us.
Justin then hit back with a lawsuit against both Blake and Ryan, claiming their team tried to ruin his name and demanded 400 million dollars in damages.
The legal fight is still far from over and for now, all eyes are on how this battle will play out.
Success is constant evolution, says actor Priyanka Chopra Jonas, a popular Hindi cinema star, who is now firmly focused on expanding her filmography in the West. In her latest Hollywood project Heads of State, Priyanka plays Noel Bisset, an MI6 agent with a past with the British Prime Minister Sam Clarke (Idris Elba). The actress said she has had a great run in India and is looking for something similar in her work in Hollywood.
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“It is constant evolution for sure. I would’ve never imagined where I am today when in 2002, I started my first movie. But I feel like I’m really nascent in my work in the West so far. I have a major filmography in my Indian work. I’ve been able to work in various genres, work with the most incredible actors and filmmakers.”
The actor has played central roles in shows and movies such as Quantico, Baywatch, Citadel, The Matrix Resurrections and Love Again. Priyanka said Heads of State, which is now streaming on Prime Video, was a fun film to do. “I want to be proud of the work that I take on. I try to take on characters that have agency and are strong and have something to do in the movies versus being ornamental.”
Both Priyanka and Cena, who has a massive fan following in India for being a WWE wrestler before turning to acting, first met each other on the set of the Ilya Naishuller-directed movie.
“I knew of John from his WWE days in India. He’s so well known in the country. It’s hard to not know him, especially when he made his transition into movies. I thought that was very interesting and his choice of parts were great. So, I was very excited to do this movie with him,” she said.
Kanye West, Sean Diddy Combs new song in the cards?
Kanye West and Sean Diddy Combs are fully expected to collaborate on a song.
The rappers, who have been cancelled by Hollywood, would be happy to well align themselves for an album in the future.
A source close to Ye tells Page Six: “Music was a salvation for him, Diddy, like it was for Ye. Diddy’s looking to make amends. I think a song would be the best way to communicate a change,” said one source who regularly works with Kanye.
“Be on the lookout for the song,” the source added
“Ye is brave enough to touch a hot [rod like] Diddy right now. I don’t think any other artists would,” they added.
This comes as Diddy’s ex, Cassie Ventura, accused the rapper of sexually assaulting her.
Ventura admitted in the sex trafficking trial that Diddy once asked her to get into an inflatable pool filled with baby oil.
Ventura revealed that although she did not want to engage in the activity, she was afraid Diddy would not agree if she refused to do so.
“Something that Sean wanted to happen, that’s what was going to happen,” Ventura said on the stand.
Guru Dutt invited the audience to confront uncomfortable realities through hauntingly beautiful cinema
Iconic Indian director and actor Guru Dutt was just 39 years old when he died in 1964 but he left behind a cinematic legacy that continues to resonate decades later.
Born on 9 July 1925 in the southern state of Karnataka, next week marks his birth centenary. But the man behind the camera, his emotional turmoil and mental health struggles remain largely unexplored.
Warning: This article contains details some readers may find distressing.
The maker of classic Hindi films such as Pyaasa and Kaagaz Ke Phool – film school staples for their timeless themes – Dutt forged a deeply personal, introspective style of filmmaking that was novel in the post-independence era.
His complex characters often reflected his personal struggles; his plots touched upon universal motifs, inviting the audience to confront uncomfortable realities through hauntingly beautiful cinema.
Dutt’s beginnings were humble and his childhood was marked by financial hardship and a turbulent family life. After his family shifted to Bengal in eastern India for work, a young Dutt became deeply inspired by the region’s culture and it would shape his cinematic vision later in life.
He dropped his surname – Padukone – after entering the Bombay film industry in the 1940s. He made his debut not as a director but as a choreographer, and also worked as a telephone operator to make ends meet. The turbulence and uncertainty of the decade – India’s independence struggle had intensified – impacted the aspiring filmmaker’s prospects.
It was during this phase that he penned Kashmakash, a story rooted in artistic frustration and social disillusionment, ideas that would later shape his cinematic masterpiece Pyaasa.
Simon & Schuster
Pyaasa, a commercial triumph, propelled Guru Dutt to stardom
Dutt’s friendship with fellow struggler Dev Anand – who soon rose to fame as an actor – helped him get the chance to direct his first film in 1951. The noir thriller, Baazi, propelled him into the spotlight.
He soon found love with celebrated singer Geeta Roy, and by many accounts, these early years were his happiest.
After Dutt launched his own film company, he scored back-to-back hits with romantic comedies Aar-Paar and Mr & Mrs 55, both featuring him in lead roles. But yearning for artistic depth, he set out to make what would become his defining film – Pyaasa.
The hard-hitting, haunting film explored an artist’s struggle in a materialistic world and decades later, it would go on to be the only Hindi film in Time magazine’s list of the 20th Century’s 100 greatest movies.
Dutt’s late younger sister, Lalitha Lajmi, who collaborated with me when I wrote his biography, said that Pyaasa was her brother’s “dream project” and that “he wanted it to be perfect”.
As a director, Dutt was fond of ‘creating’ the film as it took shape on the sets, making a lot of changes in the script and dialogues and experimenting with camera techniques. While he was known for scrapping and reshooting scenes, this reached worrying levels during Pyaasa – for instance, he shot 104 takes of the now famous climax sequence.
He would shout and get bad-tempered when things did not go right, Lajmi said.
“Sleep evaded him. The misuse of and dependence on alcohol had begun. At his worst, he started experimenting with sleeping pills, mixing them in his whiskey. Guru Dutt gave his all to make Pyaasa – his sleep, his dreams, and his memories,” she said.
In 1956, as his dream project neared completion, 31-year-old Dutt attempted suicide.
“When the news came, we rushed to Pali Hill [where he lived],” Lajmi said. “I knew he was in turmoil. He often called me, saying we need to talk but wouldn’t say a word when I got there,” she added.
But following his discharge from hospital, no professional support was sought by the family.
Mental health was a “socially stigmatised” topic at the time, and with big money riding on Pyaasa, Lajmi said that the family tried to move on, without fully confronting the reasons behind her brother’s internal struggles.
Released in 1957, Pyaasa was a critical and commercial triumph that catapulted Dutt to stardom. But the filmmaker often expressed a sense of emptiness despite his success.
Pyaasa’s chief cinematographer VK Murthy recalled Dutt saying, “I wanted to be a director, an actor, make good films – I have achieved it all. I have money, I have everything, yet I have nothing.”
There was also a strange paradox between Dutt’s films and his personal life.
His films often portrayed strong, independent women but off screen, as Lajmi recalled, he expected his wife to embrace more traditional roles and wanted her to sing only in films produced by his company.
Simon & Schuster
Guru Dutt and Madhubala in Mr & Mrs 55
To keep his company thriving, Dutt had a simple rule: each artistic gamble should be followed by a bankable commercial film.
But buoyed by the success of Pyaasa, he ignored his own rule and dived straight into making his most personal, expensive and semi-autobiographical film: Kaagaz Ke Phool.
It tells the story of a filmmaker’s unhappy marriage and confused relationship with his muse. It eerily ends with the death of the filmmaker after he fails to come to terms with his acute loneliness and doomed relationships.
Though now hailed as a classic, it was a commercial failure at the time, a blow Dutt reportedly never overcame.
In the Channel 4 documentary In Search of Guru Dutt, his co-star Waheeda Rehman remembered him saying, “Life mein do hi toh cheezen hai – kamyaabi aur failure. (There are only two things in life: success and failure) There is nothing in between.”
After Kagaz Ke Phool, he never directed a film again.
But his company recovered over time, and he made a strong comeback as a producer with Chaudhvin Ka Chand, the most commercially successful film of his career.
He then launched Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam directed by his trusted screenwriter Abrar Alvi. By this time, Lajmi said, his personal life was in severe turmoil, marked by mood swings.
The film delved into the loneliness of a woman trapped in a loveless marriage to a philandering, often tyrannical landlord in an opulent yet feudal world.
Writer Bimal Mitra recalls that Dutt told him about his struggle with sleeplessness and reliance on sleeping pills during this time. By then, his marriage had collapsed and mental health had worsened. Mitra recalled many conversations with Guru Dutt’s constant refrain: “I think I will go crazy.”
One night, Dutt attempted to take his own life again. He was unconscious for three days.
Lajmi says that after this, on the doctor’s advice, his family called a psychiatrist to inquire about treatment for Dutt but they never followed up. “We never called the psychiatrist again,” she added with regret.
Simon & Schuster
A still from Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam, starring Guru Dutt and Meena Kumari
For years, she believed her brother was silently crying for help, perhaps feeling trapped in a dark space where no one could see his pain, so dark that even he could not find a way out of it.
A few days after Dutt was discharged, the shooting for Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam resumed as if nothing had happened.
When Mitra asked him about the incident, Dutt said, “Nowadays, I often wonder what unrest was this, what was the restlessness that I was hell-bent on committing suicide? When I think about this, I get terrorised with fear. But that day, I felt no dilemma in swallowing those sleeping pills.”
The film was a success, became India’s official entry to the 1963 Berlin Film Festival and also won a national award.
But Dutt’s personal struggles continued to mount. He separated from his wife and even though he continued acting in films, he battled profound loneliness, often turning to alcohol and sleeping pills for respite.
On 10 October 1964, Dutt, 39, was found dead in his room.
“I know that he had always wished for it [death], longed for it… and he got it,’ his co-star Waheeda Rehman wrote in the Journal of Film Industry, 1967.
Like the protagonist of Pyaasa, true acclaim came to Dutt only after he was gone.
Cinema enthusiasts often wonder what might have been had he lived longer; perhaps he would have continued to reshape India’s cinematic landscape with his visionary, poetic works.
Yasser Usman is the author of the biography Guru Dutt: An Unfinished Story
As David Corenswet takes over the big red cape for James Gunn‘s Superman, he had some support from previous Men of Steel.
The actor recently shared the “very encouraging” words he received from Man of Steel (2013), Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) and Justice League (2017) star Henry Cavill, as well as Tyler Hoechlin from The CW‘s Superman & Lois, about taking on the role of DC Comics superhero for the big screen.
“I had the pleasure of exchanging letters with two previous Supermans, Henry Cavill and Tyler Hoechlin. They were very encouraging and we had a lovely exchange and I’m excited to meet them one day. It’ll be great when we can all get in a room together,” he told Heart. “Both of them, interestingly, sort of said in their own words, ‘I’m not gonna try to give you any tips.’ And I think that’s a very Superman thing.”
Corenswet added, “They really just conveyed to me an encouragement and a sense of, you know, have fun with it. Which I think is Superman’s way of doing it too.”
In addition to Corenswet as the Man of Steel, Gunn’s Superman stars Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane and Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor, among a star-studded cast bringing more DC favorites to life.
David Corenswet as Superman in DC Studios’ and Warner Bros. Pictures’ ‘Superman’
Warner Bros.
Premiering July 11 in theaters, Superman marks the launch of Gunn’s new DCU, after he and Peter Safran took over at DC Studios in 2022.
That December, Cavill confirmed the “sad news” that his Superman would not be returning for Gunn’s DCU. The CW then cancelled Superman & Lois, following a four-season run that began in 2021.
Ozzy Osbourne’s all-star farewell concert on Saturday, dubbed Back to the Beginning, featured Metallica and Guns N’ Roses, who paid tribute to Osbourne and the original Black Sabbath at what was billed as their final show in Birmingham, England at Villa Park.
Metallica was the penultimate band to perform before the Osbourne/Black Sabbath finale performances. Metallica kicked off their set by covering Black Sabbath’s “Hole in the Sky” from 1975’s Sabotage and they also covered “Johnny Blade” from 1978’s Never Say Die!, as fan footage captured.
Guns N’ Roses performed four Black Sabbath renditions, including opening with Technical Ecstasy’s “It’s Alright” before launching into “Never Say Die.”
For the first time since 1992, @gunsnroses played It’s Alright at Back to the Beginning in ode to Black Sabbath. 🖤
I love Sabbath and the night is about them and Ozzy, but for us GN’R fans specifically, it’s really special to hear this again in 2025. pic.twitter.com/N5A4CFox9W
Guns N’ Roses also performed “Junior’s Eyes” from Never Say Die! along with the title track to 1973’s Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.
The charity gig featuring the four original Black Sabbath members — Osbourne, guitarist Tony Iommi, bassist Geezer Butler, and drummer Bill Ward — also included performances from Slayer, Pantera, Gojira, Alice in Chains, and more, with Tom Morello serving as the musical director. The event featured all-star jams that included Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler, Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan, Morello, Sammy Hagar, and more, including a team-up for a rendition of Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love.”
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Steven Tyler of Aerosmith, Tom Morello & more performing Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” at Back To The Beginning | Black Sabbath’s final show pic.twitter.com/tMK4zBWnPe
“It’s my time to go back to the beginning … time for me to give back to the place where I was born,” Osbourne, who in recent years has been battling Parkinson’s disease and underwent several spinal surgeries, said of his “final” concert in a statement from February. “How blessed am I to do it with the help of people whom I love. Birmingham is the true home of metal. Birmingham for ever.”
Proceeds from Back to the Beginning will benefit Cure Parkinson’s, Birmingham Children’s Hospital, and the Birmingham-based Acorns Children’s Hospice.
Black Sabbath fans slam Marilyn Manson video tribute
Marilyn Manson was a shocking addition to appearances and performances at the recent Black Sabbath farewell show.
Somewhere between performances by Alice in Chains, Tom Morello, Yungblud and Metallica, the disgraced rock musician, Manson, was also allowed space to share some pre-recorded words in honour of Black Sabbath frontman Ozzy Osbourne.
A clip shared to social media of the video message showed Manson, real name Brian Warner, speaking of how he later came to share a stage with Osbourne and Black Sabbath after growing up as a fan himself.
“It is a great honour to be here via this video, and I’d like to say congratulations, and I love you very much Ozzy,” he said, reflecting on their shared history on stage.
However, Black Sabbath fans were displeased by Manson’s appearance due to several allegations of rape, sexual assault and physical abuse made by four women about him.
“F*** Marilyn Manson, he’s a piece of s***,” one angry fan wrote on X after seeing the video tribute in the livestream.
Others also echoed the outrage with one saying, “Disgraceful that he is on this otherwise outstanding Black Sabbath show,” while another wrote, “Marilyn Manson on the Black Sabbath stream f*** off.”
A fourth viewer said, “Eurgh Marilyn Manson making an appearance on the Sabbath stream. F*** that guy.”
Though the lawsuit against Manson dropped in January this year, his first UK concert as part of his One Assassination Under God Tour was cancelled after mounting pressure from campaign groups and a Member of the UK Parliament.
Manson was also dropped by his record label, Loma Vista, as well as his booking agent CAA and longtime manager Tony Ciulla in the wake of the accusations against him.
The Beatles drummer Ringo Starr is lending some notes for Sam Mendes‘ biopic on the musician.
According to a new interview with the New York Times, Starr and Mendes spent “two days” going over the script “line by line” and Starr “offered extensive notes” in order to make the film more accurate to his personal life and experiences.
“He had a writer — very good writer, great reputation, and he wrote it great, but it had nothing to do with Maureen [his first wife] and I,” Starr told the publication. “That’s not how we were. I’d say, ‘We would never do that.’”
However, after they went over revisions, Starr felt content with the script. “He’ll do what he’s doing,” he said, before adding, “and I’ll send him peace and love.”
There are four biopics on each Beatles member being made by Sony. Barry Keoghan is portraying Starr. Keoghan shared his experience of being nervous while meeting the Beatles icon. “It was sort of one of those moments where you’re in awe and you’re just frozen,” the Saltburn actor recalled.
“When I was talking to him, I couldn’t look at him. I was nervous, like right now. He said, ‘You can look at me,’ And again — you’re playing Ringo Starr,” he said. “My job is to observe and take in kind of mannerisms and study, but I want to humanize him and bring feelings to him, not just sort of imitate him.”
He added that the two “just sat in the garden, chatting away” and that Starr was “absolutely lovely.”
Paul Mescal will star as Paul McCartney; Harris Dickinson as John Lennon; and Joseph Quinn as George Harrison. All four of the biopics are set to open in theaters in April 2028.
