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Jamie Foxx revealed that he was close to death during his 2023 medical emergency. On the red carpet at Sunday’s 2025 Golden Globe Awards, Foxx told Variety‘s Mark Malkin that the nurse who treated him in Atlanta dubbed him a “five-percenter,” in reference to the less than 5% of people who survive the kind of severe brain bleed and stroke that the actor suffered that year.
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For over a year Foxx, 57, did not reveal much about the medical incident that left him hospitalized, though he did finally open up about it in his Golden Globe nominated stand-up special, What Had Happened Was…, which was released in December. In it, Foxx got emotional at points, verging on tears describing the scary incident, noting that during the first two weeks of his treatment his doctors weren’t sure he would make it.
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In a testament to his joy in surviving the scare, Foxx told Malkin “this doesn’t matter,” in reference to the hoopla surrounding the glitzy, star-studded awards show. He illustrated that point by shouting out the nurse who told him he was a five-percenter, saying that when she saw who her patient was she “rolled her sleeves up” and got to work.
“I said, ‘thank you so much,’” he recalled.
“She said, ‘why are you thanking me? You’re not special,’” he said. “I roll my sleeves up for everybody that comes in here. And so when it hits like that and all of the red carpet and the tuxes and this, come on man. And she said, ‘All of [this treatment] will get you to that, but right now you’re a patient and I got to get you right.”
Foxx attended the Globes with his daughters, Anelise Foxx and Corinne Marie Foxx, who he praised for stepping up during a difficult time. “I say this all the time, when you dream about what you want to be, you don’t dream about tragedy,” he said, taking off his shades. “You dream the good things, you dream the greatest life in the world. But when tragedy happens, you need somebody there that really loves you.”
Corinne, in particular, took charge by initially informing the world about her dad’s “medical complication,” then giving an update several weeks later. She said at the time that the family had been “preparing for the worst,” only to tell fans that her dad was out of the hospital and recuperating (and playing Pickleball), while thanking them for their support.
Last July, Foxx opened up a bit about the medical emergency that landed him in the Atlanta hospital for a month while he was filming the Netflix movie Back in Action with Cameron Diaz, telling fans that he had no memory of the particulars. “Look, April 11 last year — bad headache. I asked my boy for an Advil,” Foxx said. “I was gone for 20 days. I don’t remember anything.”
Foxx told Malkin that he likes to say that Corinne “turned into Michael Corleone,” laughing that his daughter was not familiar with Al Pacino’s iconic turn as the head of a mob family in Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather trilogy. “I said, ‘you don’t understand. When Michael seen that his dad was in trouble, he stepped up.’ And she did, man. It was a lot of pressure on her, but she delivered.”
Watch Foxx talk about his medical scare below.
Pamela Anderson is flying high at the moment thanks to the most glowing notices of her career in The Last Showgirl. But the actress and former Baywatch star revealed on the Happy Sad Confused podcast this week that years ago a man threatened to kill her on a plane when he mistook her for a […]
After years of keeping their relationship under the radar, Spider-Man costars Zendaya and Tom Holland are engaged. People magazine confirmed that the 28-year-old actors are preparing to tie the knot after Holland reportedly proposed at one of Zendaya’s family homes over the holidays; TMZ was first to report the news about the holiday proposal. Z […]
Selena Gomez didn’t go home with any hardware at Sunday night’s (Jan. 5) Golden Globe Awards, but the Only Murders in the Building co-star had absolutely no complaints about her big night out with fiancée producer Benny Blanco.
In addition to being nominated for a best supporting actress award for her role in the musical Emilia Pérez — with her co-star, Zoe Saldaña, taking home the prize — Gomez was also overcome with emotion when she had an unexpectedly sweet encounter with a fellow A-lister before the show. During a pre-show red carpet stroll, Gomez was shocked when House of Gucci star Salma Hayek interrupted her live spot with carpet co-host and Variety senior culture and events editor Mark Malkin, to give Sel, 32, a hug.
According to video posted by Variety, Hayek not only embraced the singer/actress, but insisted that Gomez take the mic and chat with Malkin as well. “No, no, no… I refuse,” Hayek said, swatting away Malkin’s hand as he tried to get her to hop up and do a dual interview with Gomez.
Gomez clearly appreciated the kind gesture, bowing down and giving Hayek a kiss on her hand as she fought off tears that threatened to muss her perfect makeup.
“That just made me cry! She’s who I’ve looked up to,” Gomez told Malkin. “It’s actually the sweetest thing ever,” Gomez told Malkin. “I love her. I looked up to her. My dad’s crush was her. Everything.”
In a different interview with Malkin at this weekend’s Variety 10 Directors to Watch & Creative Impact Awards, Gomez admitted that she’s super anxious about the idea of performing songs from Emilia Pérez at the 2025 Oscars. When Malkin asked her if she would be up for performing songs from the musical alongside Saldaña, Selena said she’d rather defer to the Avatar star.
“I hope that all goes on Zoe,” she said, noting that she has not performed live for quite a while. Then Malkin reminded Gomez that Saldaña recently said she wants both of them on stage on March 2 to do a “big homage to Mexico with both (Emilia Pérez) songs,” asking “will you do it?”
“I don’t know if I could, Gomez responded. “I’m not as… I’m not there, it’s just different.” The announcement of the 2025 Oscar nominations are less than two weeks away and assuming Emilia Pérez continues its winning ways — it also took home best motion picture – musical or comedy, best original song (“El Mal“) and best non-English language motion picture at the Globes — it’s likely it’s musical numbers will get nods; the songs nominated for the best original song Oscar are typically performed during the ceremony.
Jon M. Chu would love to tell you all about the Britney Spears biopic he’s working on. But speaking to Billboard on the red carpet at Sunday night’s (Jan. 5) Golden Globe Awards, the Wicked director said, for now, he can’t say much. “I really can’t talk about that yet,” he said of the upcoming Universal Pictures movie he working on based on the pop princess’ best-selling memoir, The Woman in Me.
“I’m a big fan of Britney. I’ve been a fan since I was young and she was young and she was one of 12 acts at the Shrine Auditorium,” Chu added in the video you can watch above. “So I want to do her justice and tell her story right. But we’ll see. We’re developing it now and it’s a long road ahead.”
Back in November, Chu told The Hollywood Reporter that the script for the Spears film was not written yet — and that no writer had been hired at that point — but that in its initial conception he expects it to be “a lot about how we treat people, young people, stars that we think we own, women, mothers.”
Variety has reported that Universal Pictures landed the rights to make a movie of the Spears memoir, which chronicles her rise to fame, her high-profile relationship with Justin Timberlake and her life under a very restrictive 13-year conservancy; Chu will direct with Marc Platt tapped to produce.
While it’s unknown where the script is at this point, in September Spears cryptically revealed in an Instagram post that it is “flattering to be in such good company like Jon Chu,” adding that “the project I might be doing isn’t a biopic story … it’s a fictional musical where I play an extremely intelligent character !!!”
Chu had (a little) more to say about the second installment of Wicked, which will bring fresh surprises, including a song co-written by co-star Cynthia Erivo. “I can say nothing other than I’ve very excited for people to see For Good,” Chu told Billboard when asked about the songs singer/actress Erivo penned for the eagerly anticipated sequel due out later this year. “It’s really good.”
In December, Erivo told Variety that in addition to prepping her debut album she has worked with composer Stephen Schwartz to write an original song for Elphaba that she said is “so special to me… when we filmed it, the entire crew was in tears. I hope audiences are ready — it’s a song that speaks to the heart of who Elphaba is.”
Billboard also asked about one of the most talked-about deleted scenes, the so-called “friendship montage” between Ariana Grande’s Glinda and Erivo’s Elphaba. “I might use it in another movie. I have another movie to go!” Chu said.
With the second part of the musical adaptation, Wicked: For Good, due out on November 21, Chu teased that “there’s certain footage that I can’t release because I don’t know if I’m going to use it yet.” But, joking that he’s already gotten in trouble with movie studio Universal Pictures for promising certain things, Chu said, “I’ll consider it.”
When asked to make the hardest choice of all: Team Elphaba or Team Glinda? Chu took the diplomatic route. “You’re gonna get me in trouble. These girls watch what colors I wear every day!” Chu said of his eagle-eyed co-lead actresses. “I love both of them so much,” he added. “Every day I’m a little Elphaba and a little bit Glinda.”
Joe Alwyn and Taylor Swift‘s years-long relationship, which came to an end in 2023, continues to make headlines in 2025.
The actor, who starred in A24’s The Brutalist and is presumably doing press for the film ahead of Oscar nominations being determined and announced this month, recently spoke with The Guardian about his work on the project — which premiered at Venice, with director Brady Corbet receiving the Silver Lion honor for best direction, and is up for several Golden Globes. An interview about Alwyn’s journey as an actor shifted topics to his experience with fame, and how dating one of the most recognizable pop stars in the world accelerated his ascent into celebrity.
The Guardian asked Alwyn if he worried “his relationship with Swift would overshadow his career.”
“I have tried just to focus on controlling what I can control,” Alwyn said. Looking back to his earliest work in the industry, in the 2016 film Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, he added, “And right from the beginning, tried to focus on the things that are meaningful for me: friends, family, work, of course. So noise outside of that, I think I’ve done what lots of people who find themselves in the public eye do, which is just try and ignore it. If you don’t, and if you let all of that other stuff in, and if it starts to affect you and your behavior, you’re living from the outside in. And then you’re pretty f—ed.”
When the publication’s reporter pressed that Alwyn “must just want to move on” from the public scrutiny he faced during his time with Swift, Alwyn tactfully made it clear that he has moved on, while pointing out that moving on remains “something for other people to do.”
“We’re talking about something that’s a while ago now in my life,” he replied. “So that’s for other people. That’s what I feel.”
In the article, published Sunday (Jan. 5), Alwyn spoke fondly of his collaborative work with his ex. He received credit as songwriter “William Bowery” on songs from Swift’s pandemic-era sister albums, 2020’s Folklore (“Exile,” “Betty”) and Evermore (“Champagne Problems,” “Coney Island,” “Evermore”), and on one from 2022’s Midnights (“Sweet Nothing”). Alwyn also received credit as a co-producer on several Folklore tracks, which resulted in him being awarded an album of the year Grammy alongside Swift, Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner in 2021.
“Lockdown was a whole host of surprises and that was pretty special,” Alwyn said of writing songs with Swift.
He continued, “That was not something I would have foreseen.”
The last time Alwyn, who’s known to stay quiet about his private life, spoke of his past relationship with The Tortured Poets Department hitmaker was in the summer, when The Sunday Times Style Magazine also brought her up in their convo with the actor.
“I would hope that anyone and everyone can empathize and understand the difficulties that come with the end of a long, loving, fully committed relationship of over six and a half years. That is a hard thing to navigate,” said Alwyn, who navigated questions about Swift carefully; he noted they’d agreed to “keep the more private details of our relationship private” during their time together.
Of their split, which made the news on April 8, 2023, he noted to The Sunday Times, “What is unusual and abnormal in this situation is that, one week later, it’s suddenly in the public domain and the outside world is able to weigh in … So you have something very real suddenly thrown into a very unreal space: tabloids, social media, press, where it is then dissected, speculated on, pulled out of shape beyond recognition. And the truth is, to that last point, there is always going to be a gap between what is known and what is said. I have made my peace with that.”
Read The Guardian‘s full feature on Alwyn here. The actor is next reported to appear in two Shakespeare-themed films: Aneil Karia’s adaptation of Hamlet and Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet (yes, Hamnet; not a typo), a story centering on William Shakespeare’s wife, Agnes.
Selena Gomez was photographed on two red carpets, styled in contrasting and confident looks, in Palm Springs, California, on Friday and Saturday (Jan. 3 and 4).
Gomez was in town for the 2025 Palm Springs International Film Festival’s Film Awards Gala, where she accepted the Vanguard Award with the cast of Emilia Pérez and the film’s director, Jacques Audiard.
The singer-actress walked the Palm Springs Film Fest red carpet Friday night in a custom, monochromatic suit by Ralph Lauren. The pearl-white, menswear-inspired ensemble included long-length trousers that covered her shoes, which were paired with a sheer top worn under a vest and an open blazer, all topped off with a matching necktie. Her hair was smoothly pulled back in a bun.
Meanwhile, a Saturday brunch organized by Variety saw Gomez looking demure in a baby pink, tweed Oscar de la Renta minidress with long sleeves, a modest neckline, and a short skirt featuring cherry blossom-embroidered pockets. The dress, from the designer’s pre-fall 2025 collection, was complemented by light pink heels and soft, wavy hair parted in the middle and worn down.
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The brunch was held to recognize the publication’s 10 Directors to Watch and Creative Impact Awards. Emilia Pérez director Audiard was honored with the Creative Impact in Directing Award.
“Your films are not just entertainment, they’re experiences,” Gomez said in tribute to her director. “Emilia Pérez is a powerful and poignant exploration of love, loss and the human condition. It is a true honor ro celebrate your incredible talent.”
Gomez, who’s engaged to marry producer Benny Blanco, wore her marquise-cut diamond engagement ring both days. The couple recently shared sweet photos from their time together over the holidays and celebrating the new year.
See Gomez’s complete red carpet looks, styled by Erin Walsh, from the Palm Springs Film Festival on Friday and Variety‘s brunch on Saturday:
Selena Gomez attends the 36th Annual Palm Springs International Film Awards at Palm Springs Convention Center on Jan. 3, 2025 in Palm Springs, California.
Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for Palm Springs International Film Society
Selena Gomez attends Variety Presents The Creative Impact Awards and 10 Directors to Watch Brunch at Parker Palm Springs on Jan.4 , 2025 in Palm Springs, California.
Kevin Winter/Getty Images
Ariana Grande and Nicole Kidman together on the red carpet had cameras flashing Friday night (Jan. 3) at the Palm Springs International Film Festival’s Film Awards Gala.
“Oh my god,” Kidman cried out when seeing Grande headed her way at the fest. The two stars embraced, held hands and seemingly dished out compliments, though camera mics didn’t pick up their conversation, at least in video footage of the moment captured by The Associated Press or The Hollywood Reporter.
Arms around each other, they posed for photographers, as seen in the clip from THR above. During their interaction Grande also gave the actress a small bow, which Kidman — who’s quite a bit taller than the pop star — leaned down to reciprocate.
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Though they haven’t worked together yet, Grande and Kidman were originally both cast in the 2020 Netflix musical The Prom. Grande had to drop out of filming due to tour scheduling conflicts, and Ariana DeBose filled the role.
With Oscar nominations voting set to begin on Wednesday, many of Hollywood’s biggest names attended the Palm Springs fest to present or accept honors at the gala. (As THR points out, there’s often a number of Academy members in the crowd — and there’s still time to sway the race for the Academy Awards.)
Grande was in Palm Springs to accept the Rising Star Award, presented by Jennifer Coolidge, for her work in the hit 2024 feature film adaptation of the musical Wicked, for which she’s predicted to be a frontrunner to receive a supporting actor nom at the Oscars.
“I’ve been performing since I was a child, so I never thought at the age of 31 I would be hearing the words ‘Rising Star’ again. So I wanted to start by thanking my good friends Botox and Juvéderm. I thought I’d be hearing ‘Slightly Withering Star,’ or ‘Drooping Star’ by now, so thank you,” the charming Grande joked, breaking the ice during her Rising Star acceptance speech at the Palm Springs Film Fest, where she said, “Being able to play Glinda the Good” was “the honor of my life,” and that before music, her start as a performer was in stand-up — her grandparents’ living room being her first venue, and $5 her first paycheck.
Grande employed humor and sincerity in her speech, while Kidman was overcome with emotion in hers. The Babygirl star was honored with the International Star Award, presented by Jamie Lee Curtis. Curtis held Kidman’s hand through a genuine speech in which the actress broke down in tears over the recent death of her mother.
“My whole career has been for my mom and my dad, and they’re not here anymore,” Kidman said. “I want to keep working and giving to the world. I’m sorry I’m crying. I didn’t want to do that, but I feel my mama right now. This is for you, Mama.”
See more pictures of Grande and Kidman’s sweet run-in on the Palm Springs Film Fest red carpet:
Nicole Kidman and Ariana Grande attend the 36th Annual Palm Springs International Film Festival Film Awards at Palm Springs Convention Center on Jan. 3, 2025 in Palm Springs, California.
Kevin Winter/Getty Images
Nicole Kidman and Ariana Grande attend the 36th Annual Palm Springs International Film Festival Film Awards at Palm Springs Convention Center on Jan. 3, 2025 in Palm Springs, California.
Kevin Winter/Getty Images
Nicole Kidman and Ariana Grande attend the 36th Annual Palm Springs International Film Festival Film Awards at Palm Springs Convention Center on Jan. 3, 2025 in Palm Springs, California.
Kevin Winter/Getty Images
Heidi Klum is ready to make it work — again. As exclusively confirmed by People Friday (Jan. 3), the German supermodel is returning to Project Runway as host, a role she served for 16 seasons before stepping away in 2017. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news The […]
All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes. It’s safe to say that Doechii‘s viral sitcom-inspired “Denial Is a River” is already the best music video of 2025. From […]