Names and faces

LITTLE ROCK — The Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago honored actor Robert Downey Jr. on Saturday with its Renaissance Award. The Academy Award-nominated actor was in Chicago on Saturday to accept the award. The center says it chose to honor the 45-year-old Downey because he is “one of the most respected and versatile actors of his generation.” Downey gave an interview to director Todd Phillips, saying three of his movies are the “most representative” of his work, Tropic Thunder, Sherlock Holmes and Iron Man. He won a Golden Globe for Sherlock Holmes. The actor also says he’s moved on from drug and alcohol abuse. Downey is to star in the Phillips-directed movie Due Date as a first-time dad trying to make it home in time for the birth of his baby.

She spent a career getting close to showbiz legends - then became one herself. Entertainment-reporting veteran Rona Barrett is sharing that story with live-theater audiences in the one-woman show Nothing But the Truth, which debuted this weekend at the Paley Center for Media in Beverly Hills, Calif., and offers a look back at the work and life of one of the media’s pioneering women. Long before there was Oprah Winfrey,Barrett had her own multimedia empire: newspaper and magazine columns, her own magazine, TV specials. “There was a real difference between that which we saw on the screen and that which existed inside a person,” Barrett said. “I used to say, ‘I have to know who the re-a-l is, because I know who the r-e-e-l is.” Barrett, 73, has been out of the showbiz-reporting game for nearly two decades - in 1991 moving to Santa Barbara County and forming the Rona Barrett Lavender Co., a small producer of lavender bath, beauty, food and aromatherapy products. She now works full time on the Rona Barrett Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the aid and support of senior citizens in need. Yet she remains very proud of her Hollywood legacy. “I would think, in my own small way, I was very responsible for opening the doors for many women to come into broadcasting,” she said. “And I think, when looking back, that makes me feel very, very, very good, that I was able to do something for somebody else. Because that’s what I’m doing now. It’s called payback. People help me who I am today, and if I can help them, then that’s all that I care to do.”