• Helen Mirren has been finding the bright side of the pandemic. Working from home? "Much more convenient," she said. She bought a ring light for Zooms, balancing her laptop on two dictionaries. "I love it. ... I hope elements of our quarantine lockdown are going to stick with us." She's savoring slow dinners with her husband, director Taylor Hackford. They've been living together in the mountains near California's Lake Tahoe for much of the past year. "It's given me the opportunity to be with my husband in a sort of normal everyday way, which has been fantastic. It is actually the first time in all of our 30 years together that we've sat down at the table each night and had dinner together. Normally we're getting on planes, going here, there. ... So it's been fabulous just to be a normal person." The 75-year-old British star is backing the documentary "My Beautiful Stutter," which looks at the work of New York City-based nonprofit group SAY: The Stuttering Association for the Young. The Discovery+ film follows five children who have been bullied because of how they speak, and looks at how the charity helps them with their confidence. Mirren has also restarted acting under covid-19 protocols, but said social distancing and face coverings make film productions "just not so much fun" as they used to be. But she said the "sense of community" among actors is making her look forward to future roles.
• O.J. Simpson and a Las Vegas hotel-casino have settled a lawsuit alleging that unnamed employees defamed Simpson by telling celebrity news site TMZ that he had been banned from the property in November 2017 for being drunk and disruptive. Simpson's attorney, Malcolm LaVergne, declined Thursday to comment about the agreement reached with Nevada Property 1 LLC, corporate owner of The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, except to say, "The matter has been resolved." A spokeswoman for The Cosmopolitan declined immediate comment. Simpson, now 73, is on parole in Nevada and living in a gated golf course community after his release from prison in July 2017. He had served nine years for armed robbery, kidnapping and assault with a weapon. His complaint against The Cosmopolitan acknowledged that Simpson was given notice, after spending several hours with two friends at a steakhouse and a lounge, that he was prohibited from returning to the property. Simpson denied in his lawsuit that he was "belligerent," broke glass or damaged property. Attorneys for the hotel-casino had argued that the former football star could not be defamed because his reputation was already tarnished by his criminal and civil trials in the deaths of his ex-wife and her friend in Los Angeles decades ago and his conviction and imprisonment in Nevada in a 2007 armed robbery case.
