People: Dec. 19, 2005

HIGH NOTES FOR MARIAH

For a while, it seemed even her five-octave range and chart-topping history couldn't save MARIAH CAREY from a career meltdown. When her 2001 movie Glitter became synonymous with box-office bust and her public behavior began to include such acts as an impromptu striptease on MTV, Carey's record company paid her a reported $28 million just to go away. But a Carey comeback that started with this year's second-best-selling CD, The Emancipation of Mimi, has crescendoed with the singer earning eight Grammy nominations for Mimi and the single We Belong Together. "This year has been such a blessing," Carey said. And an emancipation. Let's hope the next album isn't called Mimi: Back in Free Fall.

Q&A GREG KINNEAR

Greg Kinnear co-stars with Pierce Brosnan in The Matador, opening Dec. 23

You and Pierce both sport mustaches in the film. What is it about facial hair that makes a guy seem shady? You'd have to ask Mr. Brosnan. Both Pierce and I read a script that never suggested either character had any facial hair. For some reason we both showed up to the first rehearsal, walked around the corner, almost bumped into each other and stared at each other's mustaches for about two minutes before he screamed "Character assassination!"

Pierce plays a hit man. Did the former James Bond show up to the set with a wealth of assassin knowledge? He does have a worldly sense about him. He's worked with guys who know things like judo. He's great with weaponry. He is a little more dialed into that world than I am. The guys I know know pinball.

Were you jealous of his chest hair? Oh, come on! That's all fake. They used the same chest hair that Matt Damon and I used in Stuck on You.

You got an Oscar nomination for playing a gay man in As Good as It Gets. Now a bunch of gay roles are generating Oscar buzz. Why do gay parts still garner so much attention? It gets attention if it's done well, if the sexuality is secondary to a real-life, vibrant person an audience can relate to. I don't think you set out to be noticed by playing on the sexuality. That's kind of a dead end.

Do you ever watch talk shows anymore? I didn't watch them when I did Talk Soup. But it's impossible to turn your dial and not see Montel Williams or Jerry Springer yapping away--is he still on the air, by the way?

Did growing up as an Army brat in Beirut prepare you for Hollywood? It was not a seamless transition. Although you often feel like you're getting shot at in both places.

HIS AND HERS TELEPROMPTERS

Will their banter flow like Matt and Katie's or stall like Dan and Connie's? Trying to usher in a shiny, young, coed era in network news, ELIZABETH VARGAS and BOB WOODRUFF will succeed the late Peter Jennings as anchors of ABC's World News Tonight on Jan. 3. Vargas, 43, cohost of the network's 20/20, will become the first nightly-news anchor of Hispanic descent. Woodruff, 44, anchor of ABC's weekend news, will hold up the venerable white-guy-with-good-hair tradition. The pair will attempt to stanch the migration of network-news viewers to cable and the Internet and reclaim some of the eyeballs lost to NBC's Brian Williams since Jennings left in April. If that doesn't work, there's always a panda somewhere giving birth.

SLIM LINE BETWEEN LOVE AND HATE