While introducing the Supporting Actor nominees, Rachel Weisz said Mark Wahlberg had been arrested 25 times as a kid in Boston. True?
The Departed star recently said he'd been arrested ''20 or 25 times''
during his youth. His many brushes with the law included serving 45 days of a 90-day sentence for assaulting two Vietnamese men when he was 16. His rep did not comment on the reference to his troubled past.
Who was the ''best friend'' Jodie Foster cited while presenting the In
Memoriam montage?
Randy Stone, who died of heart failure on Feb. 12 at age 48, was an Emmy-winning casting director who also exec-produced Foster's 1991 directorial debut, Little Man Tate. In 1995, Stone won Best Live Action Short for Trevor, about an adolescent discovering he is gay. (DeGeneres presented the film when it aired on HBO in 1998.)
Who was the familiar-looking guy the camera cut to during costume designer Milena Canonero's speech?
Why, that was Canonero's husband, character actor Marshall Bell, who played Wil Wheaton's dad in 1986's Stand by Me and a mutant-harboring revolutionary in 1990's Total Recall. Most recently, he popped up as a judge in the Billy Bob Thornton flick The Astronaut Farmer.
Why did Best Animated Short winner Torill Kove (The Danish Poet)
apologize to Tom Hanks for bringing a list to the mic?
Like most nominees, Kove owns a copy of the Academy's handy DVD An Insider's Guide: What Nominees Need to Know, in which Hanks gives pointers on giving the perfect acceptance speech. Among the tips: ''Lose the list.'' A rep for Poet explains that not heeding Hanks' advice became an ''ongoing inside joke among nominees.''
Speaking of random shout-outs, The Lives of Others director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck thanked Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger while accepting for Best Foreign Language Film. Are the two German speakers friends?
No, but according to a rep for the filmmaker, ''Florian has grown to
admire Schwarzenegger's philosophy that one should abolish the words I can't from one's vocabulary. All things in life are possible.''
