Faye Dunaway

Driven and manipulative Evelyn Mulwray in "Chinatown."Driven TV executive Diana Christensen in "Network."Driven and abusive Joan Crawford in "Mommie Dearest."For years Faye Dunaway has been fighting the pushy, larger-than-life stereotype, insisting she is not the roles she plays. But now that she's playing driven opera star Maria Callas, Dunaway embraces the comparison.Local theatergoers can see how well the role fits beginning Tuesday, when the touring production of "Master Class," Terrence McNally's play about Callas, opens at the Lyric Opera House.

As Joan Crawford in the movie "Mommie Dearest," Faye Dunaway raised a coat hanger in order to get her way. As Maria Callas in Terrence McNally's Tony Award-winning play "Master Class," Dunaway only has to raise her voice to an apprentice singer, and the nervous young vocalist is reduced to tears. Call her Diva Dearest.A star vehicle that suits the ultra-thin and still-beautiful Dunaway as well as the elegant black pantsuit she wears with such flair, "Master Class" also suits the Lyric Opera House.

Driven and manipulative Evelyn Mulwray in "Chinatown."Driven TV executive Diana Christensen in "Network."Driven and abusive Joan Crawford in "Mommie Dearest."For years Faye Dunaway has been fighting the pushy, larger-than-life stereotype, insisting she is not the roles she plays. But now that she's playing driven opera star Maria Callas, Dunaway embraces the comparison.Local theatergoers can see how well the role fits beginning Tuesday, when the touring production of "Master Class," Terrence McNally's play about Callas, opens at the Lyric Opera House.

How did the United States become so entangled in Vietnam that the war there dominated the lives of an entire generation? What's in store for Marylanders in 1996? Why did an actress like Faye Dunaway agree to star in a movie like "Mommie Dearest"? And if "Party of Five" is so good, why isn't anyone watching it? TV offers answers to some vexing questions tonight.* "State of the State Address" (noon-1 p.m., repeats 10:30 p.m.-11:30 p.m., MPT, Channels 22 and 67) -- Gov. Parris Glendening offers his take on how the Free State is faring.

See, I don't want a Jason Alexander movie.What I want is a George Costanza movie.Jason Alexander is a pleasant, if largely unremarkable, young actor, and to put him in the center of a movie is to mark it as pleasant, if largely unremarkable.George, the character Jason plays on "Seinfeld" if you've been on Mars, is one of the great icons of our age, a Leopold Bloom or Raskolnikov for the '90s, a greedy little acolyte of the cult of self whose mercenary desperation is always undercut by a tide of liar's phlegm rising in his throat, a congenital slipperiness of his eyes, and a sweat-drenched upper lip. He's all hat and no cattle.

"Looking for Gatsby: My Life," by Faye Dunaway with Betsy Sharkey. Simon & Schuster. Illustrated. 416 pages. $25 Faye Dunaway is a rare combination of silky glamour and rapacious dedication to art, but she was also blessed, at least in her youth, with luck. She was endowed with classic bone-deep beauty that her own intelligence and the ministrations of others cultivated into style, and she was accorded recognition from the high-throttle star machine that in the late '60s and early '70s picked her up and, as long as she sold tickets, packaged her as the American woman of the hour.

|TC Call Cyndi Atkinson the unconventional dresser. The catering director of the Admiral Fell Inn will add a bejeweled bustier to an Ann Taylor outfit, finish a silk suit with fishnet stockings and turn up for job interviews in a vintage hat.The result? An original look that observers often adore and occasionally consider odd."I look at my clothes as costumes," says Ms. Atkinson, who's 40ish and lives in Fells Point. "I want them to express cleverness, creativity and independent thought."Friends have described your style as a cross between Faye Dunaway and Cher.

LOS ANGELES -- Academy-Award-winner Faye Dunaway in a TV sitcom that airs at 8 o'clock on Friday nights when kids control the channel changer and Urkel rules?CBS' "It Had to Be You" -- a comedy about the romance between a wealthy female publisher and a widowed carpenter with three kids -- is definitely one of the more unlikely newcomers to the fall lineup.But Dunaway says it was the role of publisher Laura Scofield and what it has to say about women today that brought her to TV."I took the role because Laura is really a woman of the '90s.

Suppose you woke up and you were inside a movie?If the movie were "E.T" or something equally beloved, that might not be too bad, assuming you got to be a good guy.But suppose the movie was "Network," Paddy Chayefsky's corrosive 1976 satire on big media and its banalizing effects on the culture that spawned it?You'd be mad as hell. But you'd take it anyway . . . because you'd have no choice.It's not only a movie. It's America in the '90s.Indeed, no film in the post-war era has been so weirdly prescient as the great, biting and ultimately tragic "Network."

Suppose you woke up and you were inside a movie?If the movie were "E.T" or something equally beloved, that might not be too bad, assuming you got to be a good guy.But suppose the movie was "Network," Paddy Chayefsky's corrosive 1976 satire on big media and its banalizing effects on the culture that spawned it?You'd be mad as hell. But you'd take it anyway . . . because you'd have no choice.It's not only a movie. It's America in the '90s.Indeed, no film in the post-war era has been so weirdly prescient as the great, biting and ultimately tragic "Network."

Ailing Hargitay to stay with show A representative for Mariska Hargitay says the actress has a partially collapsed lung, but will appear on all of this season's episodes of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Hargitay's spokesman, Gary Mantoosh, declined further comment. Hargitay, 44, won an Emmy last year for her role as Detective Olivia Benson on the show. Baby Affleck has a name Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck, both 36, have named their newborn daughter Seraphina Rose Elizabeth Affleck.

"The only thing I said `no' to was the soap, because I thought I might get bad habits." - Faye Dunaway, saying she would have considered being on a reality TV show if they had been around at the start of her acting career. Dunaway won a best-actress Oscar in 1977 for Network.

NEW YORK - What do women want? That's what cable television is trying to figure out. Women used to want life as it should be, according to the thinking behind the Romance Classics cable network. Now, Romance Classics, whose centerpiece was a lineup of romantic movies, is set to become WE: Women's Entertainment. It seems the research showed that women are more interested in life as it is, and how to make it easier. Cable viewing is growing by leaps and bounds, and the medium has more and more money to spend on original programming and marketing.

As Joan Crawford in the movie "Mommie Dearest," Faye Dunaway raised a coat hanger in order to get her way. As Maria Callas in Terrence McNally's Tony Award-winning play "Master Class," Dunaway only has to raise her voice to an apprentice singer, and the nervous young vocalist is reduced to tears. Call her Diva Dearest.A star vehicle that suits the ultra-thin and still-beautiful Dunaway as well as the elegant black pantsuit she wears with such flair, "Master Class" also suits the Lyric Opera House.

Driven and manipulative Evelyn Mulwray in "Chinatown."Driven TV executive Diana Christensen in "Network."Driven and abusive Joan Crawford in "Mommie Dearest."For years Faye Dunaway has been fighting the pushy, larger-than-life stereotype, insisting she is not the roles she plays. But now that she's playing driven opera star Maria Callas, Dunaway embraces the comparison.Local theatergoers can see how well the role fits beginning Tuesday, when the touring production of "Master Class," Terrence McNally's play about Callas, opens at the Lyric Opera House.

Driven and manipulative Evelyn Mulwray in "Chinatown."Driven TV executive Diana Christensen in "Network."Driven and abusive Joan Crawford in "Mommie Dearest."For years Faye Dunaway has been fighting the pushy, larger-than-life stereotype, insisting she is not the roles she plays. But now that she's playing driven opera star Maria Callas, Dunaway embraces the comparison.Local theatergoers can see how well the role fits beginning Tuesday, when the touring production of "Master Class," Terrence McNally's play about Callas, opens at the Lyric Opera House.

How did the United States become so entangled in Vietnam that the war there dominated the lives of an entire generation? What's in store for Marylanders in 1996? Why did an actress like Faye Dunaway agree to star in a movie like "Mommie Dearest"? And if "Party of Five" is so good, why isn't anyone watching it? TV offers answers to some vexing questions tonight.* "State of the State Address" (noon-1 p.m., repeats 10:30 p.m.-11:30 p.m., MPT, Channels 22 and 67) -- Gov. Parris Glendening offers his take on how the Free State is faring.

See, I don't want a Jason Alexander movie.What I want is a George Costanza movie.Jason Alexander is a pleasant, if largely unremarkable, young actor, and to put him in the center of a movie is to mark it as pleasant, if largely unremarkable.George, the character Jason plays on "Seinfeld" if you've been on Mars, is one of the great icons of our age, a Leopold Bloom or Raskolnikov for the '90s, a greedy little acolyte of the cult of self whose mercenary desperation is always undercut by a tide of liar's phlegm rising in his throat, a congenital slipperiness of his eyes, and a sweat-drenched upper lip. He's all hat and no cattle.

"Looking for Gatsby: My Life," by Faye Dunaway with Betsy Sharkey. Simon & Schuster. Illustrated. 416 pages. $25 Faye Dunaway is a rare combination of silky glamour and rapacious dedication to art, but she was also blessed, at least in her youth, with luck. She was endowed with classic bone-deep beauty that her own intelligence and the ministrations of others cultivated into style, and she was accorded recognition from the high-throttle star machine that in the late '60s and early '70s picked her up and, as long as she sold tickets, packaged her as the American woman of the hour.

|TC Call Cyndi Atkinson the unconventional dresser. The catering director of the Admiral Fell Inn will add a bejeweled bustier to an Ann Taylor outfit, finish a silk suit with fishnet stockings and turn up for job interviews in a vintage hat.The result? An original look that observers often adore and occasionally consider odd."I look at my clothes as costumes," says Ms. Atkinson, who's 40ish and lives in Fells Point. "I want them to express cleverness, creativity and independent thought."Friends have described your style as a cross between Faye Dunaway and Cher.