Amy Wallace

It’s a Photo Finish for Santa Anita Park in HBO’s Luck By Amy Wallace Originally appeared in Los Angeles magazine February 2012 When writer David Milch and director Michael Mann set out to make their new HBO series, Luck, about the seedy, high-stakes world of horse racing, there was never a question about where it [...]

Meet Lucy Jones, “the Earthquake Lady” As part of her plan to prepare Americans for the next “big one,” the seismologist tackles the dangerous phenomenon of denial By Amy Wallace Smithsonian magazine, February 2012 One of Lucy Jones’ first memories is of an earthquake. It struck north of Los Angeles, not far from her family [...]

The star of the TNT cop series Southland on tweeting, busing, and Boyz N the Hood As told to Amy Wallace Originally appeared in Los Angeles magazine, January 2012 How do I say this? A white person’s upbringing in Los Angeles is different from a black person’s upbringing in Los Angeles. Even if both grew [...]

The writer Paige Williams annotates pieces she admires every Tuesday, inserting her questions and the author’s answers. This week, she aimed her laser focus on my August 2010 profile of Garry Shandling, which ran in GQ. Here’s a link.  

Wicked Smaht Is there friggin’ anything Matt Damon can’t do? As the action hero/leading man/activist/Oscar-winning screenwriter/sitcom revelation/Internet meme finally makes the transition to Serious Director, we’re about to find out by Amy Wallace Originally published in GQ, January 2012 I’m ducking Matt Damon. We’re supposed to meet at the Central Park Zoo ticket booth precisely [...]

With the debut of her new HBO series, Enlightened, the actress talks about growing up with actors (her parents are Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd), dying on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and being stuck in 1978 As told to Amy Wallace Originally appeared in Los Angeles magazine, November 2011 My family’s biggest pet peeve [...]

Yeah, I got my face done. And my nose. And my eyes. And my… By Phyllis Diller as told to Amy Wallace Originally appeared in the October 2011 issue of Los Angeles magazine Why did I get my face done? I’ll tell you why. First of all, I didn’t touch it until I was 55. [...]

The dancer-choreographer-singer turned judge—who reunites with Simon Cowell this month on Fox’s The X Factor—on Laker Girls, Valley condos, and Gene Kelly As told to Amy Wallace Originally appeared in September 2011 issue of Los Angeles magazine In case you didn’t know, I’m not that tall. I’m five feet two on a good day. Growing [...]

California or Bust When discussing the body, always go to the top. We’re talking cha-chas, ta-tas, wah-wahs, chihuahuas. L.A. loves ‘em—so we got ourselves some By Amy Wallace Originally appeared in Los Angeles magazine, January 2002 LET ME TELL YOU WHAT HAPPENED WITH MY BREASTS TODAY. First, I spilled a latte all over them at [...]

The Peter Bart I Knew Condé Nast Portfolio’s Amy Wallace—writer of a definitive profile of the former Variety editor—looks at what his departure means for Hollywood. Originally appeared on Portfolio.com April 08, 2009 Eight years ago, I wrote a lengthy profile of Peter Bart, the long-standing and powerful editor of the entertainment trade paper Variety, [...]

Jerry-atrics! He’s the original lord of lowbrow, the king of the pratfall, the last surviving link to the bedrock of American comedy—vaudeville, burlesque, slapstick. Sure, he’s ancient, but he’s juggling half a dozen new projects and still found time to sit down with Amy Wallace for an eleven-hour interview. Call it the Jerry Lewis Marathon [...]

What do you do when fate threatens to derail your dream job? If you’re this star of HBO’s True Blood, you trust the burnt surfer dude with the needle and thread As told to Amy Wallace Originally appeared in Los Angeles magazine, August 2011 It’s 6:55 a.m.—a Winchell’s morning. That means my friend and I [...]

With a Flip of a Knob, He Heard the Future The path to the invention of the wah-wah pedal — which lets an electric guitar take on aspects of the human voice — shows the twists and turns of the creative process. By Amy Wallace Originally appeared in the New York Times on August 7, [...]

Science to Art, and Vice Versa A sculptor and a lighting artist have very different techniques but the same goal: to promote understanding by finding new ways of seeing the world. By AMY WALLACE Originally appeared in the New York Times, July 10, 2011 NATHALIE MIEBACH uses science to make art. A sculptor who lives [...]

The versatile actor, who plays the commander-in-chief on NBC’s alien-invasion series The Event, on having his face on billboards, Driving While Black, and getting the part As told to Amy Wallace Originally appeared in Los Angeles magazine, 6/2011 A few years after I moved to Los Angeles to be on L.A. Law, I did a [...]

You Bring an Idea, and They’ll Do the Rest Edison Nation, the Big Idea Group and other companies are bringing the inventions of regular people to market. By AMY WALLACE Originally appeared in the New York Times, June 12, 2011 BETSY RAVREBY KAUFMAN is a lot of things — a freelance television producer, a former [...]

Innovation, Gliding Across the Generations Expanding on their grandfather’s ideas, two brothers have created the Sporting-Sail, which lets skateboarders harness the wind to decelerate on steep terrain. By AMY WALLACE Originally appeared in the New York Times May 15, 2011 DOES inventiveness run in families? Is there a gene that awakens the entrepreneurial urge? A [...]

L.A. Story: Tim Burton The Burbank-born movie director (who now lives in London) on Walt Disney’s frozen body, Christmas in L.A., and his new show at LACMA As told to Amy Wallace Originally appeared in Los Angeles, May 2011 You’re often compensating for things that are lacking in your life. If you’re in the cold [...]

Los Angeles magazine won two National Magazine Awards, or Ellies, earlier this week. Here’s a photo of the editing crew standing around one of them (I’m in the middle)….

Serving a Cause, 25 Cents at a Time CherryCard Pairs Charitable Giving with Everyday Purchases By AMY WALLACE Originally appeared the The New York Times, April 17, 2011 IN February, Noah Fradin turned 18 — finally. It’s a relief, he says, that he no longer needs his mom to co-sign the nondisclosure agreements and other [...]

L.A. Story: Josh Radnor The 36-year-old star of the sitcom How I Met Your Mother, who also writes and directs (his first film, happythankyoumoreplease, debuts this month), talks about traffic, the gold rush, and L.A. as a blank canvas As told to Amy Wallace Originally appeared in Los Angeles magazine, March 2011 There are a lot of [...]

A New Book Treats The Beatles as a Muse for Success in Business By AMY WALLACE Originally appeared in the New York Times, March 20 THE Beatles were stymied. During a 1968 recording session, they couldn’t find a suitable introduction to “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” a song written by Paul McCartney. John Lennon didn’t much like the [...]

Lucy Jones, a fourth-generation Californian, is Caltech’s go-to quake expert whose calm presence soothes us when the earth moves. The Big One? It’s coming By Amy Wallace Originally published in Los Angeles magazine, April 2011 You’ll recognize Lucy Jones by her face, not her title. She is a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey and [...]

In the days since March 11, when Japan was rocked by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake off its Northeastern coast, seismologist Lucy Jones of the U.S. Geological Survey has been busy. She’s appeared in countless television interviews, both national and local, analyzing what’s being called the Tohoku quake. She’s briefed local and federal elected officials about [...]

The Fury Last year, a University of Alabama scientist gunned down six of her colleagues. Here’s what made Amy Bishop snap. By Amy Wallace Originally appeared in Wired March 2011 4 pm, February 12, 2010—University of Alabama in Huntsville Shelby Center for Science and Technology, Loading Dock. Amy Bishop stepped out of the science building [...]

Coke, Hookers, Hospital, Repeat Charlie Sheen talks to Amy Wallace about his latest bender, his true feelings about sobriety and ‘Apocalypse Now,’ and the cyclical insanity of his crazy-ass life By Amy Wallace Originally appeared in GQ April 2011 Five days ago, we closed a profile built around an interview with Charlie Sheen that will appear [...]

“I Heard the Shots and Ran Toward the Sound” That’s Daniel Hernandez talking, the 21-year-old intern who helped save Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords’s life. Here, Hernandez and two other heroes of the Arizona massacre—one of the men who tackled the gunman and the woman who prevented him from reloading—tell Amy Wallace their gripping stories of that [...]

A Swarm of Wasps, if Not Investors Research shows that wasps can be taught to sniff out most anything, even bedbugs. Two scientists want to turn the idea into a product but face challenges in raising capital. By Amy Wallace Originally appeared in the New York Times, February 20, 2011 THE white paper by the [...]

Laura Schlessinger made headlines when she uttered a racially charged expletive 11 times on her radio show. Now in a new book, Surviving a Shark Attack (On Land), America’s most infamous scold says SHE was wronged By Amy Wallace Originally appeared in Los Angeles magazine, February 2011 Dr. Laura Schelessinger greets me in the circular [...]

Originally published in Los Angeles magazine, February 2011 Here are a few things I’ve seen during my 18 years of hiking in Runyon Canyon: dozens of horses, a very fat goat, several rattlesnakes, hundreds of bare midriffs, thousands of happy dogs, Cameron Diaz and Drew Barrymore walking their happy dogs, an injured coyote, an abandoned [...]

The omnipresent actress—she’s in NBC’s Parks and Recreation and the Oscar shoo-in The Social Network—talks about rebellion, See’s lollipops, and, oh yeah, her parents (Quincy Jones and Peggy Lipton) As told to Amy Wallace Originally appeared in the February 2011 issue of Los Angeles magazine I knew who O.J. Simpson was—he and my parents traveled [...]

Matt LeBlanc Gets Wise to the Game With a smart new Showtime series, Episodes, the 43-year-old actor formerly known as Joey Tribbiani has finally found a way to turn his signature role to his advantage Originally appeared in February 2011 issue of Details DETAILS: You grew up in blue-collar Newton, Massachusetts. When did you realize [...]

Originally appeared in the New York Times, Jan. 22, 2011 By AMY WALLACE ONE way to understand Emilio Estevez’s backyard vineyard might be to recall a scene from “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” Remember Richard Dreyfuss, after a run-in with a U.F.O., obsessively fashioning mountains out of mashed potatoes and shaving cream? Except for [...]

Behind the Many Faces of Innovation, 2010 By AMY WALLACE Originally appeared in New York Times, December 25, 2010 LAST week was Doyle Doss’s busiest of the year. An advocacy group for the homeless had called from St. Louis to buy 12 of his Kandle Heeter Candle Holders, which promise “dry, radiant space heat from [...]

Farewell, Digital World. (It’s All for a Cause.) By AMY WALLACE First appeared in the New York Times, November 28, 2010 ON Wednesday, Kim Kardashian is going to die a little. So is her sister, Khloé, not to mention Lady Gaga, David LaChapelle, Justin Timberlake, Usher, Serena Williams and Elijah Wood. That day is World [...]

Hunting for antiques in Santa Monica with the Academy Award nominee now starring in Conviction and Welcome to the Rileys By Amy Wallace Originally appeared in Los Angeles magazine, November 2010 When Melissa Leo was 12, her family was evicted, and all their belongings were put out on the street. That helps explain why the [...]

Prototype Whimsy (and Clothes) for Sale By AMY WALLACE Published in the New York Times,  October 30, 2010 TO understand the thinking behind Chris Lindland’s company, Betabrand, you need to keep three seemingly disparate ideas in your head at the same time: 1) It’s a challenge for Web-only businesses to sell clothing. 2) Most people [...]

For years, Chris Albrecht was unstoppable. He was the man who made HBO, the programming genius who brought us The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, The Wire and more, revolutionizing the way we watch, and revere, TV. Then, one night in Vegas, he seemed to throw it all away: He roughed up his girlfriend outside the [...]

Brian Austin Green Married Megan Fox—and You Didn’t Since leaving the 90210 ZIP code, the actor has endured cracks about his hair, his rap album, and his flagging career. But he wakes up next to Megan Fox every morning, so who’s laughing now? By Amy Wallace Originally appeared in Details, October 2010 Details: You were [...]

We Got a Mention! Now Let’s Panic By AMY WALLACE Originally appeared in the New York Times, October 3, 2010 EARLY in the summer, Nick LaCava and his two partners got something most entrepreneurs wish for, and if these three had it to do over, they would wish for it again. But they say they [...]

The Ladies’ Man Can true love tame James Ellroy, the Demon Dog of L.A. fiction? By Amy Wallace Los Angeles magazine, September 2010 James Ellroy is sitting in a corner booth at the Pacific Dining Car, the 6th Street steak joint, brooding about women. It’s the perfect place for it. The last time L.A. fiction’s [...]

D-U-S-T-I-N The actor won an Academy Award for playing Raymond Babbitt, an autistic savant, in Rain Man. Twenty-one years later, Dustin Hoffman reflects By Amy Wallace Appeared in Los Angeles magazine, September 2010 On the research he did to prepare: Oliver Sacks had this long blackboard in his office, and when he was talking about [...]

By AMY WALLACE Originally appeared in the New York Times 9/05/10 LATE last month, tens of thousands of runners who are registered for this year’s New York City Marathon got an e-mail from Mary Wittenberg, the president and chief executive of New York Road Runners. Ms. Wittenberg wanted to introduce them to a person whom [...]

A messenger just dropped off a copy of The Meaning of Life: Wisdom, Humor, and Damn Good Advice from 64 Extraordinary Lives. It’s a compilation of Esquire’s great “What I’ve Learned” interviews, and included are two I had the pleasure of doing: with Jerry Lewis and Billy Bob Thornton. Check it out!

Science, politics and policy in the minefield By Amy Wallace Originally appeared on ReportingOnHealth.org on August 30, 2010 Around 8 p.m. on the evening of Dec. 23, 2009, my 12-year-old son and I were puttering around the house when there was a sudden, loud banging at the front door. “I have legal papers for Amy [...]

The controversial director quit drugs and gave up on the Academy Awards — but he couldn’t resist taking another shot at Wall Street greed. By Amy Wallace Originally appeared in Details August 2010 Details: When Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps hits theaters, there will be those who—on seeing Gordon Gekko complete a lengthy prison sentence—will [...]

He’s a boxer, a Buddhist, a hoops junkie, and a kind of Yoda to every funny person born since 1965 (Sandler, Silverman, Apatow, Gervais, Baron Cohen…). Amy Wallace survives a rare sparring session with Garry Shandling, the reclusive master of American comedy By AMY WALLACE Originally appeared in GQ August 2010 Toward the end of [...]

By AMY WALLACE Originally appeared in the New York Times, August 8, 2010 ONE Sunday a month, this column seeks out creative thinkers and tells their stories. You might think that finding these folks would be easy, and we acknowledge that the Prototype in-box is often flooded by readers’ suggestions. But finding entrepreneurs whose sagas [...]

That ballsy, larger-than-life star the public sees? It’s a persona she created, Stone reveals. The actress bares all about her body, her divorce and why she just says no to feelıng guilty. By Amy Wallace Originally published in More June 2010 SHARON STONE is shameless. The actress considers it a skill to have no shame. [...]

Seth MacFarlane Sounds Off The outspoken Family Guy creator has amassed a legion of loyal fans and almost as many mortal enemies—and he has a hundred million reasons to keep the fart jokes coming. By Amy Wallace August 2010 Details magazine Details: Thanks to a $100 million deal with FOX, you’re the highest-paid writer-producer on [...]

“The maximum intrigue to be found on the August newstand is in GQ’s x-ray of Garry Shandling. Reads like Philip Roth directed by David Chase.” — from @shinangovani When I looked him up on Twitter, this is what it told me: Shinan is the social columnist for Canada’s National Post, and author of the novel [...]

I have a lengthy profile of Garry Shandling, the actor and comedian, in GQ this month. It’s not online yet, and won’t be for a while. But please go take a look. He’s a fascinating guy. Oh, and as well as being hilarious, he’s wise. I’m not kidding. If the challenges of work-a-day existence haven’t [...]

Originally appeared in the New York Times, July 9, 2010 Whose Idea Was the Dry-Cleaning Bag Anyway? By AMY WALLACE LAST month’s Prototype column — about a company that makes reusable dry-cleaning bags — began: “Man or woman, every one of us has experienced the frustration that drove Rick Siegel to become an inventor.” The [...]

While shopping at the Farmers Market, Jeffrey Donovan, the star of USA Network’s hit Burn Notice, opens up about his early struggles as an actor, doing his own stunts, and the right way to make vegetable soup By Amy Wallace Los Angeles magazine, July 2010 On this sunny morning at the Farmers Market, Jeffrey Donovan isn’t booby-trapping [...]

A former Hollywood production assistant  dishes on how the DreamWorks executive takes his meetings on the rocks Originally appeared in Los Angeles June 2010 As told to Amy Wallace At DreamWorks Animation, they have free lunch. So as a PA there, you don’t have to pick up food. But you do have to get Jeffrey [...]

Lunch is anything but a break for Hollywood’s production assistants. A former PA tells what it’s like to battle traffic, tickets, and spills As told to Amy Wallace Originally appeared in Los Angeles Magazine June 2010 When you move to L.A. to work in Hollywood, there’s no clear path. But if you don’t get broken [...]

Originally appeared in the New York Times 6/13/10 By Amy Wallace MAN or woman, every one of us has experienced the frustration that drove Rick Siegel to become an inventor. He would be in his clothes closet, running late, wrestling with the plastic bags that encased — and the twist ties that entangled — his [...]

Today’s criminal complaint against Kenneth Starr, the financial adviser to many a Hollywood A-lister, made me dig out a story I wrote last year about business managers who serve the entertainment industry. It ran in the March 2009 issue of Portfolio (the now-defunct business magazine where I was a senior writer). The complaint, as outlined [...]

The Huffington Post sums up my Sharon Stone story: Sharon Stone is on the cover of the June MORE magazine and in the interview the actress, 52, talks about her dating life and the plastic surgery disaster that happened six years ago after her divorce from newspaper editor Phil Bronstein. On why she got lip injections: [...]

A friend just told me she just received her June  More magazine, whose cover story on Sharon Stone I had the pleasure of writing. The whole piece isn’t online yet, but here’s the lede (and a photo by Brigitte Lacombe): Sharon Stone is shameless. The actress considers it a skill to have no shame. She [...]

This morning I received a wonderful note from a woman who’d just read my More magazine piece about Harold, his purple crayon and me. She said she’d never written to a journalist before, but that the piece, which appeared in December, “struck me deeply… I feel exuberant!” Harold always makes me feel exuberant. So glad [...]

My sartorial NYT column is in the International Herald Tribune today.

Here are a few images of the shirt I designed via www.blank-label.com — complete with my own made-up label, “Live Free or Die.” The handsome model is related to me. And he likes the shirt, even though his mom made it.

Originally appeared in the New York Times By AMY WALLACE THE idea was never to try to supplant retail, says Fan Bi, the 22-year-old chief executive of Blank Label. Sometimes you need a dress shirt right now, and at those times, Mr. Bi says approvingly, “you can get it right now at Nordstrom.” But what [...]

She’s neither desperate nor a housewife, and that’s just the way she likes it. Dana Delany sounds off about her single status, why lovemaking gets livelier after 50 and the male star who’s her surprising role model. Originally appeared in April 2010 More By Amy Wallace Photographs spill out of big manila envelopes, making a mess [...]

In his 1899 book, “The Theory of the Leisure Class,” Thorstein Veblen (who I quote in tomorrow’s New York Times) coined the term “conspicuous consumption” to describe how people, rich or poor, acquire cool stuff to impress and to establish a pecking order. Here are a few pictures of the cool stuff (specifically high-end cell [...]

Originally appeared in the New York Times April 18, 2010 By AMY WALLACE IN 2006, Frank Nuovo was 45 — “boom!” he says, “five more years to 50!” — and at the top of his game. Except for one thing: “I’d kind of lost my soul.” As chief of design at Nokia, the world’s leading [...]

Just got word that “An Epidemic of Fear,” my Wired story on vaccines, will be in “Best American Science Writing 2010,” to be published soon… Very exciting.

Originally published in the New York Times 3/21/10 By AMY WALLACE JEN BILIK sells wit for a living. Since 2002, when she founded her gift and stationery products company, Knock Knock, with a $750,000 windfall from a Manhattan apartment sale, Ms. Bilik, a 40-year-old entrepreneur, has been churning out cleverness in abundance. There are the [...]

Has Dana Delany ever looked better? I don’t think so. Peggy Sirota took it. I wrote the accompanying story. It’s in the April issue…

I just got this from a Wired reader in Australia who read my November cover story and was following the legal action that followed. She gave me permission to reprint it here: My name is Toni McCaffery. I live in Australia and one year ago my beautiful baby daughter Dana died from Pertussis on 9 [...]

Last December, two days before Christmas, I was served with a $1 million lawsuit that alleged I had libeled a woman who was mentioned in my November 2009 cover story for Wired magazine: “An Epidemic of Fear: One Man’s Battle Against the Anti-Vaccine Movement”. Today, the lawsuit was dismissed. Read the attached ruling here: Memorandum [...]

Click on photo below to read about what I saw at the top of Runyon Canyon this morning….

Noah Baumbach, the writer-director most associated with Brooklyn, explains how he made an (almost) cliché-free movie about L.A. Los Angeles magazine, March 2010 » The Filmmaker’s Back Story Noah Baumbach’s first movie was shot in Los Angeles, and you weren’t supposed to know it. The writer-director had wanted to set Kicking and Screaming, his 1995 [...]

Originally published in the New York Times, 2/21/10 By AMY WALLACE WHEN Vanessa Troyer and Chris Farentinos first hit on the idea that would change their lives, they were thinking big — a little too big, actually. “It was a mail receptacle/guest house,” Mr. Farentinos jokes, describing an oversize, locking mailbox nicknamed the Elephant Trunk. [...]

In this Sunday’s New York Times, I begin writing a monthly column called Prototype about innovation and creativity. If you want to hear about the thinking behind the first one, about a Compton couple who invented a better mailbox, Sunday Business Editor Tim O’Brien interviewed me for the Weekend Business podcast that just went online.

Three years ago, I asked my friend Kelly to build me a website — an online archive of my work that would make it easy for people to find stories they were curious about. She designed an elegant portal that divided my stories into categories that seemed to correspond to what people might be interested in: Hollywood Players, [...]

She has a billion dollars and she wants to be Governor of California. Her critics say she’ll try to buy the election. Her supporters say that as the former CEO of eBay, she has the business chops to salvage a near-bankrupt state. Originally appeared in More Magazine February, 2010 BY: Amy Wallace Ground zero for Meg Whitman’s [...]

What most people don’t know is that long ago, before Cesar Millan became TV’s beloved canine savant, the Dog Whisperer, his wife had to teach him how to love women. Originally appeared in Elle February, 2010 BY: Amy Wallace What, you were expecting peace and quiet,muchachas? Cesar Millan may be known as the Dog Whisperer, [...]

A chaotic childhood left the author believing she had only herself to rely on. But a painful divorce — and an insight from her young son — led her to a new conclusion. Originally appeared in More Magazine December/January 2010 BY: Amy Wallace Standing behind her in the supermarket line, I could see the girl [...]

Originally appeared in Wired Magazine January, 2010 BY: Amy Wallace Sean Carroll’s office at Caltech is a jumble of brainy flotsam. There are books with titles like Differential Forms in Algebraic Topology; five empty champagne bottles, one for each of his students who’s earned a PhD; and a NASA-approved blow-up beach ball of the universe. And [...]

An email exchange with Viggo Mortensen on the subjects of hope, endurance, and human nature. Originally appeared in Los Angeles Magazine December, 2009 BY: Amy Wallace He has been nominated for an Oscar (for the 2007 mystery Eastern Promises) and was declared a bona fide sex symbol (after his turn in the 2005 crime drama [...]

After Carrying Tabloid Baggage For 18 Years, Paul Reubens Is Back In The Saddle — And In The Playhouse. Ready For A Big Adventure, Boys And Girls? Originally appeared in Details November, 2009 BY: Amy Wallace Paul Reubens is doing one of the things he does best: obsessing. “I am constantly hoping that, like, I’m [...]

Originally appeared in Los Angeles Magazine November, 2009 After she confessed to a young reporter about the murder of her ex-husband and his new wife, Betty Broderick became an icon for women scorned. Twenty years later, that reporter reconnects with the killer who launched her career. BY: Amy Wallace She took her gun, entered her [...]

Originally appeared in Wired Magazine November, 2009 By Amy Wallace To hear his enemies talk, you might think Paul Offit is the most hated man in America. A pediatrician in Philadelphia, he is the coinventor of a rotavirus vaccine that could save tens of thousands of lives every year. Yet environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy [...]

Cesar Millan, the “Dog Whisperer,” built a multimillion-dollar company on his skill with pets and their owners. “God was my lawyer,” he says. Originally appeared in the New York Times on 10/11/2009 BY: Amy Wallace IT’S a miracle. That’s what the humans believe, more often than not, after watching this compact, 40-year-old C.E.O. do his [...]

Steve Warshak made millions on “natural male enhancement.” Now he’s doing hard time. Originally appeared in GQ October, 2009 BY: Amy Wallace The ads just ooze intentional cheesiness, none more so than “Enzyte Christmas.” In the (unlikely) event you’ve never seen it, picture an office holiday party: reindeer sweaters, cubicles festooned with garlands, and antler-headed [...]

Meet Ash, cousin of Sacha, who has quietly been directing not-remotely-funny movies in Hollywood for years – and who told the man behind Brüno to stay away from comedy Originally appeared in Esquire Magazine July, 2009 BY: Amy Wallace Ash Baron Cohen’s father and his uncle — who is Sacha Baron Cohen’s father — were [...]

Saving Grace’s Wild Woman Originally appeared in More Magazine, July/August 2009 BY: Amy Wallace As the toughest, lustiest cop on TV, Holly Hunter loves to explode expectations—about women, morality, aging and the need to always be in control. Holly Hunter is talking about sex, and who wouldn’t want to listen? During her nearly three-decade career, [...]

Originally appeared in The Daily Beast June 25, 2009 BY: Amy Wallace A recent email exchange with the late Farrah Fawcett reveals the unlikely friendship between the Charlie’s Angels star and the novelist Ayn Rand, who helped the actress understand her place in culture—and longed to cast her in a TV version of Atlas Shrugged. [...]

Checkmate at the Yellowstone Club Bankruptcies Jolt a Ski Haven for the Superrich Jeff Minton Originally appeared in the New York Times June 14, 2009 BY: Amy Wallace RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. – Nine days after declaring personal bankruptcy — again — a barefoot Edra Blixseth pads excitedly around Porcupine Creek, her 30,000-square-foot estate here. Guests [...]

The roster of victims goes way beyond Spielberg and Katzenberg. How did the scam of the century reach all the way across the country and into the pockets of the showbiz elite? It wasn’t hard at all. Originally appeared in Condé Nast Portfolio March, 2009 BY: Amy Wallace To hear him talk about the economic challenges facing [...]

Sure, he isn’t as pretty as he was, but he is having more sex and attracting attention for his acting, not his antics. And if Rourke doesn’t nab an Oscar this time, so what? He’s going for one next year, too. Originally appeared in Men’s Journal February, 2009 BY: Amy Wallace Just a few months [...]

Get Me Rewrite, Rewrite, Rewrite Fox hits up Hollywood A-listers to make a sequel to Oliver Stone’s Wall Street. Originally appeared in Condé Nast Portfolio February, 2009 BY: Amy Wallace Gordon Gekko is an ex-con, fresh out of prison. The year is 2009. The place: New York. In Money Never Sleeps, a script floating around [...]

Originally appeared in Conde Nast Portfolio January, 2008 BY: Amy Wallace He’s Mark Zuckerberg’s coach, Bill Gates’ editor, Bono’s business partner, and an owner of Forbes. But Roger McNamee—the guitar-strumming soul of one of the quirkiest private equity shops in Silicon Valley—still hasn’t found what he’s looking for. Backstage at a cavernous Denver nightclub called [...]

A battle for control of the Superman franchise pits Time Warner against the original Lois Lane. Originally appeared in Portfolio, October 2007 BY: Amy Wallace In May 2002, Richard Parsons, then co-chief operating officer of AOL Time Warner, received a scathing letter from the widow of Jerome Siegel, the man who invented Superman.

  “Dear Dick,” [...]

Originally appeared in Esquire March, 2006 Eats Roadkill, Speaks Danish. The Appealingly Weird World of Viggo Mortensen By Amy Wallace Viggo Mortensen listens to a lot of AM radio. The forty-seven-year-old actor doesn’t enjoy this hobby, exactly. But if the vitriol spewed by conservative talk jocks is what tens of millions of Americans listen to, [...]

What I’ve Learned Originally published in Esquire,  January 1, 2006 Jerry Lewis: Comedian, 79, Las Vegas INTERVIEWED BY: Amy Wallace Hey, Penny! Forty-three years, Penny’s been in my office. She’s something else. She doesn’t let me get away with anything. Penny, bring me an orange soda, honey. You haven’t done a goddamn thing all day. [...]

Hollywood’s king of schlock Originally appeared in The New Yorker February 2, 2004 BY: Amy Wallace In 1998, a script entitled “Phone Booth” started making the rounds in Hollywood. It had a simple premise: a smarmy New York City publicist picks up a ringing pay phone and learns that a sniper will kill him if [...]

Los Angeles Magazine February 1, 2004 BY: Amy Wallace Los Angeles is an actor’s town. Some 40,000 actors call L.A. home. But more than their numbers, it is their hunger, their flair, and most of all their ability to face rejection daily and yet still reinvent themselves that fuel this city and make it unlike [...]

Originally appeared in the New York Times December 21, 2003 BY: Amy Wallace BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — It was dinnertime when the 80 or so invited guests began arriving. Handing off their Benzes and Boxsters to uniformed valets, many of Hollywood’s most important agents, producers and studio and network executives followed a brick path to [...]

March 1, 2003 BY: Amy Wallace THE OTHER DAY, KATHY BATES WAS STANDING with a friend on a street corner in Beverly Hills when a stranger offered an appraisal of her hot body. “This guy said, ‘I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but you have really great nipples!’” Bates says, delighted. “I’m [...]

The Un-agent Agent: He represents top directors. He drives a hard bargain. Mostly, though, Robert Newman just loves to sit in the dark Originally appeared in Los Angeles Magazine March 1, 2003 BY: Amy Wallace Robert Newman knows every movie theater in Los Angeles — where it is, what kind of seating it has, how [...]

The Greasy Spoons that Made L.A. Great Originally appeared in Vanity Fair April, 2002 BY: Amy Wallace There are glitzy Los Angeles restaurants – Mortons, Ago, Mr. Chow – where Hollywood’s top stars and reigning moguls go to be seen. Then there are no-nonsense spots where the same A-list crowd goes to simply eat in [...]

Los Angeles Magazine / March 1, 2002 INTERVIEWED BY: Amy Wallace Jodie Foster sums it up: she’s focused, she’s critical, she’s downright mathematical. After so many movies, she knows how things work and why they don’t. THERE’S A MOMENT IN DIRECTOR David Fincher’s upcoming thriller, Panic Room, that shows why Jodie Foster got the lead [...]

Los Angeles Magazine January 1, 2002 By: Amy Wallace LET ME TELL YOU WHAT HAPPENED WITH MY BREASTS TODAY. First, I spilled a latte all over them at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. The lid on my cup wasn’t tight, so when I went to take a sip, milk foam poured and then puddled [...]

Los Angeles Magazine December 1, 2001 BY: Amy Wallace Bitter sweet dreamers: in their comedies Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, and now The Royal Tenenbaums, Wes Anderson and his friends Owen and Luke Wilson skirt irony in favor of sincerity. They are the perfect funnymen for an unfunny world. YOU HAVE TO SEEK OUT VAHRAM. IF you [...]

He knows the movie business as well as anyone, and when he talks, studio chiefs listen. He’s Variety editor-in-chief Peter Bart, and he lives in curious coexistence with the industry he covers Originally appeared in Los Angeles Magazine September 1, 2001 BY: Amy Wallace Peter Bart is on the phone, and he’s threatening to sue. [...]

Los Angeles Magazine / March 1, 2001 BY: Amy Wallace ALEC GUINNESS USED to say that he built his characters from the shoes up. Laurence Olivier began with the nose often reshaping it with putty. Al Pacino insisted on the elegant camel-hair coat he wore in The Godfather, Part II. Externals matter, he explained. BUT [...]

OPPORTUNITY KNOCKED AT EVERY TURN; BEN AFFLECK MAY SEEM TO HAVE A SCATTERSHOT CAREER, ACTING IN BOTH INDIE AND BLOCKBUSTER FILMS. BUT IN HIS AFFABLE WAY, HE CLEARLY KNOWS WHAT HE WANTS. March 7th, 1999 BY: Amy Wallace Ben Affleck likes money as much as the next guy, but for a friend, he’ll still work [...]

Uni Bomber Originally appeared in Vanity Fair May, 1997 BY: Amy Wallace TODAY’S SPECIAL: TRUST ME! reads the hand-lettered sign on the wall of Sushi Nozawa. And chef Kazunori Nozawa, one of Los Angeles’ most temperamental restaurateurs, isn’t kidding around. To occupy one of the nine seats at his counter, a waitress explains to newcomers, [...]

Karma and culture draw Hollywood to the free-spirited Crossroads School Originally appeared in Vanity Fair April, 1995 BY: Amy Wallace Down an alley, next to a sheet-metal factory just off the Santa Monica Freeway, is a place so exclusive that some of Hollywood’s most powerful players are turned away at the door. It’s not a [...]

Originally appeared in Vanity Fair October, 1994 BY: Amy Wallace Nestled into a steep Santa Monica hillside, 189 concrete steps are giving new meaning to the term ‘social climbing.’ At dawn, at dusk, even in the middle of the night, the fit and would-be fit battle for parking spots near the top of the well-worn [...]

Three years ago, I asked my friend Kelly to build me a website — an online archive of my work that would make it easy for people to find stories they were curious about. She designed an elegant portal that divided my stories into categories that seemed to correspond to what people might be interested in: Hollywood Players, [...]

In this Sunday’s New York Times, I begin writing a monthly column called Prototype about innovation and creativity. If you want to hear about the thinking behind the first one, about a Compton couple who invented a better mailbox, Sunday Business Editor Tim O’Brien interviewed me for the Weekend Business podcast that just went online.

Click on photo below to read about what I saw at the top of Runyon Canyon this morning….

Last December, two days before Christmas, I was served with a $1 million lawsuit that alleged I had libeled a woman who was mentioned in my November 2009 cover story for Wired magazine: “An Epidemic of Fear: One Man’s Battle Against the Anti-Vaccine Movement”. Today, the lawsuit was dismissed. Read the attached ruling here: Memorandum [...]

I just got this from a Wired reader in Australia who read my November cover story and was following the legal action that followed. She gave me permission to reprint it here: My name is Toni McCaffery. I live in Australia and one year ago my beautiful baby daughter Dana died from Pertussis on 9 [...]

Has Dana Delany ever looked better? I don’t think so. Peggy Sirota took it. I wrote the accompanying story. It’s in the April issue…

Just got word that “An Epidemic of Fear,” my Wired story on vaccines, will be in “Best American Science Writing 2010,” to be published soon… Very exciting.

In his 1899 book, “The Theory of the Leisure Class,” Thorstein Veblen (who I quote in tomorrow’s New York Times) coined the term “conspicuous consumption” to describe how people, rich or poor, acquire cool stuff to impress and to establish a pecking order. Here are a few pictures of the cool stuff (specifically high-end cell [...]

Here are a few images of the shirt I designed via www.blank-label.com — complete with my own made-up label, “Live Free or Die.” The handsome model is related to me. And he likes the shirt, even though his mom made it.

My sartorial NYT column is in the International Herald Tribune today.

This morning I received a wonderful note from a woman who’d just read my More magazine piece about Harold, his purple crayon and me. She said she’d never written to a journalist before, but that the piece, which appeared in December, “struck me deeply… I feel exuberant!” Harold always makes me feel exuberant. So glad [...]

I have a lengthy profile of Garry Shandling, the actor and comedian, in GQ this month. It’s not online yet, and won’t be for a while. But please go take a look. He’s a fascinating guy. Oh, and as well as being hilarious, he’s wise. I’m not kidding. If the challenges of work-a-day existence haven’t [...]

“The maximum intrigue to be found on the August newstand is in GQ’s x-ray of Garry Shandling. Reads like Philip Roth directed by David Chase.” — from @shinangovani When I looked him up on Twitter, this is what it told me: Shinan is the social columnist for Canada’s National Post, and author of the novel [...]

Science, politics and policy in the minefield By Amy Wallace Originally appeared on ReportingOnHealth.org on August 30, 2010 Around 8 p.m. on the evening of Dec. 23, 2009, my 12-year-old son and I were puttering around the house when there was a sudden, loud banging at the front door. “I have legal papers for Amy [...]

After Carrying Tabloid Baggage For 18 Years, Paul Reubens Is Back In The Saddle — And In The Playhouse. Ready For A Big Adventure, Boys And Girls? Originally appeared in Details November, 2009 BY: Amy Wallace Paul Reubens is doing one of the things he does best: obsessing. “I am constantly hoping that, like, I’m [...]

Seth MacFarlane Sounds Off The outspoken Family Guy creator has amassed a legion of loyal fans and almost as many mortal enemies—and he has a hundred million reasons to keep the fart jokes coming. By Amy Wallace August 2010 Details magazine Details: Thanks to a $100 million deal with FOX, you’re the highest-paid writer-producer on [...]

The controversial director quit drugs and gave up on the Academy Awards — but he couldn’t resist taking another shot at Wall Street greed. By Amy Wallace Originally appeared in Details August 2010 Details: When Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps hits theaters, there will be those who—on seeing Gordon Gekko complete a lengthy prison sentence—will [...]

Brian Austin Green Married Megan Fox—and You Didn’t Since leaving the 90210 ZIP code, the actor has endured cracks about his hair, his rap album, and his flagging career. But he wakes up next to Megan Fox every morning, so who’s laughing now? By Amy Wallace Originally appeared in Details, October 2010 Details: You were [...]

Matt LeBlanc Gets Wise to the Game With a smart new Showtime series, Episodes, the 43-year-old actor formerly known as Joey Tribbiani has finally found a way to turn his signature role to his advantage Originally appeared in February 2011 issue of Details DETAILS: You grew up in blue-collar Newton, Massachusetts. When did you realize [...]

What most people don’t know is that long ago, before Cesar Millan became TV’s beloved canine savant, the Dog Whisperer, his wife had to teach him how to love women. Originally appeared in Elle February, 2010 BY: Amy Wallace What, you were expecting peace and quiet,muchachas? Cesar Millan may be known as the Dog Whisperer, [...]

What I’ve Learned Originally published in Esquire,  January 1, 2006 Jerry Lewis: Comedian, 79, Las Vegas INTERVIEWED BY: Amy Wallace Hey, Penny! Forty-three years, Penny’s been in my office. She’s something else. She doesn’t let me get away with anything. Penny, bring me an orange soda, honey. You haven’t done a goddamn thing all day. [...]

Originally appeared in Esquire March, 2006 Eats Roadkill, Speaks Danish. The Appealingly Weird World of Viggo Mortensen By Amy Wallace Viggo Mortensen listens to a lot of AM radio. The forty-seven-year-old actor doesn’t enjoy this hobby, exactly. But if the vitriol spewed by conservative talk jocks is what tens of millions of Americans listen to, [...]

Meet Ash, cousin of Sacha, who has quietly been directing not-remotely-funny movies in Hollywood for years – and who told the man behind Brüno to stay away from comedy Originally appeared in Esquire Magazine July, 2009 BY: Amy Wallace Ash Baron Cohen’s father and his uncle — who is Sacha Baron Cohen’s father — were [...]

A messenger just dropped off a copy of The Meaning of Life: Wisdom, Humor, and Damn Good Advice from 64 Extraordinary Lives. It’s a compilation of Esquire’s great “What I’ve Learned” interviews, and included are two I had the pleasure of doing: with Jerry Lewis and Billy Bob Thornton. Check it out!

Steve Warshak made millions on “natural male enhancement.” Now he’s doing hard time. Originally appeared in GQ October, 2009 BY: Amy Wallace The ads just ooze intentional cheesiness, none more so than “Enzyte Christmas.” In the (unlikely) event you’ve never seen it, picture an office holiday party: reindeer sweaters, cubicles festooned with garlands, and antler-headed [...]

He’s a boxer, a Buddhist, a hoops junkie, and a kind of Yoda to every funny person born since 1965 (Sandler, Silverman, Apatow, Gervais, Baron Cohen…). Amy Wallace survives a rare sparring session with Garry Shandling, the reclusive master of American comedy By AMY WALLACE Originally appeared in GQ August 2010 Toward the end of [...]

For years, Chris Albrecht was unstoppable. He was the man who made HBO, the programming genius who brought us The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, The Wire and more, revolutionizing the way we watch, and revere, TV. Then, one night in Vegas, he seemed to throw it all away: He roughed up his girlfriend outside the [...]

“I Heard the Shots and Ran Toward the Sound” That’s Daniel Hernandez talking, the 21-year-old intern who helped save Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords’s life. Here, Hernandez and two other heroes of the Arizona massacre—one of the men who tackled the gunman and the woman who prevented him from reloading—tell Amy Wallace their gripping stories of that [...]

Coke, Hookers, Hospital, Repeat Charlie Sheen talks to Amy Wallace about his latest bender, his true feelings about sobriety and ‘Apocalypse Now,’ and the cyclical insanity of his crazy-ass life By Amy Wallace Originally appeared in GQ April 2011 Five days ago, we closed a profile built around an interview with Charlie Sheen that will appear [...]

Jerry-atrics! He’s the original lord of lowbrow, the king of the pratfall, the last surviving link to the bedrock of American comedy—vaudeville, burlesque, slapstick. Sure, he’s ancient, but he’s juggling half a dozen new projects and still found time to sit down with Amy Wallace for an eleven-hour interview. Call it the Jerry Lewis Marathon [...]

Wicked Smaht Is there friggin’ anything Matt Damon can’t do? As the action hero/leading man/activist/Oscar-winning screenwriter/sitcom revelation/Internet meme finally makes the transition to Serious Director, we’re about to find out by Amy Wallace Originally published in GQ, January 2012 I’m ducking Matt Damon. We’re supposed to meet at the Central Park Zoo ticket booth precisely [...]

Los Angeles Magazine / March 1, 2001 BY: Amy Wallace ALEC GUINNESS USED to say that he built his characters from the shoes up. Laurence Olivier began with the nose often reshaping it with putty. Al Pacino insisted on the elegant camel-hair coat he wore in The Godfather, Part II. Externals matter, he explained. BUT [...]

He knows the movie business as well as anyone, and when he talks, studio chiefs listen. He’s Variety editor-in-chief Peter Bart, and he lives in curious coexistence with the industry he covers Originally appeared in Los Angeles Magazine September 1, 2001 BY: Amy Wallace Peter Bart is on the phone, and he’s threatening to sue. [...]

Los Angeles Magazine December 1, 2001 BY: Amy Wallace Bitter sweet dreamers: in their comedies Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, and now The Royal Tenenbaums, Wes Anderson and his friends Owen and Luke Wilson skirt irony in favor of sincerity. They are the perfect funnymen for an unfunny world. YOU HAVE TO SEEK OUT VAHRAM. IF you [...]

Los Angeles Magazine January 1, 2002 By: Amy Wallace LET ME TELL YOU WHAT HAPPENED WITH MY BREASTS TODAY. First, I spilled a latte all over them at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. The lid on my cup wasn’t tight, so when I went to take a sip, milk foam poured and then puddled [...]

Los Angeles Magazine / March 1, 2002 INTERVIEWED BY: Amy Wallace Jodie Foster sums it up: she’s focused, she’s critical, she’s downright mathematical. After so many movies, she knows how things work and why they don’t. THERE’S A MOMENT IN DIRECTOR David Fincher’s upcoming thriller, Panic Room, that shows why Jodie Foster got the lead [...]

The Un-agent Agent: He represents top directors. He drives a hard bargain. Mostly, though, Robert Newman just loves to sit in the dark Originally appeared in Los Angeles Magazine March 1, 2003 BY: Amy Wallace Robert Newman knows every movie theater in Los Angeles — where it is, what kind of seating it has, how [...]

March 1, 2003 BY: Amy Wallace THE OTHER DAY, KATHY BATES WAS STANDING with a friend on a street corner in Beverly Hills when a stranger offered an appraisal of her hot body. “This guy said, ‘I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but you have really great nipples!’” Bates says, delighted. “I’m [...]

Los Angeles Magazine February 1, 2004 BY: Amy Wallace Los Angeles is an actor’s town. Some 40,000 actors call L.A. home. But more than their numbers, it is their hunger, their flair, and most of all their ability to face rejection daily and yet still reinvent themselves that fuel this city and make it unlike [...]

Originally appeared in Los Angeles Magazine November, 2009 After she confessed to a young reporter about the murder of her ex-husband and his new wife, Betty Broderick became an icon for women scorned. Twenty years later, that reporter reconnects with the killer who launched her career. BY: Amy Wallace She took her gun, entered her [...]

An email exchange with Viggo Mortensen on the subjects of hope, endurance, and human nature. Originally appeared in Los Angeles Magazine December, 2009 BY: Amy Wallace He has been nominated for an Oscar (for the 2007 mystery Eastern Promises) and was declared a bona fide sex symbol (after his turn in the 2005 crime drama [...]

Noah Baumbach, the writer-director most associated with Brooklyn, explains how he made an (almost) cliché-free movie about L.A. Los Angeles magazine, March 2010 » The Filmmaker’s Back Story Noah Baumbach’s first movie was shot in Los Angeles, and you weren’t supposed to know it. The writer-director had wanted to set Kicking and Screaming, his 1995 [...]

Lunch is anything but a break for Hollywood’s production assistants. A former PA tells what it’s like to battle traffic, tickets, and spills As told to Amy Wallace Originally appeared in Los Angeles Magazine June 2010 When you move to L.A. to work in Hollywood, there’s no clear path. But if you don’t get broken [...]

A former Hollywood production assistant  dishes on how the DreamWorks executive takes his meetings on the rocks Originally appeared in Los Angeles June 2010 As told to Amy Wallace At DreamWorks Animation, they have free lunch. So as a PA there, you don’t have to pick up food. But you do have to get Jeffrey [...]

While shopping at the Farmers Market, Jeffrey Donovan, the star of USA Network’s hit Burn Notice, opens up about his early struggles as an actor, doing his own stunts, and the right way to make vegetable soup By Amy Wallace Los Angeles magazine, July 2010 On this sunny morning at the Farmers Market, Jeffrey Donovan isn’t booby-trapping [...]

D-U-S-T-I-N The actor won an Academy Award for playing Raymond Babbitt, an autistic savant, in Rain Man. Twenty-one years later, Dustin Hoffman reflects By Amy Wallace Appeared in Los Angeles magazine, September 2010 On the research he did to prepare: Oliver Sacks had this long blackboard in his office, and when he was talking about [...]

The Ladies’ Man Can true love tame James Ellroy, the Demon Dog of L.A. fiction? By Amy Wallace Los Angeles magazine, September 2010 James Ellroy is sitting in a corner booth at the Pacific Dining Car, the 6th Street steak joint, brooding about women. It’s the perfect place for it. The last time L.A. fiction’s [...]

Hunting for antiques in Santa Monica with the Academy Award nominee now starring in Conviction and Welcome to the Rileys By Amy Wallace Originally appeared in Los Angeles magazine, November 2010 When Melissa Leo was 12, her family was evicted, and all their belongings were put out on the street. That helps explain why the [...]

The omnipresent actress—she’s in NBC’s Parks and Recreation and the Oscar shoo-in The Social Network—talks about rebellion, See’s lollipops, and, oh yeah, her parents (Quincy Jones and Peggy Lipton) As told to Amy Wallace Originally appeared in the February 2011 issue of Los Angeles magazine I knew who O.J. Simpson was—he and my parents traveled [...]

Originally published in Los Angeles magazine, February 2011 Here are a few things I’ve seen during my 18 years of hiking in Runyon Canyon: dozens of horses, a very fat goat, several rattlesnakes, hundreds of bare midriffs, thousands of happy dogs, Cameron Diaz and Drew Barrymore walking their happy dogs, an injured coyote, an abandoned [...]

Laura Schlessinger made headlines when she uttered a racially charged expletive 11 times on her radio show. Now in a new book, Surviving a Shark Attack (On Land), America’s most infamous scold says SHE was wronged By Amy Wallace Originally appeared in Los Angeles magazine, February 2011 Dr. Laura Schelessinger greets me in the circular [...]

In the days since March 11, when Japan was rocked by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake off its Northeastern coast, seismologist Lucy Jones of the U.S. Geological Survey has been busy. She’s appeared in countless television interviews, both national and local, analyzing what’s being called the Tohoku quake. She’s briefed local and federal elected officials about [...]

Lucy Jones, a fourth-generation Californian, is Caltech’s go-to quake expert whose calm presence soothes us when the earth moves. The Big One? It’s coming By Amy Wallace Originally published in Los Angeles magazine, April 2011 You’ll recognize Lucy Jones by her face, not her title. She is a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey and [...]

L.A. Story: Josh Radnor The 36-year-old star of the sitcom How I Met Your Mother, who also writes and directs (his first film, happythankyoumoreplease, debuts this month), talks about traffic, the gold rush, and L.A. as a blank canvas As told to Amy Wallace Originally appeared in Los Angeles magazine, March 2011 There are a lot of [...]

Los Angeles magazine won two National Magazine Awards, or Ellies, earlier this week. Here’s a photo of the editing crew standing around one of them (I’m in the middle)….

L.A. Story: Tim Burton The Burbank-born movie director (who now lives in London) on Walt Disney’s frozen body, Christmas in L.A., and his new show at LACMA As told to Amy Wallace Originally appeared in Los Angeles, May 2011 You’re often compensating for things that are lacking in your life. If you’re in the cold [...]

The versatile actor, who plays the commander-in-chief on NBC’s alien-invasion series The Event, on having his face on billboards, Driving While Black, and getting the part As told to Amy Wallace Originally appeared in Los Angeles magazine, 6/2011 A few years after I moved to Los Angeles to be on L.A. Law, I did a [...]

What do you do when fate threatens to derail your dream job? If you’re this star of HBO’s True Blood, you trust the burnt surfer dude with the needle and thread As told to Amy Wallace Originally appeared in Los Angeles magazine, August 2011 It’s 6:55 a.m.—a Winchell’s morning. That means my friend and I [...]

The dancer-choreographer-singer turned judge—who reunites with Simon Cowell this month on Fox’s The X Factor—on Laker Girls, Valley condos, and Gene Kelly As told to Amy Wallace Originally appeared in September 2011 issue of Los Angeles magazine In case you didn’t know, I’m not that tall. I’m five feet two on a good day. Growing [...]

Yeah, I got my face done. And my nose. And my eyes. And my… By Phyllis Diller as told to Amy Wallace Originally appeared in the October 2011 issue of Los Angeles magazine Why did I get my face done? I’ll tell you why. First of all, I didn’t touch it until I was 55. [...]

With the debut of her new HBO series, Enlightened, the actress talks about growing up with actors (her parents are Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd), dying on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and being stuck in 1978 As told to Amy Wallace Originally appeared in Los Angeles magazine, November 2011 My family’s biggest pet peeve [...]

The star of the TNT cop series Southland on tweeting, busing, and Boyz N the Hood As told to Amy Wallace Originally appeared in Los Angeles magazine, January 2012 How do I say this? A white person’s upbringing in Los Angeles is different from a black person’s upbringing in Los Angeles. Even if both grew [...]

It’s a Photo Finish for Santa Anita Park in HBO’s Luck By Amy Wallace Originally appeared in Los Angeles magazine February 2012 When writer David Milch and director Michael Mann set out to make their new HBO series, Luck, about the seedy, high-stakes world of horse racing, there was never a question about where it [...]

OPPORTUNITY KNOCKED AT EVERY TURN; BEN AFFLECK MAY SEEM TO HAVE A SCATTERSHOT CAREER, ACTING IN BOTH INDIE AND BLOCKBUSTER FILMS. BUT IN HIS AFFABLE WAY, HE CLEARLY KNOWS WHAT HE WANTS. March 7th, 1999 BY: Amy Wallace Ben Affleck likes money as much as the next guy, but for a friend, he’ll still work [...]

Sure, he isn’t as pretty as he was, but he is having more sex and attracting attention for his acting, not his antics. And if Rourke doesn’t nab an Oscar this time, so what? He’s going for one next year, too. Originally appeared in Men’s Journal February, 2009 BY: Amy Wallace Just a few months [...]

Saving Grace’s Wild Woman Originally appeared in More Magazine, July/August 2009 BY: Amy Wallace As the toughest, lustiest cop on TV, Holly Hunter loves to explode expectations—about women, morality, aging and the need to always be in control. Holly Hunter is talking about sex, and who wouldn’t want to listen? During her nearly three-decade career, [...]

A chaotic childhood left the author believing she had only herself to rely on. But a painful divorce — and an insight from her young son — led her to a new conclusion. Originally appeared in More Magazine December/January 2010 BY: Amy Wallace Standing behind her in the supermarket line, I could see the girl [...]

She has a billion dollars and she wants to be Governor of California. Her critics say she’ll try to buy the election. Her supporters say that as the former CEO of eBay, she has the business chops to salvage a near-bankrupt state. Originally appeared in More Magazine February, 2010 BY: Amy Wallace Ground zero for Meg Whitman’s [...]

Has Dana Delany ever looked better? I don’t think so. Peggy Sirota took it. I wrote the accompanying story. It’s in the April issue…

She’s neither desperate nor a housewife, and that’s just the way she likes it. Dana Delany sounds off about her single status, why lovemaking gets livelier after 50 and the male star who’s her surprising role model. Originally appeared in April 2010 More By Amy Wallace Photographs spill out of big manila envelopes, making a mess [...]

A friend just told me she just received her June  More magazine, whose cover story on Sharon Stone I had the pleasure of writing. The whole piece isn’t online yet, but here’s the lede (and a photo by Brigitte Lacombe): Sharon Stone is shameless. The actress considers it a skill to have no shame. She [...]

The Huffington Post sums up my Sharon Stone story: Sharon Stone is on the cover of the June MORE magazine and in the interview the actress, 52, talks about her dating life and the plastic surgery disaster that happened six years ago after her divorce from newspaper editor Phil Bronstein. On why she got lip injections: [...]

That ballsy, larger-than-life star the public sees? It’s a persona she created, Stone reveals. The actress bares all about her body, her divorce and why she just says no to feelıng guilty. By Amy Wallace Originally published in More June 2010 SHARON STONE is shameless. The actress considers it a skill to have no shame. [...]

Originally appeared in the New York Times December 21, 2003 BY: Amy Wallace BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — It was dinnertime when the 80 or so invited guests began arriving. Handing off their Benzes and Boxsters to uniformed valets, many of Hollywood’s most important agents, producers and studio and network executives followed a brick path to [...]

Checkmate at the Yellowstone Club Bankruptcies Jolt a Ski Haven for the Superrich Jeff Minton Originally appeared in the New York Times June 14, 2009 BY: Amy Wallace RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. – Nine days after declaring personal bankruptcy — again — a barefoot Edra Blixseth pads excitedly around Porcupine Creek, her 30,000-square-foot estate here. Guests [...]

Cesar Millan, the “Dog Whisperer,” built a multimillion-dollar company on his skill with pets and their owners. “God was my lawyer,” he says. Originally appeared in the New York Times on 10/11/2009 BY: Amy Wallace IT’S a miracle. That’s what the humans believe, more often than not, after watching this compact, 40-year-old C.E.O. do his [...]

Originally published in the New York Times, 2/21/10 By AMY WALLACE WHEN Vanessa Troyer and Chris Farentinos first hit on the idea that would change their lives, they were thinking big — a little too big, actually. “It was a mail receptacle/guest house,” Mr. Farentinos jokes, describing an oversize, locking mailbox nicknamed the Elephant Trunk. [...]

Originally published in the New York Times 3/21/10 By AMY WALLACE JEN BILIK sells wit for a living. Since 2002, when she founded her gift and stationery products company, Knock Knock, with a $750,000 windfall from a Manhattan apartment sale, Ms. Bilik, a 40-year-old entrepreneur, has been churning out cleverness in abundance. There are the [...]

Originally appeared in the New York Times April 18, 2010 By AMY WALLACE IN 2006, Frank Nuovo was 45 — “boom!” he says, “five more years to 50!” — and at the top of his game. Except for one thing: “I’d kind of lost my soul.” As chief of design at Nokia, the world’s leading [...]

Originally appeared in the New York Times By AMY WALLACE THE idea was never to try to supplant retail, says Fan Bi, the 22-year-old chief executive of Blank Label. Sometimes you need a dress shirt right now, and at those times, Mr. Bi says approvingly, “you can get it right now at Nordstrom.” But what [...]

Originally appeared in the New York Times 6/13/10 By Amy Wallace MAN or woman, every one of us has experienced the frustration that drove Rick Siegel to become an inventor. He would be in his clothes closet, running late, wrestling with the plastic bags that encased — and the twist ties that entangled — his [...]

Originally appeared in the New York Times, July 9, 2010 Whose Idea Was the Dry-Cleaning Bag Anyway? By AMY WALLACE LAST month’s Prototype column — about a company that makes reusable dry-cleaning bags — began: “Man or woman, every one of us has experienced the frustration that drove Rick Siegel to become an inventor.” The [...]

By AMY WALLACE Originally appeared in the New York Times, August 8, 2010 ONE Sunday a month, this column seeks out creative thinkers and tells their stories. You might think that finding these folks would be easy, and we acknowledge that the Prototype in-box is often flooded by readers’ suggestions. But finding entrepreneurs whose sagas [...]

By AMY WALLACE Originally appeared in the New York Times 9/05/10 LATE last month, tens of thousands of runners who are registered for this year’s New York City Marathon got an e-mail from Mary Wittenberg, the president and chief executive of New York Road Runners. Ms. Wittenberg wanted to introduce them to a person whom [...]

We Got a Mention! Now Let’s Panic By AMY WALLACE Originally appeared in the New York Times, October 3, 2010 EARLY in the summer, Nick LaCava and his two partners got something most entrepreneurs wish for, and if these three had it to do over, they would wish for it again. But they say they [...]

Prototype Whimsy (and Clothes) for Sale By AMY WALLACE Published in the New York Times,  October 30, 2010 TO understand the thinking behind Chris Lindland’s company, Betabrand, you need to keep three seemingly disparate ideas in your head at the same time: 1) It’s a challenge for Web-only businesses to sell clothing. 2) Most people [...]

Farewell, Digital World. (It’s All for a Cause.) By AMY WALLACE First appeared in the New York Times, November 28, 2010 ON Wednesday, Kim Kardashian is going to die a little. So is her sister, Khloé, not to mention Lady Gaga, David LaChapelle, Justin Timberlake, Usher, Serena Williams and Elijah Wood. That day is World [...]

Behind the Many Faces of Innovation, 2010 By AMY WALLACE Originally appeared in New York Times, December 25, 2010 LAST week was Doyle Doss’s busiest of the year. An advocacy group for the homeless had called from St. Louis to buy 12 of his Kandle Heeter Candle Holders, which promise “dry, radiant space heat from [...]

Originally appeared in the New York Times, Jan. 22, 2011 By AMY WALLACE ONE way to understand Emilio Estevez’s backyard vineyard might be to recall a scene from “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” Remember Richard Dreyfuss, after a run-in with a U.F.O., obsessively fashioning mountains out of mashed potatoes and shaving cream? Except for [...]

A Swarm of Wasps, if Not Investors Research shows that wasps can be taught to sniff out most anything, even bedbugs. Two scientists want to turn the idea into a product but face challenges in raising capital. By Amy Wallace Originally appeared in the New York Times, February 20, 2011 THE white paper by the [...]

A New Book Treats The Beatles as a Muse for Success in Business By AMY WALLACE Originally appeared in the New York Times, March 20 THE Beatles were stymied. During a 1968 recording session, they couldn’t find a suitable introduction to “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” a song written by Paul McCartney. John Lennon didn’t much like the [...]

Serving a Cause, 25 Cents at a Time CherryCard Pairs Charitable Giving with Everyday Purchases By AMY WALLACE Originally appeared the The New York Times, April 17, 2011 IN February, Noah Fradin turned 18 — finally. It’s a relief, he says, that he no longer needs his mom to co-sign the nondisclosure agreements and other [...]

Innovation, Gliding Across the Generations Expanding on their grandfather’s ideas, two brothers have created the Sporting-Sail, which lets skateboarders harness the wind to decelerate on steep terrain. By AMY WALLACE Originally appeared in the New York Times May 15, 2011 DOES inventiveness run in families? Is there a gene that awakens the entrepreneurial urge? A [...]

You Bring an Idea, and They’ll Do the Rest Edison Nation, the Big Idea Group and other companies are bringing the inventions of regular people to market. By AMY WALLACE Originally appeared in the New York Times, June 12, 2011 BETSY RAVREBY KAUFMAN is a lot of things — a freelance television producer, a former [...]

Science to Art, and Vice Versa A sculptor and a lighting artist have very different techniques but the same goal: to promote understanding by finding new ways of seeing the world. By AMY WALLACE Originally appeared in the New York Times, July 10, 2011 NATHALIE MIEBACH uses science to make art. A sculptor who lives [...]

With a Flip of a Knob, He Heard the Future The path to the invention of the wah-wah pedal — which lets an electric guitar take on aspects of the human voice — shows the twists and turns of the creative process. By Amy Wallace Originally appeared in the New York Times on August 7, [...]

A battle for control of the Superman franchise pits Time Warner against the original Lois Lane. Originally appeared in Portfolio, October 2007 BY: Amy Wallace In May 2002, Richard Parsons, then co-chief operating officer of AOL Time Warner, received a scathing letter from the widow of Jerome Siegel, the man who invented Superman.

  “Dear Dick,” [...]

Originally appeared in Conde Nast Portfolio January, 2008 BY: Amy Wallace He’s Mark Zuckerberg’s coach, Bill Gates’ editor, Bono’s business partner, and an owner of Forbes. But Roger McNamee—the guitar-strumming soul of one of the quirkiest private equity shops in Silicon Valley—still hasn’t found what he’s looking for. Backstage at a cavernous Denver nightclub called [...]

Get Me Rewrite, Rewrite, Rewrite Fox hits up Hollywood A-listers to make a sequel to Oliver Stone’s Wall Street. Originally appeared in Condé Nast Portfolio February, 2009 BY: Amy Wallace Gordon Gekko is an ex-con, fresh out of prison. The year is 2009. The place: New York. In Money Never Sleeps, a script floating around [...]

The roster of victims goes way beyond Spielberg and Katzenberg. How did the scam of the century reach all the way across the country and into the pockets of the showbiz elite? It wasn’t hard at all. Originally appeared in Condé Nast Portfolio March, 2009 BY: Amy Wallace To hear him talk about the economic challenges facing [...]

Today’s criminal complaint against Kenneth Starr, the financial adviser to many a Hollywood A-lister, made me dig out a story I wrote last year about business managers who serve the entertainment industry. It ran in the March 2009 issue of Portfolio (the now-defunct business magazine where I was a senior writer). The complaint, as outlined [...]

The Peter Bart I Knew Condé Nast Portfolio’s Amy Wallace—writer of a definitive profile of the former Variety editor—looks at what his departure means for Hollywood. Originally appeared on Portfolio.com April 08, 2009 Eight years ago, I wrote a lengthy profile of Peter Bart, the long-standing and powerful editor of the entertainment trade paper Variety, [...]

Meet Lucy Jones, “the Earthquake Lady” As part of her plan to prepare Americans for the next “big one,” the seismologist tackles the dangerous phenomenon of denial By Amy Wallace Smithsonian magazine, February 2012 One of Lucy Jones’ first memories is of an earthquake. It struck north of Los Angeles, not far from her family [...]

Originally appeared in The Daily Beast June 25, 2009 BY: Amy Wallace A recent email exchange with the late Farrah Fawcett reveals the unlikely friendship between the Charlie’s Angels star and the novelist Ayn Rand, who helped the actress understand her place in culture—and longed to cast her in a TV version of Atlas Shrugged. [...]

Hollywood’s king of schlock Originally appeared in The New Yorker February 2, 2004 BY: Amy Wallace In 1998, a script entitled “Phone Booth” started making the rounds in Hollywood. It had a simple premise: a smarmy New York City publicist picks up a ringing pay phone and learns that a sniper will kill him if [...]

A friend just told me she just received her June  More magazine, whose cover story on Sharon Stone I had the pleasure of writing. The whole piece isn’t online yet, but here’s the lede (and a photo by Brigitte Lacombe): Sharon Stone is shameless. The actress considers it a skill to have no shame. She [...]

Science to Art, and Vice Versa A sculptor and a lighting artist have very different techniques but the same goal: to promote understanding by finding new ways of seeing the world. By AMY WALLACE Originally appeared in the New York Times, July 10, 2011 NATHALIE MIEBACH uses science to make art. A sculptor who lives [...]

Jerry-atrics! He’s the original lord of lowbrow, the king of the pratfall, the last surviving link to the bedrock of American comedy—vaudeville, burlesque, slapstick. Sure, he’s ancient, but he’s juggling half a dozen new projects and still found time to sit down with Amy Wallace for an eleven-hour interview. Call it the Jerry Lewis Marathon [...]

California or Bust When discussing the body, always go to the top. We’re talking cha-chas, ta-tas, wah-wahs, chihuahuas. L.A. loves ‘em—so we got ourselves some By Amy Wallace Originally appeared in Los Angeles magazine, January 2002 LET ME TELL YOU WHAT HAPPENED WITH MY BREASTS TODAY. First, I spilled a latte all over them at [...]

The writer Paige Williams annotates pieces she admires every Tuesday, inserting her questions and the author’s answers. This week, she aimed her laser focus on my August 2010 profile of Garry Shandling, which ran in GQ. Here’s a link.  

Originally appeared in Vanity Fair October, 1994 BY: Amy Wallace Nestled into a steep Santa Monica hillside, 189 concrete steps are giving new meaning to the term ‘social climbing.’ At dawn, at dusk, even in the middle of the night, the fit and would-be fit battle for parking spots near the top of the well-worn [...]

Karma and culture draw Hollywood to the free-spirited Crossroads School Originally appeared in Vanity Fair April, 1995 BY: Amy Wallace Down an alley, next to a sheet-metal factory just off the Santa Monica Freeway, is a place so exclusive that some of Hollywood’s most powerful players are turned away at the door. It’s not a [...]

Uni Bomber Originally appeared in Vanity Fair May, 1997 BY: Amy Wallace TODAY’S SPECIAL: TRUST ME! reads the hand-lettered sign on the wall of Sushi Nozawa. And chef Kazunori Nozawa, one of Los Angeles’ most temperamental restaurateurs, isn’t kidding around. To occupy one of the nine seats at his counter, a waitress explains to newcomers, [...]

The Greasy Spoons that Made L.A. Great Originally appeared in Vanity Fair April, 2002 BY: Amy Wallace There are glitzy Los Angeles restaurants – Mortons, Ago, Mr. Chow – where Hollywood’s top stars and reigning moguls go to be seen. Then there are no-nonsense spots where the same A-list crowd goes to simply eat in [...]

Originally appeared in Wired Magazine November, 2009 By Amy Wallace To hear his enemies talk, you might think Paul Offit is the most hated man in America. A pediatrician in Philadelphia, he is the coinventor of a rotavirus vaccine that could save tens of thousands of lives every year. Yet environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy [...]

Originally appeared in Wired Magazine January, 2010 BY: Amy Wallace Sean Carroll’s office at Caltech is a jumble of brainy flotsam. There are books with titles like Differential Forms in Algebraic Topology; five empty champagne bottles, one for each of his students who’s earned a PhD; and a NASA-approved blow-up beach ball of the universe. And [...]

The Fury Last year, a University of Alabama scientist gunned down six of her colleagues. Here’s what made Amy Bishop snap. By Amy Wallace Originally appeared in Wired March 2011 4 pm, February 12, 2010—University of Alabama in Huntsville Shelby Center for Science and Technology, Loading Dock. Amy Bishop stepped out of the science building [...]