Sun Nov 22 2009
Abigail Breslin set to play Helen Keller on Broadway
NEW YORK (AP) -- From spunky "Little Miss Sunshine" to an even more heroic young girl.
Abigail Breslin will play Helen Keller in the first Broadway revival of William Gibson's "The Miracle Worker," scheduled to open on March 3, producer David Richenthal announced Wednesday. Previews begin Feb. 12 at Circle in the Square Theatre.
Alison Pill will portray Annie Sullivan, the determined instructor who teaches the deaf and blind Helen how to communicate.
"I am so honored," the 13-year-old Breslin said in an interview. "It's like the biggest thing in the world. ... I have read the biography of Helen Keller. So I've always known the story, and it's always been something I wanted to play.
"Helen is a hero of mine -- for so many reasons. She never gave up on herself and she had so many people who believed in her like her teacher Annie Sullivan."
About Breslin, Richenthal said: "I have never met a young girl her age who is so clear-eyed and unstarry. Helen Keller was brilliant -- an IQ of 150-something -- and obviously a courageous person to overcome what she did. I see in Abigail those qualities."
Hurley receives award
NEW YORK -- Actress Elizabeth Hurley received the Humanitarian Award from the Breast Cancer Research Foundation on Wednesday at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. The 44-year-old "Austin Powers" actress has played a major role in raising awareness for breast cancer.
Swayze's widow feels
sadness 'on a cellular level'
NEW YORK (AP) -- Patrick Swayze's widow has told a crowd near Los Angeles that the loss of her husband of 34 years has left her with sadness "on a cellular level."
Lisa Niemi, making her first public comments since Swayze's death last month from pancreatic cancer, said at the annual nonpartisan Women's Conference in Long Beach, Calif. on Tuesday that her pain "made all the sadness and grief previous to that look like an intellectual concept."
Though she cared for her husband during his 22-month battle with the disease, Niemi says grappling with the 57-year-old "Dirty Dancing" star's death was still "an animal all its own."
Bob Barker donates $1M
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) -- Former television game show host Bob Barker, who ended episodes of "The Price is Right" by asking viewers to spay and neuter their pets, donated $1 million to Drury University to establish a professorship on animal rights that he hopes will lead to a full undergraduate degree program.
Barker, who graduated from the small liberal arts school in 1947 with a degree in economics, said Tuesday that he hopes the school will eventually be able to offer a program of studies that would train them to be animal rights activists and to respect animals.
The new professorship went to Patricia McEachern, a professor of French who will work full time to develop what Barker and McEachern said would be the nation's first undergraduate program in animal rights.
Barker named the new professorship for his late wife, Dorothy Jo Barker.
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