Oft-acclaimed actress Anne Bancroft, known best for her role as the original MILF, succumbed to cancer Monday in New York. A truly accomplished performer, Bancroft had achieved the trifecta of acting awards (Oscar, Tony, and Emmy) during a career that included such memorable turns as her predatory housewife Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate opposite Dustin Hoffman, and her portrayal of a Helen Keller’s teacher in the Miracle Worker.
While Bancroft was reportedly dismayed by the emphasis given her infamous turn in The Graduate over the vast remainder of her work, college-aged males with Mrs. Robinson fantasies, Simon and Garfunkel, and The Lemonheads all thank the late actress for the role that forever changed so many lives.
On a lighter note, the celebrity-loving world can start celebrating the arrival of a Britney Junior as Jeannette Walls shares news that America’s latest pop starlet-cum-reality show participant, Crossroads star Britney Spears, is expecting a baby girl. Spears, whose new UPN show Chaotic has been both critically panned for sharing TMI (Too Much Information) and has recently dropped drastically in the ratings, had announced last April that she and Chaotic co-star/husband Kevin Federline were having a baby. If you’ve seen the pair’s show, or have heard about the high caliber of content (says Britney: ‘Our sex is so good. … Ecstasy, ecstasy, ecstasy, ecstasy’), why not keep watching and boost their Nielsen ratings? You just might be able to pinpoint the moment the constant lovebirds conceived their future bundle of pop power.
Fans of ABC’s pulse-quickening adventure series, Lost, have a shred of information to hold onto as they piece together the fragments of last month’s abrupt finale: tough-girl Michelle Rodriguez has joined the cast for next season. The star of such adrenaline pumping films as Girlfight, The Fast and the Furious, and Resident Evil, Rodriguez guest starred in this season’s finale as a fellow passenger on Oceana Airline’s doomed flight 815, and her addition to the cast promises to reveal more about the fate of our intrepid survivors.