Ledger Pop Journal - Celebrity News & Sports

Two-time Indy 500 champ Helio Castroneves brought home the gold in the recent "Dancing with the Stars" finale, and now he's also getting the thumbs-up from original competitor John O'Hurley. "I think he's a wonderful representative of what the show is about. He didn't start out as a dancer. To use the analogy of a racer, he had to go from zero to 60."

"Dancing with the Stars" Different Now Says John O'Hurley

However, O'Hurley believes it could have been anyone's game. "To say that anyone is any better than the other -- the show is so established with people and their fan bases. It's a different show than when I was in it," he observes. "None of us realized we had a fan base. We were just trying not to fall over."

O'Hurley says he's open to the idea of guesting on the popular ABC dance show "anytime. It was fun. They better do it soon before I get too darn old. I'll have to have a walker," he adds with a laugh.

For now, O'Hurley is busy with the launch of his book "Before Your Dog Can Eat Your Homework, First You Have to Do It," written as a series of letters from his old Maltese, Scoshi, to his new baby son, William.

"The night that we brought Will home, Scoshi went to the base of the feeding chair and has not moved for 11 months. He just continues to hang on there, and that's his purpose now, protecting Will," notes O'Hurley of his inspiration for the book. "In terms of the content, it was difficult because to really write about the values that you're passing on through your dog, you have to have done a lot of investigation and self-analysis. I had to think about what values I stand for."

THE BIG SCREEN SCENE: Maura Tierney of "ER" tells us she had a very good time making the February-opening "Semi-Pro" basketball comedy with Will Ferrell and Woody Harrelson. "It was great for me, even though my character is, like, 'the girl.' It's a really funny script, and the whole movie is kind of edgy," she says. "It's along the lines of 'Slap Shot' in the '70s -- a straight up, R-rated, funny movie. All the characters are flawed. I play Woody's ex-love."

BEHIND THE SCENES: Real life and drama converged in the Dec. 11 episode of CBS's Jimmy Smits series, "Cane." The story has Oscar Torre's character, Santo, rescuing Smits's character's young son, Artie (Samuel Carman), from a hurricane, and while they're riding out the storm in a deserted warehouse, he opens up and reveals his past as a Cuban political prisoner-turned-refugee. The character's story, it turns out, parallels Torre's own grandfather's. "Our writer-creator, Cynthia Cidre, is Cuban -- she wrote 'Mambo Kings' and 'Little Havana' -- so she was very much aware of the whole Cuban story. But she wasn't aware of the coincidences of this story and my grandfather's," he says. "I think she was really taken aback when she found out."

The tattoos Torre is seen sporting on the series include "a number on my left forearm -- my grandfather's number. Once you're a political prisoner, they want to take away your identity, so they give you a number. I have it on the show in honor of him, and also to keep my character real and grounded. You know, like -- don't act. I felt a big responsibility. I was nervous going in," he adds, "knowing I was representing thousands and thousands of people. … Even I was surprised by how emotional I felt when I was doing it. Every word was real," he says. "As an actor, you dream of this."

TOO REAL TOO: Jami Gertz and "Nip/Tuck's" Dylan Walsh were plunged into the coldest depths to play an estranged couple lost in a blizzard in this Saturday's (Dec. 8) fact-based Lifetime Original Movie "Lost Holiday: The Jim and Suzanne Shemwell Story." "This movie definitely took me out of my comfort zone," says Gertz. "We were on the side of a mountain the entire time. It was freezing and blizzarding, and we were up to our waists in snow. It was exhausting, but it really helped with the story. When I'm cold, I'm really cold, and when we were blowing on that smoke to start that fire, I really wanted that fire to start. It was pretty desolate and helped to create the atmosphere and what dire straights they were in."

Gertz says the real-life Shemwells were headed for a divorce before they were lost in that blizzard, and facing their mortality brought them closer together. "They were lost five days, and at one point, she said, 'Just go,' but he wouldn't leave her. It was really their story of finding what drew them to each other in the first place. I disagree that you can't teach an old dog new tricks. It was up to these two people to want to make a change, and they really decided to carry on if they ever did get out of it. They found their passion again and even had more kids afterward."

With reports by Stephanie DuBois and Emily Fortune Feimster.