Ledger Pop Journal - Celebrity News & Sports

Actor Dean McDermott admits he doesn't like being away from his wife Tori Spelling for too long, but that's just the motivation he needed when playing the bad guy in Ving Rhames's latest movie, "Saving God," which hits DVD Oct. 14. "The hardest part was being away from T and the family for so long. We get crazy when we're away from each other for an hour. This project was four weeks, so it was the longest we've been apart.

Tori Spelling Husband Dean McDermott Opens Up About His Impoverished Past (Image: Wenn)

Thank God for our Mac laptops so we could do video conferences," says McDermott, who sported an actual mohawk for the part. "It was great for the character because I felt so lonely without Tori there, which worked because my character and his wife were separated in the movie."

Playing a mean-spirited gangster was certainly a stretch for McDermott, who dubs himself a nice guy, but he had a little more in common with the story than some might think. "The story really appealed to me because it's got the age-old battle of good vs. evil as the backdrop in the drug-infested streets of Baltimore," he explains. "I can relate to that because I grew up in government-subsidized housing in Canada, which is sort of the Canadian projects, if you will. I can relate to how a neighborhood is affected by the introduction of drugs and violence."

MEANWHILE: McDermott and Spelling are anxiously waiting to see if Oxygen will renew their reality show "Tori & Dean: Inn Love" for another season because he says they have a blast working together. "We'd definitely love to do season four. Season three, especially, was a lot of fun because we changed it from a half hour to an hour format so the audience could get into our lives a little deeper."

PRODIGY: Eight-year-old music sensation Ethan Bortnick – who's already wowed Oprah Winfrey, Martha Stewart and Jay Leno on their shows -- appears on Playhouse Disney's "Little Einsteins" today (10/11) playing Mozart's 21st piano concerto. He tells us he taught himself to play at age 3 because "I was so mad at my parents because they wouldn't give me piano lessons." He hopes to be a zookeeper who plays piano when he grows up. Right now, he doesn't have any animals, he confides. "We had a dog, but we were traveling so much, and the dog stayed home alone. So we gave him to a lady who doesn't go anywhere."