Gossip/Celebrity News

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

***stie: How I Got Bikini-Ready

A year ago, when ***stie Alley first suggested appearing on Oprah in a bikini, the actress was already more than halfway to her now 75-lb. weight loss, PEOPLE reports in its latest issue.

The prospect of commemorating her target weight ("You're going to see a girl who's worked on herself!" she once promised) on the Nov. 6 episode of Oprah was powerful motivation: "Yeah!" she told the talk-show host with a grin. Her transformation, accomplished over two years with diet and exercise, "is inspiring," says actress pal Kathy Najimy. "She's a role model for women everywhere."

Yet Alley wasn't entirely happy with her reveal on the show. "I had practiced my walk – I was going to do this wow-hot-model walk," she says. "But I was so hysterical, I ended up doing the dorky-girl-from-Kansas walk. It didn't work out so well!"

Those in the studio would disagree. As soon as the crowd caught sight of Alley (who strutted to the Commodores' tune "Brick House"), they erupted in cheers and applause. "Everyone was going crazy," says Laura Stuller, one of Alley's Jenny Craig consultants. "I was just crying, standing up with everyone else, absolutely thrilled to see her accomplish her goals."

Getting there wasn't so easy: Bikini shopping proved quite the nightmare. "If you were a store selling bathing suits, wouldn't you use, like, pink lights and skinny mirrors?" says Alley. Fed up with what she saw on a shopping trip with Najimy and another actress pal, Leah Remini, Alley asked designer Jeffrey Kurland to create a custom bikini for her.

Her criteria? "I said I liked little bottoms and I wanted the top to be sort of Dolce [& Gabbana] looking." Kurland did three fittings, taking in the bottom a couple of times "because my body looks better in less," says Alley. Seeing herself at the final fitting three days before the Nov. 1 Oprah taping allayed her fears. "I was really excited," she says, "because I thought, 'I look okay to me!'"

And perfection isn't her goal. "Never. Never. Never. Never. Never," she says when asked if she's hoping to reach her Cheers weight of 120 lbs. "I never maintained 120 without doing something wacky, and I don't want that life anymore." And stomach stapling or lipo was never an option. "I don't advocate cutting out intestines and pinching things off and getting things sucked out," she says. "I would rather take an extra six months or a year and just not have to go that route."

She is currently maintaining her weight by eating 1,500 calories a day, most often a combination of one Jenny Craig meal, plus favorites like grilled fish, asparagus and salad with vinaigrette. Her usual workout includes walking on the treadmill and dancing, but to prep for her big Oprah moment – as well as a series of Jenny Craig ads that will feature her in a bikini – she added tough routines of everything from kickboxing to Pilates four times a week with trainer Carmen Demsky.

It's her stick-to-it attitude that Alley herself is most proud of. "I don't think of myself as a role model for weight loss as much as a role model for tenacity," she says. "I like being a role model so women know that they can change anything they want to change – any time."

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

Jude Law and Sienna Miller Call It Quits

Jude Law and Sienna Miller have finally split for good, a source close to the pair tells PEOPLE exclusively.

"It's a mutual decision," a pal of the actor says of ending the roller-coaster romance. "They have definitely come to the end of the road. They tried to make it work but it failed."

Reps for both Miller and Law refused to comment on the private lives of their clients.

Law, 33, and Miller, 24, were engaged to be married in 2004 but Miller broke off the relationship after his affair with his children's nanny, Daisy Wright, was exposed the following year.

Law was divorced from his actress wife Sadie Frost in late 2003 and the couple have three children and another child from Frost's previous relationship. The actor's closeness to his children and by default to Frost has caused tension in his relationship with Miller. "There isn't another person involved but it isn't helped by Jude's devotion to his kids," says the pal.

"He and Sadie have a very friendly relationship for the sake of the kids but they are not getting back together," the pal adds. "It's pretty amazing seeing how calm it is for the kids with them but they are definitely not an item again."

New York-born Miller met Law on the set of Alfie, the movie in which he seduced her onscreen. Romance flourished offscreen and the pair was engaged on Christmas Day 2004. But just months later, Wright went public with intimate details of the torrid affair she had with the actor while he was filming All The King's Men in Louisiana.

After the revelation of the affair, Miller called off their union and Law issued an apology. After months apart the couple gingerly made another go of it in one of Hollywood's great mysteries of the heart.

"It was one of those can't live with them, can't live without them," an insider told PEOPLE when they first started dating again. Around the same time Miller was linked to new James Bond Daniel Craig but the reports were never substantiated.

Prior to acting, Miller was a model and once appeared nude in a famed Pirelli calendar, but was recently embroiled in controversy in Pittsburgh after insulting the city in an interview with while filming there. She later apologized to its citizens.

[Rasputin]

Boston Legal's Julie Bowen Is Pregnant

Boston Legal and Lost actress Julie Bowen, 37, is four months pregnant with her first child, she tells PEOPLE.

She's certainly eating for two, she told PEOPLE at the Environmental Media Awards in Los Angeles. "(I'm) eating in the middle of the night. I'm like a bear. I wake up in the middle of the night, eat food and go back to sleep again. It's not fun, but it's a wild ride. I'm looking forward to it being over."

Bowen, 37, said she wants to be surprised by the baby's sex: "We could know, but I don't want to know. No names yet, nothing."

She also revealed that she's enlisted Project Runway finalist (and fellow expectant mom) Laura Bennett for maternity fashion: "I called her up and asked her to make me a dress. I love her style, she dressed herself very well pregnant. So I asked her to send me a dress. She did, but it didn't get here in time."

Finding maternity clothes, she said, is "definitely is not my favorite thing in the world, because you're stretching around a whole new body. What's up with that? It's like I'm 14 and have to figure out how to dress."
Bowen and husband Scott Phillips, a real-estate investor, have been married since September 2004. He proposed the previous Thanksgiving, when she was starring as schoolteacher Carol Vessey on TV's Ed.

Bowen, who has appeared on ABC's Lost as Matthew Fox's ex-wife, plays attorney Denise Bauer on the network's Boston Legal and has had roles on Party of Five and ER.

[Rasputin]

Brody Jenner & Lauren Conrad Split

Less than a month after Brody Jenner told PEOPLE that he and The Hills star Lauren "L.C." Conrad were "seeing each other," the two have split up.

"We're not together anymore," Jenner told a source on Thursday at the launch party for the new furniture collection at Minotti in Los Angeles.

The news was echoed by his mother, Linda Thompson, who told PEOPLE at the Environmental Media Awards last week, "I think Brody's pretty single right now. He's on his way to Miami. Bikinis, thongs. I think he'd better be single right now."

Conrad's rep, Nicole Perez, had no comment.

On Oct. 18, Jenner, 23, revealed that he and Conrad, who got her start on Laguna Beach, had started a romance. "I don't know what you consider dating, but we're seeing each other, we're having a great time with it. She's an amazing girl."

Conrad, however, was coy about her relationship with Jenner at the time, saying only, "He's a nice guy."

In early October, Jenner split from Nicole Richie, whom he started seeing in August, just weeks after ending his year-and-a-half long relationship with Laguna Beach star Kristin Cavallari, Conrad's nemesis on the MTV reality show.

Conrad split from her fellow Laguna Beach alum Jason Wahler in August.

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]