Posts Tagged ‘John Ritter’

Jason Ritter Grows Up

October 18th, 2008

Jason Ritter and girlfriend Marianna Palka team up for the romantic comedy Good Dick, which is in select theaters now.

Jason plays a video store clerk while Marianna, who also directed and wrote the flick, is the introverted customer he tries to woo.

How did working together change their relationship?

“We’ve been dating since I was 18,” Marianna, 27, says in a lilting Scottish accent. “We definitely spent more time together than we would’ve. We’re usually doing our own thing and it’s separate and whatever we’re doing takes a lot of time. We got to travel together so we see each other more.”

Jason, 28, got some exposure to dealing with significant-other-style baggage.

“The myth of ‘damaged goods’ is not true,” Jason says. “People always have something to offer as humans regardless of any violence that’s happened. But a lot of people believe in it. Anyone who has watched a lot of romances goes ‘how incredible would it be if my flaw were that I was awkwardly charming?’ Intimacy is a scary thing because it goes hand-in-hand with vulnerability.”

Thanks to a role as Jeb Bush in W., which is also in theaters now, Jason is following in the footsteps of his late, great father John Ritter. What’s the best advice he gave him personally and professionally?

“It was always just about staying true to who I was regardless,” he tells me. “In the personal way, if someone were to bully me or something like that, be able to recognize that even though that person called me that, I still am who I am.”

Jason continues, “And then professionally, regardless of what other people say about you – good or bad – he was of the mind that the good is the more dangerous part of that because people who start believing that they are something special – it’s a lie. There’s this weird agreement that everybody makes that celebrities are somehow more important because they can get into more buildings and that somehow makes them more important. That’s the danger because when that all goes away – and it can go away in an instant – you’re still left with yourself. So if you haven’t worked on yourself at all, you’re left with an empty shell. And you try to get back into those restaurants and you can’t. Like in Extras.”

Good Dick is in select theaters now; W. is also in theaters now.

While You Were Sleeping

February 5th, 2008 / Author: cwillett

It’s a kinder, gentler Diddy this year. Mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs told people to “Vote or Die” during the last election, as a way to motivate voters to get to the polls. This time, he’s back with a less harsh message: Go vote. “"If we want to stop the war, if we want to get the economy better, I think that young people need to understand they have to take matters into their own hands," said Combs. "It is really like waking up a sleeping giant." In 2004 Combs launched the nonpartisan group Citizen Change to promote youth voting.

Relatives of dead actor John Ritter have launched a $67 million lawsuit against two doctors, claiming that the 8 Simple Rules…for Dating My Teenage Daughter star would have survived if two doctors had recognized his heart abnormality. Ritter died after being rushed from the show’s set and treated for a heart attack. His family argues that had his pre-existing condition — a tear in the aorta — been caught by doctors, it would have changed the course of treatment and he would have survived.

On Monday a Los Angeles coroner reported that southern rapper Pimp C’s death was ruled accidental. The influential rapper died on Dec. 4 at the Mondrian Hotel in L.A. after an accidental overdose of codeine and promethazine, according to the report. The coroner said that C’s sleep apnea, combined with the drugs caused his death. Pimp C rose o fame as one half of the hip-hop group UGK.

 

Today’s Birthdays: Laura Linney (44), Jennifer Jason Leigh (46), Barbara Hershey (60), Jeremy Sumpter (19).

 

This Day in Hollywood History

September 11th, 2007

Sept. 11, 2003

R.I.P. John Ritter.

The endearing comedian, who rose to fame as klutzy ladies’ man Jack Tripper on Three’s Company, passed away four years ago from an aortic dissection.

John, six days away from his 55th birthday, collapsed while running lines with close friend Henry Winkler on the set of his now-cancelled ABC sitcom 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter. Taken to Providence St. Joseph Hospital — the same one he was born in — the star underwent heart surgery, but ultimately died from an undetected tear in his aorta.

News of his death shocked the community and threw his show for a loop as John only had three episodes in the can for the new season. With blessing from his wife, actress Amy Yasbeck, ABC decided to blaze on and revamp the storyline.

"He believed in this show and its message that a strong family can get through anything," Amy said.

After airing a successful tribute to John, John Ritter: Life of Laughter, and the first three episodes in September, the Alphabet returned for November sweeps with an hour-long episode titled "Goodbye," in which John’s Paul Hennessy dies suddenly while shopping for milk. Twenty million viewers tuned into the very special episode, making it the show’s highest-rated episode ever.

So beloved the actor was that he received a posthumous Emmy nomination the following July, losing to Kelsey Grammer, and his character came in at No. 48 on TV Guide’s list of 50 Greatest TV Dads of All Time.

To "replace" John, ABC brought on two TV vets, James Garner and David Spade, and the show lasted another season.

During that time, his family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Providence St. Joseph for misdiagnosing his aortic dissection as a heart attack. A temporary settlement was reached last year.

A day after his untimely death, Hollywood lost another icon — Johnny Cash, whom John’s musician-dad Tex had written songs for decades earlier.

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