Actor: Do as I say, not as I do

Los Angeles  Tom Arnold’s advice on how to make it in show business: Stay away from drugs and alcohol, follow your dreams and don’t become famous by marrying someone who was famous first.

Arnold, who didn’t always follow his own advice (he is the ex-husband of former TV star Roseanne Barr), also told students at Birmingham High School that being famous isn’t necessarily all it’s cracked up to be.

“I thought if I was on TV, everyone would like me,” the gregarious actor and former meatpacking plant worker said Thursday. “Turns out, that’s not necessarily true. … You have to learn to enjoy the struggle. Even the big stars like Jennifer Lopez and Tom Cruise deal with rejection.”

Arnold spoke as part of a mentoring program organized by the Creative Coalition, a group of entertainment industry advocates that lobbies for campaign finance reform and arts in public schools.

Fonda still an activist voice

Dalton, Ga. Â Jane Fonda helped dedicate a home for unwed mothers she had lobbied the state to fund.

“It’s a too common misconception that when girls get pregnant too early that it’s their fault,” Fonda said Friday at Oak Haven home in Dalton.

Young girls face a number of pressures, and they need a safe place to break the cycle of despair, said the actress, who lives in Atlanta.

Oak Haven has room for six mothers and their children; there’s a waiting list of seven more.

Fonda began the Georgia Council for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention in 1995.

Gaye garners Aaliyah’s role

Los Angeles  Actress and singer Nona Gaye, daughter of R&B icon Marvin Gaye, will replace the late Aaliyah in two sequels to the sci-fi hit “The Matrix.”

Gaye was selected to play the mysterious character “Zee” in the Warner Bros. films “The Matrix: Reloaded” and “The Matrix: Revolutions,” the trade newspapers Variety and The Hollywood Reporter reported Thursday.

Aaliyah, 22, died in a plane crash last summer.

Gaye most recently appeared opposite Will Smith in “Ali” as one of Ali’s wives.

Time for tots to read, by Dolly

Myrtle Beach, S.C. Â Singer Dolly Parton’s book program for preschoolers is coming to South Carolina’s Grand Strand.

The Imagination Library program, sponsored locally by Parton’s Dixie Stampede dinner theater, will provide a free book each month to every child younger than 5 in Horry County. It is estimated there are more than 8,000 such children.

“We are so very, very proud of what we have over here in Myrtle Beach and you folks have been so great for us,” Parton said Thursday. “We just didn’t feel right about just taking all that good fortune for ourselves, and we thought we needed to give something back.”

The program, sponsored by Parton’s Dollywood Foundation, operates in 40 communities in 13 states.