Angelina, Billy Bob on the rocks

New York Angelina Jolie confirms that she has split with her actor-husband Billy Bob Thornton in an interview with Us Weekly, saying that she hasn’t spoken to the Oscar winner in at least a month.

“I’m angry. I’m sad. It’s a very difficult and sad time,” Jolie told the magazine in its July 29-Aug. 5 double issue, on newsstands Friday.

“Sometimes, you don’t see things coming, even though they are happening. It was a real deep connection, a deep marriage, so it’s not that simple to say this or that one thing caused the problems.”

Us Weekly said Thornton declined to comment for the article. His publicist would only say, “They remain very married.”

Jolie, 27, wed Thornton, 46, after a whirlwind courtship in Las Vegas in 2000. It was his fifth marriage and her second.

Expanding artistic frontiers

Los Angeles Leonard Nimoy and his wife, Susan, have donated $1 million to the Museum of Contemporary Art.

The Nimoy Fund for Emerging Artists will showcase new artistic talent, officials said Tuesday.

The fund will help support a variety of projects, including painting and sculpture, artist books and publications and performance and video works, said museum director Jeremy Strick.

The large gift is the second in recent months by the Nimoys, who donated $1 million to the Griffith Observatory renovation effort. When the Los Angeles landmark reopens in 2005, the 71-year-old actor, who’s best known as Mr. Spock on “Star Trek,” will have a 200-seat theater named in his honor.

Widespread sorrow

Athens, Ga. Widespread Panic guitarist and singer Michael “Mikey” Houser has announced that he has terminal cancer in a message to fans posted on the band’s Web site.

“I want to assure all of you that all that can be done has been done, and I want to thank all of you who have contributed information, medicine and so on,” the 40-year-old wrote.

“I have hopes of playing again soon, although I can’t say for sure when or where, and I hope to see you all there.”

Speculation about Houser’s health had been circulating since spring, when he missed some scheduled appearances with the Athens-based jam band. He also has missed much of the group’s summer tour, which began June 21 in Tennessee.

Bob Barker on the mend

Los Angeles “The Price Is Right” host Bob Barker is back in Los Angeles, nearly a week after undergoing prostate surgery in Washington, D.C.

The 78-year-old, who returned on Tuesday, will rest at home until Aug. 19, when taping resumes on the CBS game show for which he has been host for 30 years, said his publicist, Henri Bollinger.

Barker underwent surgery on July 10 to ease discomfort from an enlarged prostate. Doctors expect him to make a full recovery, Bollinger said.