People

Stiles ditches ‘normal’ act

New York — When Julia Stiles started classes at Columbia University more than two years ago, she tried to pretend she was just like everyone else, and not an actress with a decade of experience.

“I approached the start of college in utter denial of the fact that I’d been in any movies whatsoever,” the 21-year-old writes in an essay for the February issue of YM magazine. “I went to class in my pajamas like everyone else, and insisted to my classmates that I was just another student.”

But Stiles said she learned that it didn’t matter how she behaved; people were going to have preconceived notions about her, and she just had to be herself.

Pavarotti splits with manager

New York — Luciano Pavarotti has split with his longtime manager and publicist, Herbert Breslin.

“We no longer work for each other,” Breslin said Thursday. “We’ve had enough. I’ve had enough.”

Breslin had represented Pavarotti since 1967, six years after the singer’s professional debut. He said their relationship ended Tuesday.

Breslin helped Pavarotti become popular outside the classical music world, using television to help the tenor sell out arenas and stadiums.

Pavarotti, 67, hasn’t appeared in an opera performance since singing in Puccini’s “Tosca” at The Royal Opera, Covent Garden, last Jan. 22 in London.

Ali display looks like a knockout

Fans of “the greatest” fighter will soon be able to see an exhibit being built in his honor. The exhibit at the Muhammad Ali Center will tell the story of the boxer, from childhood to heavyweight champion to globe-trotting humanitarian. The center is expected to open next year in Louisville, Ky., Ali’s birthplace.

Ali’s wife, Lonnie, said the preliminary work “blew Muhammad’s socks right off.” The exhibit deals with Ali’s turbulent days in the 1960s when he joined the Nation of Islam and refused induction into the Army during the Vietnam War.

Greed almost undoes good deed

A man who tried to get autographed memorabilia for finding Robert Redford’s lost credit card got a visit from the cops instead.

Police in Orem, Utah — a city near Redford’s home and his Sundance resort — say the unidentified man found the card near a convenience store and called the resort to report the find. But after being offered free ski-lift passes and dinner for two if he would bring the card to the resort, the man reportedly insisted on some signed Redford memorabilia. Otherwise, he said, the star would not get his card back.

Police then called the man, who refused to give his address and said that he threw Redford’s card in the trash.

After tracing the call, police went to the man’s apartment, where they recovered the card.

The man did not get the free ski passes, a free dinner or an autograph. And he didn’t get charged with a crime because “of his sudden change of heart to gladly give the card to the officers when they arrived at his home,” according to a report on the city’s Web site.