People

Dreaming of a co-star

Washington — Zach Braff dreamed about working alongside Natalie Portman as he prepared to make his first movie.

“Of course I thought she was gorgeous, but in addition to that, of the gorgeous Hollywood actresses, I think there’s an elite few who are also really talented actresses,” Braff told The Associated Press while promoting “Garden State,” which he wrote, directed and stars in.

But he never imagined he’d persuade the famously selective actress to sign on as his love interest.

“It was a daydream. It was never talked about or bandied about as anything realistic. We were always saying, you know, like Natalie Portman, someone like a Natalie Portman,” Braff said.

Portman, however, liked the script and accepted the part immediately after having lunch with the 29-year-old “Scrubs” star.

Tickets doom ‘Amazing Race’ pair

New York — It was all business for Joyce Nicolo and Bob Barron, the Internet dating couple eliminated this week on CBS’ “The Amazing Race.”

Nicolo, 54, and Barron, 64, the oldest team in this season’s reality TV competition, blame only being able to attain business-class tickets from Argentina to Russia as their downfall. According to the show’s rules, teams can only fly coach.

“I knew in my heart that it was going to be the end for us” because they couldn’t get coach tickets, Nicolo said Wednesday.

J.Lo’s ‘new beginning’

New York — “J.Lo, Phase Two” isn’t a new summer movie — it’s a state of mind for the actress-singer.

“I feel like this is my phase two, like it’s a new beginning,” Jennifer Lopez tells InStyle magazine in its August issue. “Like everything I did before really doesn’t matter.”

After two failed marriages and her much publicized romances with Sean “P. Diddy” Combs and Ben Affleck, the 34-year-old pop star seems intent on not leaving a trail of glitter (and gossip) wherever she goes.

“Maybe I was a little bit careless in the past,” she says. “I’m not a perfect person. I make mistakes. I just feel like I’m in a better place about who I am. I follow my heart. That’s the one thing I can say about myself. And I love that about myself.”

Aces and eights for everyone

Deadwood, S.D. — Poker players still will ply their trade in Deadwood in October, but it won’t be on television, promoters said.

Last week, Bill Walsh, owner of the Franklin Hotel on Deadwood’s Main Street, said ESPN had confirmed that the northern Black Hills gambling town would be a backdrop for two days of videotaping for the “World Series of Poker.”

But ESPN says a telecast never was planned. Ashley Smith of ESPN’s marketing department said the Deadwood people “got overzealous (and) there was a misunderstanding on what we are doing.”