Cruise, Holmes likely to wed in Italian castle, mayor says

Rome – Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes likely will wed Saturday in a Scientology ceremony held at a 15th-century Italian castle in a lakeside town near Rome, the town’s mayor said Thursday.

The wedding party, along with guests, are then expected to attend a banquet the same day in Rome, Bracciano Mayor Patrizia Riccioni said.

For weeks rumors have focused on Odescalchi Castle in the sleepy town of Bracciano as the likely venue for the celebrity wedding. Riccioni said Thursday she had met the couple the day before somewhere outside of her town, but she would not say where.

Cruise, 44, star of the “Mission: Impossible” films, and Holmes, 27, have been staying at a luxury hotel near the Spanish Steps in Rome. They were photographed Thursday with their infant daughter, Suri, as they walked to a restaurant in the city.

Those spotted going into the restaurant included “Mission Impossible III” director J.J. Abrams, Brooke Shields and Jennifer Lopez. Lopez’s husband, Marc Anthony, briefly stepped out to smoke a cigarette.

Without Borat, Cohen says he wouldn’t be so brave

Los Angeles – Sacha Baron Cohen, whose fictional Kazakh reporter Borat has sparked controversy, says he could never put himself and others in embarrassing situations if he weren’t in character.

“I think I’d find it hard to,” Cohen says in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine. “I think you can hide behind the characters and do things that you yourself find difficult.”

Cohen’s spoof documentary, “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,” follows his Kazakh TV journalist character on a cross-country trip to report back to his homeland on American culture.

The film has become a runaway hit – generating complaints and a lawsuit along the way from Borat’s unwitting subjects who say they were duped into making racist, sexist and anti-Semitic remarks.

Cohen, an observant Jew who keeps kosher and the Sabbath when possible, says he purposely made his character prejudiced.

“Borat essentially works as a tool,” the 35-year-old British comedian tells the magazine in an interview conducted before the film’s opening.

“By himself being anti-Semitic, he lets people lower their guard and expose their own prejudice, whether it’s anti-Semitism or an acceptance of anti-Semitism,” he says.

Cohen says he doesn’t like to discuss how he got people to appear on camera or take seriously Borat’s preposterous questions. Revealing his tactics, he says, would be “a disaster, terrible for me.”