Hollywood Exclusive by Marilyn Beck & Stacy Jenel Smith

Get ready to see a very different Matt Damon when "The Informant!" opens Sept. 18. That's the word from Scott Bakula, who plays one of the FBI agents to whom Damon's real-life corporate whistle-blower character tells all.

"Matt's work is extraordinary," declares Bakula. "He just became this guy. He gained 30 pounds. People get that he's a tremendous actor, but with this, they're really going to see his comedic sensibility and great character work."

Bakula's fellow agent in the Steven Soderbergh dark comedy thriller is funny man Joel McHale, and "Two and a Half Men" comedic actress Melanie Lynskey plays Damon's wife. "I'll tell you, we laughed so much," says Bakula. "You get around a bunch of comedians, they're just trying to outdo the other guy."

"The Informant!" brings to life the story of brilliant Ph.D. Mark Whitacre of Archer Daniels Midland — the highest-ranking corporate executive ever to turn whistle-blower in the U.S. His noble deed of exposing price-fixing tactics was offset by his own fraud, and made interesting indeed by his bipolar condition and bizarre antics.

"Instead of doing the traditional whistle-blowing character, his view of life washes the movie with this strange tone," adds Bakula.

He notes that Damon and Soderbergh "had a way they worked this character. Steven said, 'You can't do it too much. You've got to keep going, keep going, keep going.' They locked into it after a couple of days. It was really remarkable to be on the same ride. Our characters go through these stages of disbelief. We don't know until well into the movie what's wrong with this guy."

This month is going to be hectic for the multi-talented Bakula, who recently starred in "Guys and Dolls" at the Hollywood Bowl. He'll be going back and forth from the set of his forthcoming TNT series with Ray Romano and Andre Braugher — "Men of a Certain Age" — to Toronto and then New York for promotion of the film as well as for its premieres. But he wouldn't think of missing out. "The TV show worked it out for me to come. I'm very grateful for that."

ON THE PERSONAL SIDE: Fans of German supermodel-mogul Heidi Klum are well aware by now that the "Project Runway" hostess doesn't let pregnancy slow her down. Expecting her fourth child in October, she tells us she's feeling good.

"I have to say I got that from my grandmother. My grandmother had a lot of children, and it's funny, but I'm turning into my grandmother now," she says. "I loved my grandmother. My daughter Leni is named after her. She always would tell me about when she had her children — for her, the most important thing was her to have a big family."

Not surprisingly, Klum remembers her late grandmother "was a beautiful woman.

I've only seen photos of her when she was young. I only remember her being older. She was like this fuzzy and warm person, and she would always have great stories to tell. I would lay in the bed with her and she would tell me things about our family, and things from the war, and ... she was always great.

"Now, I'm like, 'Oh, my God. We have four children!'" she says, referring to her brood with husband Seal. "I would never have thought, when I was little, that I would have such a great big family. It's fun."

HOLDING OUT FOR A HERO: Spike TV is taking adrenaline to the next level in their just-launched "Surviving Disaster" show, in which dashing ex-Navy SEAL Cade Courtley takes viewers through a series of simulated disasters and teaches them how to survive. "One of the senior executives at Spike said she woke up one night thinking, 'What would I do if this or that happened?' She thought it would be great to do a show where we came up with the ultimate survival manual, but for situations anybody can find themselves in," explains Courtley, who simulated an earthquake, shark attack, plane crash, nuclear attack, mall siege and bio-terrorism attack.

Luckily, Courtley's military training turned out to be a huge asset for the show. "After making it through SEAL training and the stuff I did as a SEAL, I guess you start to feel like you can make it through anything. When you have that kind of a mindset, there's a certain confidence that goes along with that. The confidence is really helpful when all hell breaks loose," he notes. "We try to teach people, 'Yeah, that just happened. Take a breath. Let's get that brain working and we can problem solve our way through this.' It's nothing too advanced where you'd need 20 years experience of hand-to-hand combat."

While he's certainly equipped to handle disastrous situations, Courtley says he's just glad he's finally getting to play pretend this time around. "Some of the stuff I'm doing on camera is a lot closer to my last line of work because it's dealing with problems that could be potentially deadly. But I'll take 80 degrees in Los Angeles any day over 120 in Baghdad."

ANOTHER GENERATION HEARD FROM: Lou Diamond Phillips doesn't mind admitting, "Nepotism is alive and well in the Phillips household." Three of Phillips' four daughters — the elder three — and his wife, Yvonne, were all seen in his "Love Takes Wing" cable movie earlier this year, and he says, "The scary thing is, the girls have been bitten by the bug." But he doesn't sound that scared. "They're actually good at it," he says. "I can see they have natural talent. It was fun to direct them and see them get it so quickly."

With reports by Emily-Fortune Feimster

To find out more about Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith and read their past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2009 MARILYN BECK AND STACY JENEL SMITH

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