Hollywood Exclusive by Marilyn Beck & Stacy Jenel Smith

Djimon Hounsou has definitely gone to the ends of the earth for the sake of his art in recent times. On the heels of the grueling demands of his role as the slave Caliban in Julie Taymor's Dec. 10-opening "The Tempest" — for which he endured five hours of face and body makeup a day — the actor went beyond rugged conditions for "Special Forces."

"It's sort of like the French version of 'Black Hawk Down,'" reports Hounsou, who just wrapped the film. "We went to Tajikistan, which is on the borderline of Afghanistan, for about a month, camping in the middle of the wilderness. We were 3,500 feet up in the middle of nowhere. It's so high, you make two steps and you're gasping for air. There was no accommodation whatsoever."

The "Special Forces" story has to do with an elite military team's effort to rescue a kidnapped journalist. Notes Hounsou, "They wanted to shoot a film that captured the reality of being at war in Afghanistan."

FROM THE INSIDE LOOKING OUT: "Better With You" series sisters Jennifer Finnigan and Joanna Garcia have become close friends in real life, something Finnigan says she particularly appreciates because "in this business, it can get tricky, especially with women. There can be weird jealousies and tensions and cattiness. Joanna doesn't have any of that at all. She's so happy for her friends' successes — such a terrific, genuine person. She roots for other people's success. I hope I'm the same way. It's very refreshing."

She notes that Garcia "has known my husband, Johnny (Silverman), longer. They've had the same group of friends for a long time. I remember meeting her at one of his birthday parties, thinking, 'What a great girl.' We're very comfortable with each other. She's really a girl's girl."

Finnigan wants us to know that the series' Dec.

8 Christmas episode "is very fun. We all try to get out of spending Christmas together," she says of the show's central family, including herself and Garcia, their respective other halves on the show, Josh Cooke and Jake Lacy, and "Better With You" parents Debra Jo Rupp and Kurt Fuller. "But we catch each other."

A BREAK FROM IT ALL: "Undercovers" star Boris Kodjoe says he's looking forward to the show's two-week Christmas break, when he'll "escape back to Germany, where I am from. We'll ski and see friends and family," says the actor, who has a daughter and a son with wife Nicole Ari Parker. "When we're there, my cell phone is never charged."

POLITICALLY INCLINED: Julia Louis-Dreyfus' forthcoming HBO "Veep" series — a half-hour comedy in which she plays a former senator turned vice president — sounds like it could get pretty raucous. Right now, they're looking to cast a character named Jonah, who's 27, overweight, sloppy, inappropriate, rude, and got his job due to campaigning hard for the president. He also has the idea that any woman would sleep with him because he works for the chief executive. The show starts shooting around the end of February.

Casting of subsidiary characters continues on George Clooney's forthcoming political drama, "The Ides of March," including that of Clooney's character's arch rival, a powerful Ralph Nader-type senator who is also the father of Evan Rachel Woods' character. From the Broadway play "Farragut North," "The Ides of March" has Ryan Gosling as a hard-charging young press secretary working in the campaign of Clooney's character, a Presidential frontrunner. Becoming enmeshed in backroom political doings, will Gosling win at the cost of his soul? Shooting is planned to begin in February on the picture that boasts a cast also including Paul Giamatti and Marisa Tomei.

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 2010 MARILYN BECK AND STACY JENEL SMITH

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