Hollywood Exclusive by Marilyn Beck & Stacy Jenel Smith

Andy Garcia doesn't mind admitting he enjoys being bad. "It's a treat to play a character who is so unredeemable that it's hard to understand why he behaves the way he behaves," explains the actor, who plays the nefarious crime boss, Fingers, in the big-screen drama "The Air I Breathe," opening tomorrow (Jan. 25).

Garcia finds that in order to bring some sense of humanity to such a wretch, "you try to find a sense of truth … what got him to be the person that he is. You're a product of the environment you grew up in and all the experiences of life that formulated how you process information, how you react to certain situations and how rational or irrational those reactions can be."

Based on an ancient Chinese proverb that breaks life down into four emotional cornerstones, "The Air I Breathe" has Forest Whitaker, Brendan Fraser, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Kevin Bacon playing characters identified as Happiness, Pleasure, Sorrow and Love, respectively.

However, Garcia believes his character and the rest "represent all those emotions all the time. But I think at the top of the pyramid is only love and the ramifications of that — the need for love, or lack of it, the obsession for it. … All the interpretations of what love is in your life, how you deal with it, what will you do to get it, what will you do to give it up."

MEANWHILE: Garcia reports his first priority in 2008 is to get funding for "a movie I'm producing called 'City Island' with Marcia Gay Harden. It's a dysfunctional family drama, and I'll play the father." He says the writers' strike is not an issue "because there's a beautiful script, and it doesn't need rewrites. It's the financing we're trying to work on, and then we'll start ASAP."

WAITING GAME: "Curb Your Enthusiasm" star Cheryl Hines tells us she's anxiously waiting to hear whether the HBO comedy will return next season. "I'm never sure if the show is coming back. I feel hopeful that it is. I haven't talked to Larry (David) about it in a while, so I don't know," she admits. "It's like a 50/50 chance, but with the writers' strike, we're not even discussing it. It's tough times for this town and this industry right now."

Hines certainly has other things on her plate, like guest starring and serving as executive producer on the new Starz Entertainment original series "Hollywood Residential."

"I helped wrangle some of the guest stars, and interestingly enough, it wasn't hard, which surprised me and was flattering at the same time," notes Hines of her duties.

"I would call someone like Paula Abdul, who I met on an airplane once. She invited me over to her house to sit down and talk about the project, and I did, and we get along very well, so she agreed to do the pilot," she says of the project about a fictional, faltering celebrity home-makeover show.

"I called Tom Arnold out of the blue and asked if he'd do this project, and he said yes. You get to see these celebrities make fun of themselves. Even Tom — in his episode, the show can't film because he's gone into rehab. By the way, Tom has been sober for a very long time, so he was very good to film that," she adds. "It was really fun, and they're all still speaking to me afterward."

THE VIDEOLAND VIEW: One time "Melrose Place" actress Laura Leighton returns to the tube Saturday night (Jan. 26) in the Hallmark Channel movie "Daniel's Daughter," playing a high-flying New York magazine editor in for a life-altering trip after her father dies and she has to return to her New England home town. The movie meant a month away from her family for Leighton, who, with husband Doug Savant of "Desperate Housewives," has a 2-and-a-half year old daughter and a 7-year-old son, in addition to Doug's 14- and 16-year-old daughters.

"It was one of those intense productions where we were shooting all day every day, so I wouldn't have had any time to spend with them. It was better for them to stay together with their siblings and in school," she notes. Plus, "I've also started video chatting with them on our computers. I take a laptop along. It's so much better if we can see each other at the end of each day, especially for the littler ones. It's not like I just disappear."

Leighton tells us her optimum work situation would be "to have a series here in town again. Of course I'm always looking for the right one. It's supposed to be pilot season right now, but it's not really happening. We're just keeping our fingers crossed that the strike ends."

THE BIG SCREEN SCENE: A Feb. 20 production start has been set for "The Fast and the Furious 4" — this one to film in Los Angeles and Mexico. Emilio Estevez is getting ready to direct again. This time, it's a feature about a librarian who gets into trouble when he opens his landmark facility as a shelter for homeless one cold night.

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 2008 MARILYN BECK AND STACY JENEL SMITH

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