Hollywood Exclusive by Marilyn Beck & Stacy Jenel Smith

Hank Azaria's girlfriend, Katie Wright, and their 4-month-old baby, Hal, just joined him on the Pittsburgh location of "Love and Other Drugs" — which couldn't please the actor and funnyman more.

Although his son was born prematurely, "He's fine — a big, 10-pound baby now. He's very calm, very easily soothed, very mellow so far. It is fun to have the little guy around. He's just starting to recognize us," reports Azaria.

Asked about what kind of role he'd most like to play next, the besotted new dad answers, "To be honest, I'm pretty happy to hang around and just stare at the baby for a while."

Right now, however, Azaria's attention is also on "Love and Other Drugs." In fact, he tells us that with the health care debate raging on, he, Anne Hathaway, Jake Gyllenhaal and the rest of the "Love and Other Drugs" team keep saying to one another, "We wish this movie was coming out next week. It just has so much to say about the effect big pharma has really had on the medical profession and the health care world. It's greater than people think," Azaria declares. "This really goes into what that system has created and how it works in a day-to-day way."

As it is, the comedic drama/romance has weeks of production left to go. Azaria is playing "a doctor of questionable ethics, who engages in some things dealing with pharmaceutical companies that you wish your doctor wouldn't do" in the feature. Drawn from "Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman" by Jamie Reidy, the film's depiction of "this whole world — the pharmaceutical world — and the Viagra story itself are all true. The love story between Jake and Anne, that part is fiction," he says.

Meanwhile, the four-time Emmy winner has been recording his "The Simpsons" parts long distance as the "Drugs" shoot goes. The landmark animated comedy is soon to hit its 20-year milestone, and he's looking forward to celebrating that. "I'm sure they'll be doing some kind of party or something with a lot of balloons."

MAN ON THE MOVE: Dividing his time between making and promoting the "Twilight" sequel, "New Moon," and threequel, "Eclipse," and his work as Dr. Fitch "Coop" Cooper on "Nurse Jackie" has put, well, nearly inhuman demands on Peter Facinelli, aka head vampire Carlisle Cullen, over the past several months.

"Sometimes I've gone without sleep for like 36 hours.

It's tedious, but we worked it all out and it's been doable, with some flying back and forth," says Facinelli. "It's exciting. I mean, I love to do what I do. I love to work. Sometimes it's nice to have a break in between, yes, but you do what you need to do."

He did two weeks of rehearsal and a week of fight training for "Eclipse," then went into filming the movie with plans to dive directly into new-season shooting on "Nurse Jackie." As far as his schedule, "It was great. Both sides kind of worked it out before the boards were done on both shows. The trick is to go in early to talk about your schedule, before the boards are done. So it's give and take," he says.

Fight training came pretty easily to him. "I'm pretty athletic. I did that show 'Fast Lane' for a while and I did 90 percent of my own stunts, just because I like doing them. If I don't go home bruised, I don't feel like I put in a good day's work."

The actor, also known as Jennie Garth's hubby, certainly couldn't be playing characters who are much farther apart. "Someone sent me a picture of Carlisle Cullen next to a picture of Coop and they were so vastly different it made me laugh. Sometimes I look at pictures of Carlisle and say, 'I don't look anything like that.' I've always tried to do different things. When people ask me what I want to do next, I always say, 'Anything I haven't done before.'"

NOT FOR KIDS: The no-holds-barred conversation Denise Richards had with Howard Stern on his radio show last June — in which she discussed her boob jobs, types of sex she enjoyed, and ex Charlie Sheen — was so scintillating to Stern fans that the actress-reality star-Playboy pictorial subject has been dubbed a top guest of all time. "I was very surprised by the response," she tells us, making it clear she has no regrets. "I would definitely do Howard Stern's show again. You have to know what you're getting into, and I did. That's why I'd never done his show before. My publicist was saying, 'I don't think there's anything you haven't been asked at this point,' so I decided to do it and have fun with it, and I was very honest with him," she recounts. "Obviously, as soon as I got done, I called my dad back in L.A. and said, 'Do not listen to Howard Stern,' and, you know, if you see any quotes on the Internet, don't read them." Obviously.

THE BIGGEST SOFTIE: Hard-driving though "The Biggest Loser" trainer Bob Harper may be, he's also known to hold a competitor's hand and have a cry in an emotional moment. He bonds with his followers and has "established lasting friendships. I'm a touchstone for them. If they need me for anything, they reach out. With all the social networking possibilities these days, I definitely hear from them — 'Bob, I've hit a plateau.' You have to trust the process to stay on course."

With reports by Emily-Fortune Feimster

COPYRIGHT 2009 MARILYN BECK AND STACY JENEL SMITH

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