Hollywood Exclusive by Marilyn Beck & Stacy Jenel Smith

Even among other self-admitted workaholics, Maria Menounos is an extreme case.

The "Access Hollywood" It personality/actress/producer/director/fashion plate has been squeezing in hosting chores for "Netflix Live! On Location" this summer. She tells us that last month she had a case of food poisoning so severe she wound up being hospitalized — but managed to leave the hospital and jet from L.A. to New Orleans to emcee the outdoor Netflix concert event tied in to a showing of Dennis Quaid's "The Big Easy."

Says Menounos, "I've had to work sick so much. I don't have hiatuses and I rarely take vacations. I work so well when I'm sick, people don't believe me when I say I am. Sometimes I take pictures in the hospital to prove it really happened."

She reports that a few months ago, when she did a "Today Show" appearance, "I'd had some kind of bug, and I'd been throwing up all night before, and that morning. I had to keep a bag in the couch next to me and Al Roker in case something happened."

The beautiful 29-year-old dynamo, whose next "Netflix Live!" event is on Aug. 2 — a public concert by The Bruce Willis Blues Band at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, followed by an outdoor screening of the 1998 sci-fi film "Armageddon" — knows how severe that sounds. She adds with a laugh and a shrug, "What can I say? I had perfect attendance in church and in school growing up." We're not surprised.

THAT'S HOT: Paris Hilton's wayward life is not — repeat not — the basis for ABC's new fall drama "Dirty Sexy Money," reports actress Natalie Zea. Otherwise it'd probably be called "Dirty Sexy Laundry," but we digress.

"It's a bit more complicated than just the Hiltons," says Zea, who plays the oldest daughter of a wealthy, dysfunctional clan in the drama that also stars Peter Krause, Donald Sutherland, Jill Clayburgh and Samaire Armstrong. The misperception the show was based on the Hiltons resulted from the publicity stunt in which the series' fictional family took out real full-page newspaper ads to comfort Paris after she'd been sentenced to jail. The reality, says Zea, is that "it's about a family who is a cross between the Hiltons, the Vanderbilts and the Kennedys. The Darlings are old money. Not that the Hiltons aren't old money," she adds quickly, "but there's this heaviness, a gravity that goes with old money.

There's a class that they carry around that butts up against what we see in the media today, which is a lack of class — so they're fighting those two worlds."

She adds, Armstrong does play one of the Darling siblings who is "a Paris Hilton type … an actress who apparently is not so great as an actress, and that's a problem for her and her career. But the way Samaire plays her, she has more depth and some really great emotionality. It's going to be fun to watch her on the show."

BUILT-IN ADVANTAGE: If Kenny Alphin, a.k.a. Big Kenny of country's hugely successful Big & Rich duo, looks sartorially splendid at awards shows and other functions, credit his in-house advantage. "My wife was one of the most successful stylists of the industry," he boasts of mate Christiev Carothers. "When she became my wife and the mother of my son, that became her full-time occupation. She is really the image of the Mafia," he adds referring to his and John Rich's galaxy of artists who are friends and collaborators, known as the MuzikMafia. "Most of my stuff is handmade, and John's is, too. It's an art form. We support the arts in every way, shape or form, whether it's clothing, painting pictures or gardening. Flowers, man — they're one of the greatest art forms. My grandmother was a master gardener, whose specialty was roses. People would come out to the farm all the time to see her garden."

FROM THE INSIDE LOOKING OUT: Veteran actor Kevin Dunn, who's currently starring in "Transformers," said he couldn't help but be nervous when working with Meryl Streep on the Robert Redford film "Lions for Lambs." "It was kind of a shock to my system because I got called on pretty quick," notes Dunn of getting the part. The movie, which also stars Tom Cruise, involves a series of events that occur as a result of injuries sustained by two Army Rangers behind enemy lines in Afghanistan. Streep plays a journalist, and Dunn is her editor. "You're going into work with one of the best actors on the planet and one of the best directors on the planet, so I got over my nerves and had a really good time doing it," says Dunn, who believes he's now a better actor for having had the experience. "Great actors always bring you up because they support their fellow actors. Whoever they work with always ends up looking better." He tells us he's now headed for Spain to work on Woody Allen's next project.

(With reports by Stephanie DuBois and Emily 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 2007 MARILYN BECK AND STACY JENEL SMITH

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