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*Oprah Winfrey’s 42 acre estate just outside Santa Barbara, Calif. is reportedly undergoing renovations that total in the millions.
According to TMZ.com, the $50 million Georgian-style 1920's mansion is nicknamed “Oprah’s Hearst Castle” by the crew of workers employed to make improvements inside of the home and on the lush grounds outside.
Among the additions, according to TMZ.com, are the following: a home theater; a custom-built, quarter-of-a-mile driveway made with thousands of handmade Montecito sandstone bricks individually laid by hand; a man-made lake with adjacent ponds filled with rare Oriental fish; and an enormous custom-built closet for Stedman the size of a master bedroom.
*Meanwhile, Time magazine has chosen Winfrey, alongside Jay-Z, Melissa Etheridge, Mel Gibson, the Dalai Lama, Anne Coulter and others, for its annual “Time 100” dinner of movers and shakers, to be held May 8 at New York’s Lincoln Center.
Winfrey, Etheridge and Gibson were chosen as this year’s “Heroes and Icons.” Jay-Z was listed under “Builders and Titans.” Former Supreme Court Justice O'Connor is in the "Thinkers and Scientists" list. Conservative commentator Anne Coulter is under the "Artists and Entertainers" category.
*On Wednesday night, Winfrey returned to Broadway for the first big play opening since her own production of “The Color Purple” debuted in December. The 52-year-old was supporting her friend Julia Roberts on the opening night of her play, “Three Days of Rain.” Winfrey showed up with her best friend Gayle King. Other notables in the audience were Rosie Perez, Tim Robbins and Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Despite Roberts' lukewarm reviews – most stating the actress failed to bring her screen charisma to the stage – the show’s 12-week run is almost entirely sold out. The play is a drama about a brother and sister who meet up with a childhood friend for the reading of a will. Roberts plays Nan in the first act and then her mother in the second, which takes place a generation earlier.
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