Hollywood confidential: stars come clean

Julianne Moore is hungry, damn it! In a rare frank moment for members of her fraternity, the Hollywood actress has told Eve magazine, in no uncertain terms, how much she despises being required to maintain her skinny physique.

"I still battle with my deeply boring diet of, essentially, yoghurt and breakfast cereal and granola bars," she says in the March issue. "I hate dieting. I hate having to do it to be the 'right' size. I'm hungry all the time. All actresses are hungry all the time, I think."

Lordy! By the saccharine standards of normal celebrity interviews – with their unlikely tales of stars' fondness for steak, burgers and delicious green things – Moore's outburst of honesty is a breath of fresh air akin to anti-communist literature in old East Germany.

Delve beneath the surface, however, and Tinseltown's history books are sprinkled with glorious examples of stars experiencing the local version of a Gerald Ratner moment. Kate Winslet, for example, once complained when GQ airbrushed her to look thinner: "I don't want people to think I was a hypocrite and had suddenly gone and lost 30 pounds." Jamie Lee Curtis, for her part, insisted being photographed sans airbrushing for More magazine, admitting in the accompanying interview that her stomach legs and (oddly) back were looking fat.

Last year, meanwhile, Alec Baldwin let slip his theory as to why big movies cost so much and take so long to make. "With a big ticket star," he says "they [the studios] say, 'How you doing? Are you good? You want a coffee? Would you like a Frappucino? Did the woman come to do your nails last night? Do you want to do a shot now? You want to go and do a shot now? You ready?'"

Another Alec, Guinness this time, rejected the popularity that came with his part as Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars, saying that he "shrivelled up" when the movie series was mentioned, disliked the geekiness of many its most avid fans and threw away all Star Wars fanmail without reading it.

Sometimes, actors show a truly staggering awareness of the limits of their abilities. George Clooney once admitted that his turn as Batman was so bad it killed the franchise, and Hugh Grant ventured: "If I were doing Eugene Onegin or Chekhov, I'd be fucked."

Hollywood's unkindness to gay actors was exposed by Rupert Everett, who said: "It's not ideal to be a homosexual in my business. I'm every bit as good as Hugh Grant, but he's always working, and I work hardly ever."

And for sheer, don't-give-a-bugger honesty about the demands of his profession, Anthony Hopkins wins hands down. "I don't care what anyone thinks," he said. "I just literally learn my lines and show up. I think there's too much acting, do you know what I mean?" Yes. We do.