Diary – 11 March 2006

Los Angeles

When I boarded the plane for Los Angeles in New York last Friday to attend the Vanity Fair Oscar party, as well as several others, the beautiful Uma Thurman was just ahead of me, looking every inch the star (she is, after all, 6ft tall) even though she was sans maquillage. She sweetly turned to me and said, ‘I hear you and your husband are not sitting together — I’m happy to change seats with you if it helps.’ I thanked her, and explained it was OK, because the airline had just bumped Rosie Perez so that Percy and I could sit together.

Each year, before the Oscar ceremonies, every designer in the world jostles to give a gown to one of the precious few A-list actresses, because if she is photographed on the red carpet it’s worth tens of thousands of dollars in free publicity or, should she win, hundreds of thousands. Some designers even pay the stars to wear their dresses. At the Peninsula Hotel we were bombarded with gifts of watches, sunglasses, chocolates, vodka and every possible unguent for hair and skin — and I’m not even a presenter.

The big event on Friday night was veteran ICM super-agent Ed Limato’s cocktails and dinner (dress ‘casual chic’) at his gilded estate on Coldwater Canyon. It was a freezing night, but nevertheless our host greeted us in shirtsleeves (very nice shirtsleeves, mind you) and bare feet. At dinner in the beautifully tented garden, our companions were Dominick Dunne, who filled us in on the latest Aaron Spelling lawsuit, the ever-chic Lynn Wyatt, who always flies in from Houston for this weekend, Wendy Stark, one of the richest and most influential girls in town, and Alana Stewart. Suddenly we were joined by a tiny wizened man who planted himself at the end off the table, accompanied by three young Anna Nicole Smith lookalikes in barely-there minis and by Steve Bing (remember him?).