For Saldana, not even taking into account her appearance as a blue alien in the biggest blockbuster movie of all time, Avatar, she has another appearance on her resume that will always endear her to people I surround myself with: She was in Star Trek. It’s a rule: Any actress who appears in a Star Trek or Star Wars film will always be held in high regard (eg Carrie Fisher, Natalie Portman) — at least by the vocal male population that uses the Internet as their sounding board. Is Kim Cattrall a sex symbol because she played Samantha on Sex and the City? No. It’s because she played Valeris in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

What does that say about us as a society, though? Nothing much, except guys who like Star Wars and Star Trek will worship any girl who’s willing to enter that world, paycheck or not. That’s still a more respectable attitude than guys who are drawn toward celebrities whose looks are good for (ahem) private arousal — Olivia Munn, Brooklyn Decker — than any real substance. These are probably the guys to stay away from unless you’re a girl who is attracted to Ian Ziering, then, it’s probably a good fit. The good news is that this particular brand of male is too busy playing flip cup right now, anyway. (Or, as Wikipedia tells me, the game can also just be called “cup.” Which was, I had thought, a fake card game made up by Chandler Bing.)

Speaking of Friends, Jennifer Aniston played Rachel but will always be tied less to her co-stars — Courteney Cox and Lisa Kudrow — than to a woman she has never shared a screen with, Angelina Jolie. To a guy, Aniston represents not, as she does to females, the jilted former wife of Brad Pitt who we pity. For guys, she represents everything Jolie is not: Attractive yet approachable; ordinary, but in a good way; not attempting, in her own mind, to save the world; and, most notably, not once married to Billy Bob Thornton. These are all things guys will find attractive. She is everywoman for the common man. The laid-back, cool chick. Which is ironic, because at the height of Friends’ popularity, Aniston was perceived as the opposite of all these things. Aniston hasn’t changed. It’s just the male perspective of her has changed when directly compared with the eccentric Jolie. Is this fair? Probably not. But she doesn’t seem to be complaining.

There are certain actresses who carry a sense of just-out-of-reach unattainability to their persona. A persona that opens up the adventurous side of the male personality that could encourage a guy to either (a) sing The Pixies during karaoke or (b) cover Stillwater on tour for Rolling Stone. At one time this was Audrey Hepburn; today this would be Zooey Deschanel. Guys who love Deschanel aren’t in love with her, they’re in love with the idea of her. This is dangerous. These are guys looking for an excuse to chase their wildest dreams. Unfortunately, it never ends with catching their dreams. It usually ends with him sobbing, on the F Train ride home from Brooklyn, asking himself why it didn’t work out and why she wants you to really listen to the lyrics of “Nothing Better” by The Postal Service. (Damn you,  Ben Gibbard!)

Then there’s the confusing cases of Anne Hathaway and Maggie Gyllenhaal. Two enigmas when it comes to this question. Hathaway seems to have found a niche in the gay community but, for some reason, isn’t mentioned much as a straight male’s celebrity fantasy. Which is odd, but not completely surprising. Based on the roles she has played, there’s never been one that — like Deschanel in (500) Days of Summer — sparks the emotional epicenter of the male psyche. Or, maybe, considering her popularity in the gay community, no insecure straight male wants to openly admit to his attraction. Fearing the inevitable “You like the girl from The Devil Wears Prada?” questions which lead directly to “Wait, you’ve seen The Devil Wears Prada?”

Gyllenhaal, for her part, is the unchallenged queen of the love her/hate her debate. No actress is more polarizing for really no reason. Half the people I know claims she made The Dark Knight better, taking over for Katie Holmes; the other half feels she almost ruined it by just being there. How to tell these two camps apart, in my opinion? Her detractors are more likely to be in that flip cup line, renewing their Maxim subscriptions while Gyllenhaal’s defenders are possibly, right now, and even more annoyingly, sitting at their computers, just like me, writing pieces just like this one.

Mike Ryan is an entertainment writer who contributes to New York magazine, Vanity Fair, AOL’s Moviefone and Yahoo News, among other outlets. He lives in New York.

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Jersey Shore’s Ronnie and Sammi break up; this time forever, this time for good! (Radar Online)

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There was the vicious tongue-lashing from a woman who represented Jeremy Piven; back in 2005, when New Yorkers went to clubs like Marquee for the bottle service and celeb gawking, I was dispatched by the magazine I worked at to a nightspot where Piven was doing a promotional thingy for Hamptons magazine. The Pivs, then on a PR bender after getting well-deserved recognition for Entourage, seemed exhausted, catatonic, spent. I approached him for an interview but he could barely stand up; his then-publicist ordered me to interview  publisher Jason Binn instead and I was all, “Who’s that?” (No offense Jason Binn, but you’re no Ari Gold.)

She got in my face and shrieked bloody murder, and while I can’t quite recall what she said, my ears still burn to this day.  As a straightforward Midwestern girl who was naive to the dark side of celebrity journalism, it was a fascinating and crude initiation into the machinations behind it: one in which the stars are sometimes driven to near-exhaustion on the promotional circuit, the PR people driven nearly paranoid trying to protect their clients and the reporters reduced to peons to nab That One Interview.

Soon after club-stalking Piven and Lindsay Lohan for that specific magazine — called Inside TV, it lasted only eight months  — I moved to The Associated Press as an entertainment reporter. That meant not only covering the ongoing narratives of celebrities’ lives (births, deaths, trainwrecks, Britney) but also interviewing lots of them for projects they promoted. While most interviews went smoothly, with subjects willing to smile and provide a soundbite or candid conversation, others exposed the cold hard truth: Sometimes celebrities you admired can let you down, and sometimes they can be jerks (and aren’t afraid to let you know it). Sometimes their harried handlers can’t control their client’s  behavior (and all hell breaks loose as a result).

Such experiences have been few and far between, with stars from Robert Redford to Anne Hathaway to David Hasselhoff no less than lovely, obliging and game for an interview. But here are some encounters with boldfaced names that sent a chill down my spine and left me feeling like an ego-deflated peon with a tape recorder:

• Travis McCoy, the guy from Gym Class Heroes who used to date Katy Perry, gave mostly monosyllabic answers to my questions and ate potato chips during an interview in the Heroes’ trailer outside a concert in downtown Manhattan. At one point, he took his hand out of the potato-chip bag and smeared the grease on my sleeve. Out of nowhere. I have a weak stomach so I almost threw up right then in the trailer. His publicist sat there with a serene stare, possibly screaming internally, possibly just used to it.  Either way, harrowing!

• Eva Longoria iced me out while promoting those estrogen-targeted gourmet M & M’s in the tents at New York Fashion Week. She was most likely getting paid the big bucks because otherwise she might not have shilled for M & M’s in full view of the most fashionable people in the world. And she was most likely not in the mood to discuss the pregnancy rumors that were dogging her at the time when I walked into a backstage VIP lounge for our interview — which was, of course, meant to focus on Eva’s love for M & M’s. The effervescent actress was unusually chilly: her body language was stiff, her expression sour.  After three minutes of trying and failing to get Eva to open up (and be funny like she is on the TV), I went in for the money question: “How do you respond to rumors you and Tony are pregnant?” To this, she zipped her mouth shut and refused to answer any other questions. She did not give the throwaway “No comment” or redirect the conversation to Desperate Housewives or even those blasted M & M’s.  I thanked her for her time, got up and walked out — sigh of relief. My next interview was Olympic swimmer Dara Torres, a breath of fresh warm air compared with Eva’s arctic chill.
• Neil Patrick Harris. Smart guy, great entertainer, provocateur. Yet NPH broke my heart a little after he claimed through hard-charging publicists that I had taken his words out of context in a story I’d written about CBS’ How I Met Your Mother and his disdain for stunt casting. (This was after the show began recruiting string of celeb guest stars including Britney, by far the most high-profile). He talked candidly on the L.A.-based set on the show and, when asked which actress might turn out to be  “Mystery Woman” — then a plot point on the show in the spring of 2008 — Neil responded,  “No telling, but based on the stunt casting we’ve done in the past I’m guessing Tara Reid.” Oh, burn! The story hit the wire, and the next morning, I received a flurry of furious emails and phone calls from CBS and Neil’s representation, accusing me of pulling a “bait and switch” and seeking out only Britney scoop (rather than writing an innocuous story about how great the show was–and STILL is, by the way). That was not the case but they hit back via Entertainment Weekly’s web site, which ran a statement from Neil saying I’d taken some quotes of his and speculated on their intent. My story spread like wildfire, hitting all the entertainment news shows — proof that I had done something right, I think — but it took me a while to get over a simple fact: Doogie had done me wrong!!! Neil Patrick Harris, who EVERYONE LOVES! (Except my mother). He did take some responsibility in his statement, however, conceding: “My job description is to act, and I should really do just that.” But he clearly enjoys stirring up controversy — celebs would be far more interesting were they to follow his lead — and when a former AP colleague encountered Neil on the red carpet, he made a snarky comment to the effect of: “You’re the AP? Oh, I don’t talk to you!” OH, BURN. (Gratuitous Seinfeld reference: Neil is my Newman).

So, let’s hear it! Has anyone in the celeb-sphere acted in a way that took you by surprise? Someone out there must have some juicy stories. Share your comments below.

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Haven’t you heard? We are hosting a celeb art contest here at Crushable, where we are so obsessed with celebrities that sometimes we draw them. (We are currently working on a Jack Donaghy tribute portrait). Anyways! The lovely image above (of singer Evan Dando)  is one of the submissions we received from reader who tells us Dando loved it so much, he contacted her directly and now owns it.

If you love celebrities and art, and you’d like to win sweet prizes, send us your stuff! More details here.

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The Top 20 Are:

1. Madonna $72 million
2. Barbara Streisand $60 million
3. Celine Dion $45 million
4. Shakira $38 million
5. Beyonce $27 million
6. Gwen Stefani $26 million
7. Christina Aguilera $20 million
8. Faith Hill $19 million
9. Dixie Chicks $18 million
10. Mariah Carey $13 million
11. Hilary Duff $12 million
12. Avril Lavigne $12 million
13. Martina McBride $12 million
14. Britney Spears $8 million
15. Carrie Underwood $7 million
16. Nelly Furtado $7 million
17. Fergie $6 million
18. Jennifer Lopez $6 million
19. Sheryl Crow $6 million
20. Norah Jones $5.5 million

The list looked at concert earnings as well as merchandising, album sales, and other related businesses like clothing and fragrance.

Thanks to cassie for the tip

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