Latest news with #Gershon
Daily Tribune
27-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Tribune
Gina Gershon almost broke Tom Cruise's nose
Bang Showbiz | Los Angeles Gina Gershon almost broke Tom Cruise's nose when he tickled her during a love scene. The 63-year-old actress appeared opposite the Top Gun star in 1988 movie Cocktail and she's revealed she accidentally kicked him in the face and left him covered in blood while they were filming a romantic scene in bed together. She told the Guardian newspaper: 'I almost broke his nose. I had never done a love scene before and it was going to be with Tom Cruise. I thought: God, I get paid for this. He was so cute. I had a crush on him immediately. He was very protective and very much a gentleman, saying: 'Let's keep you covered.' He was very concerned ... 'I'd told him I was very ticklish, because he had started to tickle me earlier. I said: 'Just don't do that. I lose control because I was tortured as a child by my brother'. 'Right before the take, he was down there and grabbed my waist in a tickly, sweet manner. I didn't mean to, but I had a kneejerk reaction right into his nose. 'It was full of blood. I thought: I just broke Tom Cruise's nose.' Gershon admits she felt terrible about the accident and feared she'd never work in Hollywood again - but Cruise was very 'kind' and 'sweet'. She added: ' I [thought I] will never work in Hollywood again. I was mortified because I really kicked him good. I didn't mean to. 'He said: 'Nope. My bad. You warned me.' I remember thinking: this guy is a movie star. He deserves everything he gets. 'He was just so kind and so sweet with me in a situation where I was quite vulnerable.' Gershon also starred in 1995 erotic drama Showgirls and she previously admitted she was terrified for her career after the movie bombed at the box office. She told The Independent newspaper: 'I realised I have a lot of PTSD around that movie ... They were like, this is gonna be huge – but I knew it was going to be a disaster.
Perth Now
20-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Perth Now
Gina Gershon almost broke Tom Cruise's nose
Gina Gershon almost broke Tom Cruise's nose when he tickled her during a love scene. The 63-year-old actress appeared opposite the Top Gun star in 1988 movie Cocktail and she's revealed she accidentally kicked him in the face and left him covered in blood while they were filming a romantic scene in bed together. She told the Guardian newspaper: "I almost broke his nose. I had never done a love scene before and it was going to be with Tom Cruise. I thought: God, I get paid for this. He was so cute. I had a crush on him immediately. He was very protective and very much a gentleman, saying: 'Let's keep you covered.' He was very concerned ... "I'd told him I was very ticklish, because he had started to tickle me earlier. I said: 'Just don't do that. I lose control because I was tortured as a child by my brother'. "Right before the take, he was down there and grabbed my waist in a tickly, sweet manner. I didn't mean to, but I had a kneejerk reaction right into his nose. "It was full of blood. I thought: I just broke Tom Cruise's nose." Gershon admits she felt terrible about the accident and feared she'd never work in Hollywood again - but Cruise was very "kind" and "sweet". She added: " I [thought I] will never work in Hollywood again. I was mortified because I really kicked him good. I didn't mean to. "He said: 'Nope. My bad. You warned me.' I remember thinking: this guy is a movie star. He deserves everything he gets. "He was just so kind and so sweet with me in a situation where I was quite vulnerable." Gershon also starred in 1995 erotic drama Showgirls and she previously admitted she was terrified for her career after the movie bombed at the box office. She told The Independent newspaper: "I realised I have a lot of PTSD around that movie ... They were like, this is gonna be huge – but I knew it was going to be a disaster. "I was always happy with my work in it, but I knew that it was not going to be what people thought it would be. And I was scared, so I just told my agents, 'Get me another job before Showgirls comes out. I need to show that I really am an actress'." However, she's pleased the film - which follows a woman who hitchhikes to Las Vegas to pursue her dreams of being a showgirl - is being seen in a new light these days. She added: "Showgirls was shunned, but now it's 30 years later, and screenings of it are selling out, and people love it."
Irish Independent
18-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Gina Gershon: ‘People like to cast me as a hardcore, motorcycle-riding, lesbian, man-killing demon'
Call it a classic Gina Gershon moment – simultaneously intimidating and ridiculous, and acted with tongue firmly in cheek. This is a skill that she cultivated on the set of Paul Verhoeven's brilliant 1995 mess Showgirls, when she realised that the only way to avoid going down with that particular sinking ship was to recite every line like the drag queens she could sense would eventually embrace it. But Showgirls is just one wild entry in a career full of them: her turn as a hitwoman in Face/Off; as the rich girl who woos Tom Cruise in Cocktail; as the trailer-park depressive terrorised by Matthew McConaughey in the bleak Killer Joe. She played Donatella Versace in a made-for-TV biopic, as well as Larry David's Hasidic dry-cleaner lover on Curb Your Enthusiasm. And looming large above everything else is her breathtaking work in Bound, the cult neo-noir from 1996 in which she and Jennifer Tilly play girlfriends attempting a big, dangerous score. 'I definitely haven't had a typical career,' Gershon says, smiling. 'People don't quite know where to place me, or they tend to see me one way. Like, 'hardcore, motorcycle-riding, lesbian, man-killing demon – let's cast her as that'.' In fairness, she is really good at it. We're speaking over Zoom, Gershon sat in her New York apartment surrounded by art prints and photographs, all of them rammed tightly together across her walls – there's a Jean Cocteau, a Sally Mann, some paintings she's done herself. She's wearing spectacles and a green shawl, her voice as captivatingly smoky as it is in the movies. Banal as it might sound, she just seems cool. There's quite literally every chance she could have been a rock star – she comes from a family of musicians, and tells me there was a period in the 1980s when she had to make a choice between acting and music. (Prince wanted her to star in Purple Rain and become one of his muses – she turned him down.) Acting proved more immediately successful, so she's had to settle for an occasional jazz residency and being friends with Bob Dylan, Joan Jett and Lenny Kravitz. Gershon doesn't tend to mince words, and has historically been reluctant to spend too long on the subject of Showgirls, a film she didn't particularly like making and that nearly derailed her career. But now she admits she's had a change of heart on it. 'I realised I have a lot of PTSD around that movie,' she says. Gershon has been writing scripts in recent years, and it's only now that she feels able to see the film from the perspective of its makers. 'I thought, 'Oh, this is what Paul was trying to do.'' As Cristal Connors, the Machiavellian, dog-food-munching rival to Elizabeth Berkley's inexplicably volatile Vegas dreamgirl Nomi Malone, she made sparkling lemonade out of stupid lemons. She knew she had to come up with a plan B early into production, while being yanked topless up to the rafters above a stage filled with fire bowls and writhing extras. 'I'm there on this rope, thinking, 'I studied the classics',' Gershon says, laughing. ''I wanted to do Chekhov. How did I get here?'.' ADVERTISEMENT Learn more I knew it was going to be a disaster Though it's hard to imagine now, there was an assumption in the months before Showgirls' release that it would emulate the stratospheric success of Verhoeven's previous erotic thriller Basic Instinct – but Gershon was panicked. 'They were like, this is going to be huge – but I knew it was going to be a disaster,' she says. 'I was always happy with my work in it, but I knew that it was not going to be what people thought it would be. And I was scared, so I just told my agents, 'Get me another job before Showgirls comes out. I need to show that I really am an actress.'' Gershon's next project was Bound. But even getting Bound was difficult, with her agents insisting that she would ruin her career if she played a lesbian. 'So I had to leave those agents,' she says. 'I do think my career would have been much easier if I'd had agents that really got me. I've had to go through several different ones, because I just don't want to spend time playing characters I'm not invested in. It would have been nice if we were all on the same page, but at the end of the day, it's my book, and it's my story.' It has provided Gershon with one of those undeniably interesting careers, full of massive hits, cult classics and strange detours. That doesn't mean it hasn't been a tricky one to navigate, though. Potentially her greatest performance was in a 2003 film called Prey for Rock & Roll, in which she plays the gay frontwoman of an all-girl punk band – but the film barely came out, and few people have seen it. When I ask Gershon when she felt as if she'd made it as an actor, she says she's 'still waiting' – it's a joke, I think, but part of me believes her. I adore John Travolta, and I was really eager to work with him again High Rollers came about partly because of Gershon's history with Travolta, the film serving as a reunion between them 28 years after Face/Off. 'I didn't realise at first, but High Rollers is a sequel,' she says – to a 2024 movie called Cash Out – 'and someone else [Sex and the City's Kristin Davis] had played my character, but wasn't coming back.' Travolta put her name forward. 'I adore him, and I was really eager to work with him again.' And she makes the most of what was presumably a thin part on paper, wielding knives with aplomb and sassing out any number of thugs who square up to her. 'That's why they pay me the big bucks,' she jokes. As much as she likes a good action thriller, though, she would like to do more comedy in the future, and mourns a film from South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone that she was due to shoot right before Covid. She describes it as a deepfake comedy that would have satirised the Trump administration, with Gershon playing first lady Melania, someone she'd already impersonated in a series of comedy skits during the 2016 election and the first months of Donald Trump's presidency. 'But then the pandemic showed up and we had to shut down filming. And by the time we were able to film again, I think everyone was so sick of hearing about Trump that they decided to move on,' she says. The Melania skits have also stopped. 'They just started making me feel nauseous,' she says. 'All of a sudden it wasn't fun, because [the Trumps] weren't going away. Like, it was funny, but it's just not funny any more.'
Yahoo
29-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
A Banana That Won't Brown So Fast? Scientists Just Made It Happen
Scientists used CRISPR gene editing to create a banana that stays yellow longer, reducing food waste and extending shelf life. The biotech company Tropic says this innovation could cut carbon emissions significantly and prevent millions of bananas from being wasted. Approved for sale in multiple countries, including the United States and Canada, the banana is expected to hit store shelves by world can feel like a pretty bleak place right now. But you know what has the power to cheer you up? A delicious banana. And scientists have even developed one that stays fresher for longer, promising to stave off the dreaded "brown banana" period for a little longer. In March, Tropic Biosciences, a UK-based biotech company, unveiled its new gene-edited banana that promises to remain yellow for longer, not only ensuring you can enjoy it for a few extra days but also helping to reduce food waste in the process. "Tropic's non-browning bananas have the potential to significantly reduce food waste and CO2 emissions along the supply chain by more than 25%, as over 60% of exported bananas go to waste before reaching the consumer," the company shared in a statement about the banana. "This innovative product can support a reduction in CO2 emissions equivalent to removing 2 million passenger vehicles from the road each year." Related: Meet Yelloway One, Chiquita's New Disease-Resistant Banana According to Gilad Gershon, the co-founder of Tropic, the team used CRISPR gene editing techniques to disable a gene that creates the enzyme polyphenol oxidase, which causes bananas to turn brown. 'After several years of development, we started production of [non-browning] seedlings about a year ago, and we're now starting to offer significant quantities of these banana plants to farmers," Gershon shared with AgFunderNews. 'The bananas have the same taste, smell, sweetness profile, the same everything, except that the flesh doesn't go brown as quickly, which means you can add them to fruit salads and cut fruit products, opening up a huge new market.' Importantly, Gershon noted that this will help companies buy at "least 10 extra days, which is huge for the banana industry." The company more specifically told The Guardian that the banana will stay yellow for up to 12 hours after it's peeled. Gershon additionally told AgFunderNews that the banana has been approved for sale in several countries, including the U.S. and Canada, and should be ready to roll out to store shelves sometime in 2025. Related: How to Cook Anything in a Banana Leaf While it may seem like a trivial scientific endeavor, it really is one with far-reaching positive consequences. According to a 2021 study in Horticulture Research, nearly one-third of bananas harvested are never consumed. That aligns with data that shows about one-third of the food the world produces also goes to waste. Or, as the World Resources Institute bluntly put it, "It means that an amount of land larger than China is used every year to produce food that no one will eat." But this new banana could be a major step toward improving these metrics. While it all sounds very futuristic, The Guardian pointed out that it's not the first fruit to get this treatment. The same gene was also edited out of Arctic apples, which have been sold in the U.S. since 2017. And just in case you're nervous about all the science put into this little fruit, know the Food and Drug Administration has this to say about genetically modified food: "GMO foods are carefully studied before they are sold to the public to ensure they are as safe as the foods we currently eat ... studies show that GMOs do not affect you differently than non-GMO foods." So go ahead, and enjoy that bright yellow banana. Read the original article on Food & Wine
