Orlando Bloom fell in love with Morocco while he was shooting the costly epic Kingdom of Heaven for Ridley Scott there last year. So much so, in fact, that he now wants to live there, at least part time. And, no surprise to us, he’s looking for a house to share with his on-again off-again on-again girlfriend, the delicious Kate Bosworth. Orlando also found a stray pooch on the street and now the dog, called Sindi, of questionable ancestry, has a pet passport and is able to travel, in great style, we’re sure, to the British actor’s homes in Los Angeles and London.
  Both Kate and Orlando have been touting the beauty of the north African desert country and were said to have signed with a real estate agent there to help them locate a proper luxury getaway to avoid the showbiz rat race. The couple already inspected, according to one of our spy witnesses, Dar el-Hanch, Yves Saint Laurent’s magnificent mansion in Marrakesh, and the palace that was once the home of J. Paul Getty Jr. and his wife, Talitha Pol. As readers of this column know, we reported a few months ago that Orlando and Kate were taking a break from each other while they were involved in separate film projects. She was filming Superman Returns (playing Lois Lane) in Australia and he was in St. Vincent, B.V.I., making the two sequels to his hit movie of last year, Pirates of the Caribbean, also starring Oscar-nominee Johnny Depp.  

  While in New York promoting Kingdom of Heaven, Orlando met up with Kate and they took in the Chanel exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And just like ordinary people, they would stroll the meandering pathways of Central Park, stopping along the way for a little bench canoodling while Sindi frolicked with other canines. On the list of must-do things for the attractive pair while back east was a visit to Kate’s family in Connecticut where, we’re informed, they will tie the knot in an autumn wedding ceremony. Apparently, during one of their bench stops in Central Park, Orlando popped the question and offered Kate a diamond ring from Cartier. It was a question she couldn’t say no to. Do you think we were able to get any kind of confirmation on these events from either of the stars’ reps? Fat chance! They claimed ignorance of the couple’s even seeing each other again. Amazing!   “I think every little girl dreams about her wedding day. I used to think I was going to marry Tom Cruise.” That’s Katie Holmes talking, as reported last year in Seventeen magazine. Now Katie’s fantasy has turned into a real-life fairy tale. Cynics have continued to insist that Katie and Tom’s very public display of affection was more an affectation—that the two have high-profile summer movies opening: Tom’s War of the Worlds and Katie’s Batman Returns. The reasoning was that these two projects need publicity because of Tom’s perceived fading box-office allure and the public’s diminished interest in the Batman franchise. If anyone really believed that displaying the existence of a relationship for all the world to see guarantees a movie’s success, we have two films in mind that say otherwise: Gigli and Jersey Girl.
  We can also offer personal testament to the veracity and the sincerity of Katie and Tom’s much-heralded togetherness. As many of you know, we are assistant producers of Holly Wiersma’s film-bio of Edie Sedgwick, Factory Girl. We’ve speculated in the recent past as to which actress would be playing the tragic actress/model. It is not Sienna Miller. Nor Kate Hudson. We are happy to reveal it is Katie Holmes who’ll be enacting the part of the Andy Warhol “superstar” opposite Aussie actor, Guy Pearce, as Warhol. We recently took a pre-production meeting with the film’s producer (Wiersma), writer (Captain Mauzner), director (George Hickenlooper) and star (Katie Holmes). The meeting was interrupted more than once while Katie took a phone call from Tom Cruise. Believe us, there was nothing phony or fake about Katie’s reaction to hearing Cruise on the other end of her cell phone. She positively glowed as she spoke soto voce to her new love interest.

  We are also happy to lay waste to another unfounded piece of trash talk about the lanky brunette beauty: She did not fink out on attending the opening-night reception of the Chanel exhibit at N.Y.C.’s Metropolitan Museum of Art because she feared running into Tom’s ex, Nicole Kidman (who was co-hosting the event with Karl Lagerfeld). Actually, she was busy in L.A. signing her Factory Girl contracts and taking meetings involving the project. OK?
  One final bit of info about Katie and Tom and, we swear, that’s going to be it: They motored up to the Santa Ynez Valley together where they visited Edie Sedgwick’s grave in the Oak Valley Cemetery in Ballard. Katie visited with some of the Sedgwick family members in Santa Barbara, and also called on Edie’s widower, Michael Post. (Tom waited for her in Santa Barbara.)   Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman, who were derailed in their earlier attempt to work together (in Eucalyptus), will try again. The project—an all-Aussie movie—is to be directed by Baz Luhrmann and is being written by Collateral scripter Stuart Beattie. Filming will be later in the year in the land down under and is being described as “an Australian Gone with the Wind.” Margaret Mitchell’s novel of romance and ruin, set against the backdrop of the War Between the States, remains one of America’s most beloved and its characters forever memorable: Scarlett O’Hara, Rhett Butler, Melanie Hamilton, and Ashley Wilkes, to name the four principals. David O. Selznick’s film version was the equal in every way to the novel and faithful to the source material. In the Aussie re-imagining of the novel/film, Nicole and Russell will portray the Scarlett and Rhett-like characters. Naomi Watts will enact the Melanie-type role. Others reportedly already signed for the project include Hugh Jackman, Simon Baker, and Guy Pearce, with Heath Ledger as a possibility.   When we ran into Nicole and Naomi poolside at the Beverly Hills Hotel, they couldn’t tell us anything about the project—only that they are involved and that the script is being written by Beatty right now. Oh, and they said they were “very excited” about working together. The two actresses were sunning while watching Nicole’s and Tom’s two kids, Connor and Isabel, swimming and diving. We learned that Naomi has been surviving the breakup of her relationship with Heath Ledger with amazing equanimity. She wishes Heath and his pregnant girlfriend, actress Michelle Williams, nothing but the best. (Heath and Michelle, with the film Brokeback Mountain all finished and ready for release, are said to be hoping for a Labor Day weekend wedding here in the states.)
  Nicole went on to explain about the “difficulty in having a relationship with a hectic career like mine. My two children are the most important things in my life. They come first before anything or anyone,” and then added, “I won’t be happy with any man unless I feel the great love I had with Tom [Cruise]. I couldn’t be with someone I don’t have enormous respect for. With Tom, I had a great love. So why would I want anything other than a great love again?”
  The tall beauty is one of the busiest in the business. She has a slate of films in various stages of preparation and, frankly, we don’t see how she will be able to manage, this year at least, to work in the Aussie G.W.T.W. Besides the big-screen treatment of the television sitcom Bewitched, due any moment, there’s Fur, the film biography of photographer Diane Arbus, and another bio-pic, this one about tobacco heiress Doris Duke. Logging onto IMDb, the movie website, we found listed for Nicole four other movies in production or scheduled for production over the next 18 months: Happy Feet, Emma’s War, American Darlings, and Wedding Season. This busy actress, with her undeniable glamour and beauty, really is a throwback to Hollywood’s “golden age,” when studio contract players learned the art of acting by acting—making as many as three or four back-to-back films per year.

  Teenager Elizabeth Taylor, under contract to MGM in 1951, made five films that year, three of which were big, expensive pictures that turned out to be commercial as well as artistic triumphs: Father’s Little Dividend, Quo Vadis, Love Is Better Than Ever, A Place in the Sun, and The Light Fantastic. We predict for this American-born (yes, she first saw the light of day in Honolulu) superstar the same kind of career success and longevity that Elizabeth Taylor has enjoyed. We also predict a less adventurous married life for Nicole.   The tabloids were reporting that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie decided they’re ready to start a family. Friends of Brad’s soon-to-be ex, Jennifer Aniston, were saying that she is positively apoplectic at Matt Lauer, of NBC’s Today show, because in a report to his television audience last month, he said Brad and Angelina took top honors in a poll as “America’s most beautiful couple.” Jennifer reportedly said to a friend, “A couple? Now they are a couple?” Our source said that the former Friends star called her publicist and told her that when her next film comes out, she won’t talk to Matt Lauer because “he called Brad and Angelina a couple.”
  While Jennifer has remained mum publicly, we heard that she agreed to do a sit-down with Oprah and reveal her feelings about Brad and Angelina, with no subject being off limits. And as if to demonstrate the depth of her unhappiness, Jennifer wants to do the Oprah interview around June 10, the opening weekend of Brad and Angelina’s film, Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Jennifer is out for justice, say our sources, and she feels like Brad has made a fool of her in front of the entire world. We phoned Harpo Productions for some kind of verification and were met with a “no comment.” No surprise there. We since have learned that Brad wants the world to know that he did not cheat on Jennifer. A pal of Pitt’s recently told the N.Y. Post that Brad “will go to his grave saying that he didn’t cheat on Jennifer.”
  Brad is also reportedly considering doing an Oprah sit-down to tell his side of the story. He realizes he is going to have to talk about it at some point, so he wants to do it in the most public way possible, say those who talked to us on the promise of anonymity. Further, Brad is expected to tell Oprah that his marriage failed because he wanted a family and Jennifer wanted a career.
  The Oprah thing is probably a lot of hooey, but it sounds like a ratings winner to us. We’d like to suggest that if it does happen, that Oprah’s producers put two baseball jerseys under each seat in her audience: “Team Aniston” and “Team Jolie.” These jerseys, designed by White Trash, are not a figment of our imagination. They are leaping off the shelves at Kitson’s, the trendy Robertson Boulevard retailer. Support for either Jennifer or Angelina would be indicated by how many of the shirts are worn by Oprah’s audience members. We have confirmation that more of the “Team Aniston” jerseys have sold at Kitson’s than the “Team Jolie” jerseys—“lot more,” we’re told.   Diane von Furstenberg and her beautiful daughter Tatiana were recently honored at the annual C.H.I.P.S. luncheon at the Beverly Hills Hotel where the oh-so-chic ladies-who-lunch enjoyed a Diane von Furstenberg fashion show, courtesy of Saks Fifth Avenue. So many of the ladies were buying up the beautiful Diane-designed baubles (for H. Stern), that Diane was absolutely on cloud nine. She told us that for the entire month of May, H. Stern is donating a percentage of sales proceeds from the D.V.F. jewelry collection to Children’s Institute Incorporated. There’s only a little less than a week to go, folks, so hie on over to Gearys and buy, buy, buy for C.I.I.

  At the luncheon we heard that Athina Onassis and a posse of her best gal pals recently bought a bunch of Diane’s jewelry at an H. Stern shop in Sao Paulo, Brazil. While there, Athina fell victim to that escalating malady: falling diamonds. Yes, another case of a celebrity losing a diamond earring or a stone out of her engagement ring (remember Sienna Miller lost and found hers). Athina quickly recovered the diamond and the H. Stern gemologists immediately re-mounted it in the engagement ring that was given to her by fiancé, Brazilian Olympic equestrian team member, Alvaro Alfonso de Miranda Neto, affectionately called “Doda” by intimates. (There was a mean-spirited rumor that Doda had a faux diamond put in Athina’s engagement ring, but the H. Stern staff said it was not so.)
  Among others attending the C.H.I.P.S. luncheon were Colleen Bell, Betsy Bloomingdale, Justine Bloomingdale, Libby Doheny, Onnalee Doheny, Elizabeth Wiatt, Celia Peck-Voll and her mom Veronique Peck, Crystal Lourd, S.F.A.’s Heather Shuemaker, Claudia Deutsch, Wendy Stark, and Diane’s P.R. director, the lovely Julie Crisman, who told us that Diane will receive the lifetime achievement award from the Council for Fashion Designers of America on June 6 at the New York Public Library. Then it is back to the West Coast for Diane where she will oversee the final details of her boutique, opening in August, right next door to Marc Jacobs’ on Melrose Avenue.   Never let it be said that Julia Roberts is not good to herself. We are talking about the report that the actress purchased for herself a magnificent diamond-and-ruby necklace at the new Cartier boutique on Rodeo Drive. Another example that the Moders may be doing their bit to keep their money in circulation—(Aren’t we hearing this is good for the country’s economy?)—is that Julia, Danny, and the twins may be moving into the fabulous Fifth Avenue Beaux Arts mansion once owned by the late heiress Doris Duke. Asking price: $50 million. It is the last of the privately owned homes in the city. You won’t get a confirmation one way or the other about this “maybe” transaction from either Julia’s people or from the Corcoran Group, the realtors handling the sale. At least we weren’t able to.

  The current W magazine reports that Pulitzer Prize-winning author (of The Hours) Michael Cunningham is developing a screenplay for Julia, based on Lolly Winston’s comic novel, Good Grief. Cunningham says that Julia is intrigued with playing the novel’s 36-year-old protagonist who tries to cobble her life back together after losing her husband to cancer. Julia’s sister Lisa Gillian will produce with Marc Platt. This sounds like the perfect vehicle for Julia to win another Oscar to go with her Erin Brockovich Academy Award. And if that happens, twins Phinneaus and Hazel will each have an Oscar to play with. That, or Julia will have a pair of very rare bookends.   All of Cartier’s big guns were front and center as the legendary jewelry company celebrated its silver anniversary in Beverly Hills. Bernard Fornas, president and CEO, Cartier International; Stanislas de Quercize, president and CEO, Cartier North America; and Maryam Saghatelian, Cartier’s regional director, were on hand as hosts of the star-studded event honoring Project A.L.S. (arterial lateral sclerosis, formerly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease). The store’s location at the intersection of Rodeo Drive and Brighton Way was transformed into the exotic Serengeti as celebrities noshed hungrily on the specially created menu by Nobu Matsuhisa and enjoyed eyeing the fabulous Cartier bijoux. Some of these were Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale, Rene Russo, Topher Grace, Carolyn Murphy, Ben Elliot, Ellen De Generes, Portia di Rossi, Brad and Jill Grey, Cornelia Guest, Kevin Huvane, Barbara Davis, Nancy Davis, Amber Valetta, Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas, Jacqui Getty, Neiman Marcus’s new general manager Kelly Cole, and Tamara Mellon, who made us promise to mention her book 4 Inches, which benefits the Elton John AIDS Foundation. This is the deliciously scandalous photo book of such lovelies as Sarah, Duchess of York, Elle Macpherson, Victoria Beckham, and Kate Moss, among others, all posing in the altogether except for Cartier jewels and Jimmy Choo shoes. A great idea executed brilliantly!   We cannot close out these lines without paying tribute to the bravery of our friend of more than 25 years, Brooke Shields, who has gone very public about a very private subject, post-natal depression, in her book. She was urged by her agent to write the book “because if someone like me can go through this, it meant anybody can go through it.” After her run in Chicago at the Adelphi Theatre in London, Brooke will begin filming The Devil Wears Prada, with Meryl Streep playing the character said to be (loosely) based on Anna Wintour. Brooke, we assume, will portray the young assistant editor who blows the whistle on her boss.