Dear Gossips,

Wimbledon, the movie, was on TV last night. I am dealing with a terrible cold. It was the perfect combination. Also, I often daydream about being a championship tennis player or a championship figure skater. So, you know, in my mind Kirsten Dunst was Chinese and Paul Bettany would have actually dated me.

But I’d forgotten about all the other people. Like James McAvoy. He was still working on Shameless. It was before Narnia, before The Last King Of Scotland, he was just about to break. And he plays the dickhead little brother to Bettany’s leading actor. It’s been 8 years and, well, McAvoy probably ranks higher.

If I ever become the Dean of the Faculty of Celebrity Studies at a liberal arts university somewhere in New England, as part of the Hollywood Sliding Doors course, we would talk about why Paul Bettany doesn’t work more. And that goes for his wife Jennifer Connelly too. Both are fine actors. Both receive their share of offers. Bettany in fact was supposed to star in a highly anticipated new pilot for Showtime called Masters Of Sex, based on sex expert William Masters. He dropped out abruptly last month. He also turned down playing Bertie in The King’s Speech, the role for which Colin Firth won the Oscar. Word is Bettany is notoriously skittish about committing to a part. In his situation this hasn’t, at least so far, made him unattractive to casting directors and producers. But it’s also less a matter of playing hard to get than it is about his personal life. Bettany often makes some difficult choices re: family over career. It would be a really good case study.

Am sorry to cancel today’s liveblog but as previously mentioned, I’m too f-cked up from this cold and I’ve used too much energy sh-tting on Scarlet Johansson’s new boyfriend and thinking about why girls don’t ever want their “number” to be higher than 5.

Yours in gossip,

Lainey