Gere, researching a role he will play in the film ''The Flock,'' spent about four hours with deputies last week going door-to-door to check on registered sex offenders.

White said Gere wanted to meet with his deputies to get insight for his character. While riding with deputies, the star of ''Officer and a Gentleman'' went into the homes of several registered sex offenders and spent several minutes talking with them.

The 43-year-old rocker shot NBC's ''Tommy Lee Goes to College'' on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus last fall. Some of the scenes showed him in uniform, stepping out with the UNL marching band.

''I know he had a good time there,'' said Crue bassist Nikki Si during a recent telephone news conference about the spring tour, which opens Feb. 10 in Columbus, Ga.

Lee, who wasn't part of the phone conference, suffered minor burns on his arms and face last month during a pyrotechnics explosion at a concert in Casper, Wyo.

A play about the life of Lech Walesa, the shipyard worker and labor leader who helped topple communism in Poland, premiered in his home city of Gdansk.

The play, called ''Walesa: A Cheerful Story Hence a Very Sad One,'' chronicles the feisty Walesa's rise from strike leader and Solidarity founder in 1980 -- which won him the 1983 Nobel Peace Prize -- to the fall of communism in Poland in 1989-90.

Walesa, a former shipyard electrician, was hounded by secret police and interned with other democratic activists before peacefully leading the country's transformation to democracy. He served as Poland's president in 1990-95.

Joan Rivers, who has openly joked about her own cosmetic surgery, stopped by a local hospital in Warren Mich., to celebrate the opening of an elective surgery center before heading to a nearby performance.

Rivers said she likes to take advantage of events like the one held in this community just north of Detroit, Mich. when they coincide with her public appearances. She was performing at nearby Warren.

The hospital opened the center earlier in the week. Outside the event, a red carpet was set up to greet guests, which some said was as a nod to Rivers' red carpet appearances as a fashion critic at the Oscars.

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