Sure, last night's Academy Awards were the worst Oscars ever. But that doesn't mean we were deprived the always-glamorous faces of the silver screen. Happy faces, sad faces, faces incapable of emotion due to injections—they're all here for your perusal.

In a new GQ profile, Nick Nolte upended one of the great tales of the internet age, revealing that his famous wacked-out mug shot—taken after he passed out while driving on the Pacific Coast Highway—was not actually a mug shot, but a Polaroid he willingly posed for after a cop asked for a picture. Is it true? As true as any recollection Nick Nolte has about his drug-induced catatonic episodes. Which is to say no, it's not true.

Former Nightline anchor Ted Koppel turns 70 today. John Grisham is turning 55. Mary Steenburgen is 57. Nick Nolte is turning 69. Vince Neil of Motley Crüe turns 49. Seth Green is 36. Mary McCormack, the star of In Plain Sight, is turning 41. Comedian Robert Klein is 68. Times Magazine editor Gerry Marzorati is 57. And recently-jailed actor Gary Coleman turns 42 today.

New York City's unofficial first lady, Diana Taylor, is celebrating her 54th birthday today. Hope Mike got you something nice! Others celebrating: Tom Brokaw is turning 69. Former Daily News gossip columnist Lloyd Grove is 54. Henry Blodget is 43. Chef Marc Murphy is turning 40. Axl Rose is turning 47. Journalist/author Michael Pollan is 54. Natalie Cole is 59. Rich Astley is turning 43. And Zsa Zsa Gabor is 92. Weekend birthdays after the jump.

Pictured is the customized credit card delivered to David Mackie, a 35-year-old salesman from Oklahoma who had the simple dream of wanting to see Nick Nolte's mugshot every time he paid for something with plastic.

The smoke has cleared over Zuma Beach, where Nick Nolte's residence succumbed yesterday to a devastating fire that caused nearly $3 million in damage. And as much as we appreciate your helpful tips as to how that blaze began, officials have since confirmed that it all started with a faulty printer in Nolte's office. The dominos toppled from there, sending the Oscar-nominated actor out a window suffering from a cut on his hand, smoke in his lungs and a painstakingly built enclave burned to the ground. At which point we turn the story over one of Nolte's former profilers at Premiere, whose encomium today reminds Malibu — and all of us, really — the true scope of the catastrophe that transpired:

♦ In an interview with Barbara Walters which airs Friday, Peter Cook says it was Christie Brinkley's fault he cheated on her because she wasn't "meeting his needs." Oh, also, he'd like you to know he's really not a pervert. [NYDN]
♦ Sarah Silverman and Jimmy Kimmel are back together, although friends say they're "taking it slow." [People]
♦ Angelina Jolie got a tummy tuck, or at least that's what the Star says. [Star]
♦ Amy Winehouse's spokesperson says the singer is not suicidal. In fact, the rep says, "she's fine." Of course she is. [People]

Nick Nolte is recovering this afternoon following a blaze that officials say completely destroyed his Malibu home, causing an estimated $1.5 million in damage. Nolte reportedly cut his hand while fleeing the fire through a window, and — Wait! This just in: His rep issued a statement to Extra claiming there was in fact no structural damage, and neither Nolte nor anyone else at the house was injured. Whom to believe? One thing the dueling parties appear to agree on is the fire's source, an electrical mishap in Nolte's living room. Details beyond that are evolving as we write this; now the AP reports the home was burned to the ground, with damage totaling $3.5 million. But he's OK! Developing...

Click to viewBoomp3.com It must’ve been a case of déjà vu for actor Jonah Hill as a photographer sneaked up on him again while jogging in Hollywood. However, this time around, the photographer did not tempt Hill with cupcakes or other delicious treats. Instead, the photographer was more interested in Hill’s beard and simply asked, “What’s the deal with the beard, dude?” Hill explained that he was growing the beard because he’s going to do a guest spot on Deadliest Catch as well as to make a stab at credibility. Hill said, “Philip Seymour Hoffman has a really nice beard growing there. He’s pretty well respected. Maybe, if I had one of those things, I’d be able to do more dramatic work. Something intense or maybe a part as Nick Nolte’s crazy long lost son.” [Photo Credit: Splash Pics] *A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.

Having played everything in his long career from Barbra Streisand's sodomy-repressing patient in The Prince of Tides to a hook-handed war diarist in the upcoming Tropic Thunder, it seems a small tragedy that the single image most associated with permagrizzled thespian Nick Nolte is his infamous mugshot. Generally regarded as the gold standard to which all celebrity booking photos are held, there was virtually no aspect of the portrait that failed to convey a purity of wrongness: the sunken features, the pained grimace, the waterlily print buttoned up to the neck, and, of course, that shock of stringy chaos atop his head, defying all laws of physics as if fashioned by some oversugared pre-schooler out of a box of golden pipe-cleaners. Entire post-graduate seminars were dedicated to exploring its mysteries and beauty. So imagine our shock when the model himself finally revealed the true story behind its conception on The Tonight Show. This wasn't a mugshot at all, it turns out, but Nolte's selfless contribution to the Sacramento Policemen's Annuity and Benefit Fund.

Everywhere we've been around the LA Film Festival this week, the chatter du jour is either oversexed studio minions or how folks plan to spend their off-days during the increasingly inevitable-looking SAG strike. The latter conflict came into even sharper relief today in Variety, which published a SAG-AFTRA Bullshit Scorecard (hardly an improvement over our SAG Strike Mad Libs™, but whatever) breaking down the lies, celebrity endorsees and various other spin the unions are wielding in their steel-cage labor war:

While the Cannes cognoscenti revel in the unblinking confessions of Mike Tyson in his eponymous documentary currently screening there, another opus of self-reflective, crazy-ass candor has found increasing traction at the festival as well. Like Tyson, Nick Nolte: No Exit reportedly features an unadulterated one-on-one session with its subject, but boosts the stakes with the added integrity of an unprecedented Nolte-on-Nolte grilling:

PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our readers, and are posted several times a week, so send them in often—the fate of the universe relies upon it! Submit yours to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put "sighting" or "PrivacyWatch" in the subject line so we don't lose them) and tell everyone about how the sound of Mickey Rourke's loud snoring prevented you from getting any work done at the Santa Monica Public Library.

Nick Nolte, the legendarily grizzled actor who shits bigger than us all and washes down his daily bucketful of vitamins with a cup of broken glass, has just sired a love child at 66 years young. [Reuters]

· Watch out, Hollywood, because here comes Mitch Albom: Adam Sandler has acquired the rights to feature-writing debut (an untitled baseball comedy, if you must know) of the Five People You Meet On One More Tuesday With Morrie author, whose treacly bestsellers have been previously adapted into housewife-narcotizing TV movies. [Variety]
· In today's strangest casting pairing, Jude Law and Forest Whitaker will star in Universal's "futuristic adventure thriller" Repossession Mambo. [Variety]
· In other buddy-casting news, Owen "The Butterscotch Stallion" Wilson and Nick "The Unkillable Aging Thoroughbred" Nolte have signed on to star in the Ben Stiller-directed comedy Tropic Thunder, which should create an amusing "before and after" Hollywood tableau the first time the actors share a two-shot. [Variety]
· Pirated copies of Michael Moore's Sicko proliferated on the YouTubes over the weekend, two weeks before the docimentary's opening. [THR]
· Today in writers' strike saber-rattling: The WGA West has warned its members to ignore the same old bullshit that studios are likely to spew as negotiations for a new labor agreement begin next month, such as claims that they are losing money in this terribly unprofitable entertainment business." Charges of counterbullshit by the studios include the accusation that the union is "out of touch with fast-changing showbiz realities." [Variety]

The family of a teenage girl who claimed she had been drugged and raped at Nick Nolte's notorious Malibu home—an alleged mini Sin City that hosted days-long, drug-and-alcohol-fueled underage parties presided over by his son Brawley—has settled with the actor just days before their civil suit was supposed to go to trial:

Coming out of Cafe Terigo on Main Street on Saturday at lunchtime, we caught Nick Nolte standing on the steps at the front of a restaurant; as anyone who's spent more than five minutes on Main can tell you, the sudden appearance of an individual with any level of fame instantly causes a mob of onlookers to form on the sidewalk. (A couple of hours later, about a hundred people clogged the sidewalk in front of the Premiere Lounge, gawky deer frozen in the headlights of a TV camera, just on the promise that they might be witnessing Somebody Important being interviewed. We heard seemingly dozens of people asking each other who they were watching, and once guy was visibly deflated when we explained it was Blow Out's Jonathan Antin. His hair, we should note, was magnificent, something between a pompadour and a shark fin.) So Nolte's brief stop at the top of the steps gave the rubberneckers a chance to see him clutching a cane and generally looking like a very frail version of Judge Doom from Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Congratulations are in order for Nick Nolte, who has successfully convinced a judge that he is completely clean and sober since being picked up in 2002 on the PCH for a DUI while high on GHB, an arrest which produced perhaps his career's most resonant image, the infamous Krusty the Clown-meets-the Crypt Keeper "mugshot" photo:

Nick Nolte is being sued by the family of a girl who was drugged with GHB and raped at his home almost three years ago (he wasn't there at the time, but the suit claims he should have been "aware of the propensity" of his security guard and one of his regular underage houseguests to provide "alcohol and/or drugs to minor children.") The incident hasn't exactly scared son Brawley straight—he was arrested last April in West Virginia for marijuana possession. Now a judge has decided to allow the jury to hear every illicit detail regarding father and son:

Nick Nolte, the beloved, quirky actor you may know from his work in The Prince of Tides, 48 Hrs, or the world's greatest mugshot, is being sued by the parents of a teenage girl who was drugged and sexually assaulted at a party held at Nolte's Malibu house. Nolte's people claim that he wasn't even around for the party, but this suit has wide-ranging implications for the local industry party scene. If Nolte's found liable, it could bring down the entire underage-girl-doped-on-GHB-so-a-producer-can-have-sex-with-her-at-a-star's-mansion system, and the town's nightclubs can't handle the massive overflow from a potential house-party shutdown—they're already packed to capacity with mickey-wielding entertainment types.