With Wall Street hemorrhaging jobs and assets, even many of the wealthiest players are retrenching. Others, like the Lehman Brothers bankers who borrowed against their millions in stock, have lost everything. Hedge-fund managers try to sell their luxury homes, while trophy wives are hocking their jewelry. The pain is being felt on St. Barth’s and at Sotheby’s, on benefit-gala committees and at the East Hampton Airport, as the world of the Big Rich collapses, its culture in shock and its values in question.
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An Oscar-nominated role in Junebug, a singing-dancing hit with Enchanted, a part opposite Philip Seymour Hoffman and Meryl Streep in next month’s Doubt, then Nora Ephron’s Julie & Julia, and a big sequel, Night at the Museum 2: Amy Adams has got to be the fastest-rising star in Hollywood. Amazingly, she nearly didn’t rise at all. Michael Shnayerson hears about her run of canceled shows and dropped parts, her decision to quit the business, and her fiancé, actor Darren Le Gallo, who is handling Adams’s breakthrough like a true prince.
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Raffaello Follieri had the love of Hollywood princess Anne Hathaway, the illusion of a Vatican imprimatur, an investment partnership with billionaire Ron Burkle, and entrée to Bill Clinton’s inner circle. It wasn’t enough for him. Now that the 30-year-old Italian entrepreneur has been jailed on fraud and money-laundering charges, the author separates the facts from the fantasy of Follieri and Hathaway’s high-flying life.
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While much of America worries about foreclosure, John Paulson, who made $3.7 billion shorting subprime mortgages, has plunked down $41.3 million for a Southampton estate. Another just went (to Tiger Woods?) for $60 million. And Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman is building a vast compound in Water Mill. But, amid whispers about which Wall Street casualties will lose their summer spreads, the market for properties below $10 million is grim. Michael Shnayerson checks the real-estate temperature of the country’s most celebrated summer retreat to see if its mere mega-millionaires are about to take a cold dip.
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