Playing a character who rushes in to save the day on the big screen is one thing, but these 15 celebrities became real-life heroes by leaping forward to save the lives of ordinary people.

WENN

Rapper T.I. has been on a mission to rehabilitate his image since  he was released from prison after those gun possession charges, and having “hero” on his resume certainly helps. While on his way to an Atlanta radio station for an interview, the reality show star heard a news report about someone at a 22-story building ready to jump. T.I. recorded a video of himself pleading with the man to come and talk to him. The police played the video to the distressed man who agreed to come down and T.I. and the unidentified man shared a brief conversation before the cops took him to the hospital to be treated for depression.

Credit: WENN

From Hello Beautiful

Before Lance Armstrong admitted to using illegal enhancement drugs, his accomplishments seemed superhuman. Then again, something as relatively simple as riding a bike would seem amazing after being diagnosed with stage three testicular cancer. Armstrong, was given a 40 percent chance at living then went on to win the Tour De France five consecutive times. His story, the things dreams are made of, was just too inspiring to question. No one assumed he was taking steroids.

A 2012 investigation turned up results that proved our obliviousness wrong and devastated/ended the prized athlete’s career. The Illegal enhancements blood-booster EPO and steroids were found in his system. The USADA also revealed that Armstrong received blood transfusions dating back to 1996.

Armstrong vehemently denied the allegations…until he sat down with Oprah! “I will start my answer by saying this is too late. It’s too late for probably most people. And that’s my fault. I view this situation as one big lie that I repeated a lot of times. It wasn’t as if I said no and I moved off it,” he confessed during the dialogue.

Read more at HelloBeautiful.com.

People Magazine

So news of the vanilla persuasion like the wedding between Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel wouldn’t usually fall under our Madame Noire radar, but this People magazine cover above forced our hand. We just couldn’t with this _____ cover. Questions were flying about the decision behind these poses. First off, did J.T. not learn anything from the Tom Cruise “jumping on the couch” fiasco (in case you didn’t notice, Cruise is divorced from the source of his jump-couching stunt)? Secondly, why such a corny pose for their exclusive cover? I mean, couldn’t they have thunk of something more creative? Instead of me weighing in on the symbolism of JT looking like a clown, contrasting with the image of Jessica playing the demure bride, I’d like to ask you (our very spirited readers) to chime in and let me know your thoughts.

Sidenote: Why is seemingly unrelated news of Britney Spears peaking out on the right hand side of the cover? Mighty sneaky, “People” – LOL.

WENN.com

There’s nothing worse than having to sit in traffic from day to day but, if you’re a celebrity, not only do you have the money to enjoy the luxury of a highly expensive car, you also have enough cash to buy an airplane or a helicopter. Here are 14 celebrities who have taken to the skies and are proud owners of an aircraft.

Ever since Tom Cruise made public his adoration for Scientology years ago in a bizarre fashion (by publicly scolding Brooke Shields for taking medication to battle postpartum depression), Scientology has been getting somewhat of a bad rap in every form of media. People have tried to call it a cult and say that members are being brainwashed. I don’t know about all that, but I do know that when Cruise’s wife Katie Holmes allegedly divorced him to keep their daughter Suri from having to study the religion, every ex-member of the Church of Scientology came out of the wood works on TV to denounce the religion. For a few good weeks there, the religion was just getting a lot of shade. But in the process of doing some research on it, I found that many prominent black celebs are members or have taken classes to get them through hard times. Here are just a few…

Source:flipsidepa.com

Al  Jarreau

Your dad’s favorite singer, the award-winning jazz singer became affiliated with the Church of Scientology in the late ’60s. Back when people really started catching wind of the religion, Jarreau was noted as one of many celebrities who said that Scientology had changed their life for the better and even played a role in his success. However, these days, Jarreau is no longer affiliated with the Church of Scientology. Why he parted ways with it is unclear, but he’s just one of many who chucked the deuces to it all.

While soaking in the summer sun and reading news articles on my phone a couple of weeks ago, something caught my eye. It wasn’t about the record breaking heat wave we were going through across the country, or Mitt Romney getting booed at the NAACP for stating he would repeal Obamacare if elected, it was Katie Holmes. Why you ask? Well if you don’t own a TV or care about celebrities, then you probably don’t know that Katie Holmes divorced actor Tom Cruise after five years of marriage. While people are stating different reasons for the split, many have started focusing on her career and how it may be affected after her divorce is final. Affected in a good way that is.

Reports near and far said she would be able to star in bigger budget films, and that the end of her relationship could be a whole new beginning for the star. She’s already nabbed a few new roles in movies coming out this year and next year, and she just seems more of the “It” girl in mainstream media. Now, I don’t follow Holmes’s career, but I do think that it’s strange for people to only become successful after everything else in their life falls apart. The same situation happened with Cruise’s last wife, Nicole Kidman. Post their divorce in 2001, Kidman blew up huge in her acting career, even going on to win an Academy Award for her role in The Hours just a year later. That’s a huge achievement for a woman who had to just put on a smile and wave while her superstar husband soaked up all the fame and notoriety. Women can be successful in their relationships, but also in their careers just as much as men can be if there is enough focus on it.

The idea of the career-orientated woman is something that was almost extinct just a couple of decades ago. In the past, women were often viewed as more domestic and less worried about their careers than men. Many institutions like the University of Michigan and the Bureau of Labor Statistics have put ladies in that very box with studies showing that women have been somewhat ‘forced’ into the role of a maid, having to do all the cleaning, cooking and more in a home. The Bureau of Labor Statistics found that in 2006, 84 percent of women spent time managing the home rather than their careers.

Just six years later things are looking up. More women are making big changes in almost everything including business, government, entertainment and sports.

In a study from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), women of color (African American, Hispanic, Asian and Native American) make up 14.5 percent of the American workforce, and African American women are in the lead with 7.6 percent in the workforce.

Your goals and that gutsy mindset shouldn’t be skewed by your relationship, or the fact that you’re in a relationship. Sometimes we as women take on other goals and responsibilities in a relationship and when it’s over, we feel that we gave up or missed out on so much through too many sacrifices. It’s time to focus on ourselves and not bypass the goals we set for someone else so that their light can shine while ours only dims.

We hear the heartbreaking songs from Adele, and Mary J. about how love has scorned them and how they moved on. Their experiences turn into melodies, melodies into songs, and songs into success. But I digress here. Your career isn’t given a death sentence because you’re in a relationship, and at the same time, your work isn’t your life and your life isn’t work. But the more time you put into the things that you want, the more fulfilled you will feel (and the less resentful). Sadly, there aren’t too many people who feel this way.

In the June issue of The Atlantic, the cover read “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All.” The article was written by Anne-Marie Slaughter, current international affairs professor at Princeton, and she believes that women can’t be successful and have a stable marriage and regular life.  She left her job as the policy director for the State Department in Washington D.C. because trying to maintain her job got in the way of raising her 14-year-old son. Some questions that came to mind were, where was the balance in her relationships? Why wasn’t the spouse or father of her son helping? The article doesn’t answer these questions at all, but it does bring up the continued conversation on success in relationships and ultimately “having it all.” Does that mean that you have the perfect marriage, or perfect children? If so, is it really even possible to “have it all”?

Success is something that not just women, but men want to have. Balance, understanding and support in a relationship can mean all the difference in getting to your goal instead of pushing it back. You shouldn’t have to continuously put your hopes and goals on hold so your significant other can solely reach theirs. Why can’t you both be a success together?

What do you think? Do you believe that it’s impossible to be able to focus on a career in a relationship? Or is it better to be single and work towards your goals?

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Source: timescrest.com

Religion is one of those subjects that is often avoided in conversation in order to keep the peace. However, when it comes to relationships and families, sometimes a firewall of tolerance just isn’t strong enough to stand.

For most people, the God they serve and their faith, is at the core of their essence. I’m not any different. My mom is Baptist and my Dad is a Jehovah’s Witness. I was raised as a believer of Jesus Christ. I respect my father’s way of life and have even tolerated some of his attempts to convert me, but my heart has never been swayed. Although, my aunt believes that I don’t go to church as much as I should. She tells me all the time that church is the perfect place for me to meet a husband. Okay auntie…But hey, birds of a feather do flock together, however, interfaith relationships are becoming commonplace. More and more are marrying individuals of religious backgrounds that differ from their own.

Love has a way of overcoming obstacles. It can cover the many challenges that religion creates. Since marriage is about two people becoming one, compromise is already ingrained in the dynamics. When there is love, you find a way to make it all work. Each person gives and takes a little bit. Taye Diggs, who identifies as a Christian, married Idina Menzel who is Jewish. He has stated that he hopes to allow his son to see both of what their beliefs offer so that he can choose for himself:

“These days, thank God, people are a little bit more accepting and people’s views are broadening and it’s not as accepted to just choose one, how you might have been forced to in the past. I think it depends on the parents’ perspective and how they feel about those issues and how they kind of want to pass that down to their child. As proud as I am of my blackness, I think it’s important to show Walker that he should be just as proud of his Jewish mother and all of the culture that that includes as well.”

But, there comes a point when the fundamental differences between two people create a wall. It becomes a war and one side has to lose because there’s no more room left for compromise, and that usually happens when it comes to what the religious beliefs of the children will be, or when one side wants their spouse to convert. While Diggs for now seems to think having both religious beliefs of being of Jewish faith and Christian faith will benefit his child (and luckily, his wife wasn’t pushed to share his beliefs), other people don’t fare so well. Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes reportedly broke up because she didn’t want their 6-year-old daughter, Suri, further subjected to the tenets of Scientology. Katie was raised a Catholic and converted for a few years, but as time went on, she affirmed her prior faith. She recently claimed membership at a Catholic church and enrolled her daughter in a school that practices the faith.

Katie’s not the only one who has had second thoughts about losing themselves in another religion in order to please a partner, but that’s not to say that interfaith relationships are doomed from the start. If two people are committed to reconciling their strong opinions about God and how their respective faiths should work in their lives, more power to them. But as an absolute authority on Stephanie (that’s me of course), I’d prefer to be equally yoked with my significant other. Love is enough of a battlefield and a divided house will easily fall apart.

Could you marry someone of a different faith?

Stephanie Guerilus is a multimedia journalist and author. Follow her @qsteph

SingleintheSip.com

You ever been in love? I’m talkin’ ‘bout that makes-your-knees-tingle kind of love, that I’mma-jump-on-Oprah’s-couch kind of love. That kind of love that has you finally knowing what all those R&B songs are all about, the kind of love that makes you throw your hands up and shout every time you hear Luther Vandross sing, “Who needs to go to work to hustle for another dollar? I’d rather be with you ‘cause you make my heart scream and holla.” I mean that glassy-eyed kind of love where you take every opportunity to mention your beloved’s name. That kind of love where “I” becomes “We” and you revel in the moment that two have finally become one.

In an episode of “Sex and the City” (“The Agony and the ‘Ex’-Tacy”; season four, episode one for the uninitiated), Carrie Bradshaw and company attend an engagement party for which the invitation states that the betrothed couple have “two souls, one thought”.

“If two souls have only one thought between them, something is very wrong,” Carrie quipped.

In curly-haired Carrie Bradshaw fashion, I couldn’t help but wonder about how women maintain their individual identities in relationships. This conversation, though hardly a new one, is timely, considering the murmurings that surround the break-up of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes (forever infused as TomKat in Hollywood relationship terms). Or Kate, as Tom reportedly preferred to call her. Writer Kathleen Perricone reports,

Ever since the two first got together in 2005, the “Mission Impossible” star has insisted on referring to his [soon-to-be-former] wife as “Kate,” even though neither her friends nor her family has ever called her that[…]During an interview with All Headline News, [Cruise] explained, “Katie is a young girl’s name. Her name is Kate now – she’s a child-bearing woman.” At the time, it was also reported that Holmes had agreed upon the name change “after discussing it with Tom” and as a result “all friends and family now call her Kate.”

Cruise’s couch-jumping kind of love, his Scientologist beliefs and the pair’s blog-worthy break-up have onlookers wondering what really went on in the marital home shared by the former “Dawson’s Creek” star and one of Hollywood’s most bankable leading men.

“She always seemed scared to me,” a friend of mine noted during a conversation about the split. “It was like she was always under his thumb.”

Another hot commodity in celebrity coupledom? Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, a pair that has reportedly crossed the 72-day threshold that Kardashian and basketball star Kris Humphries couldn’t reach during their brief marriage last fall. Kardashian has been photographed rocking “KW” stud earrings and has tweeted a picture of her and her beau’s his-and-hers sneakers. An innocuous digital display of affection? Lost in love or simply a case of tingling knees? It doesn’t help that not only do they go to everything together now (even laser hair removal treatments), but people have pointed out that her style has changed to better fit his, and has faded into dull looks of a monochromatic, “let’s match to everything we go to!” type of fashion. She looks more like his experimental muse than his lady.

In everyday life, I’ve wondered about friends who had essentially disappeared off the face of girls’ night out and Sunday brunches to hang out with the he, adjusting their schedules and lives to their man, maybe even their personality. Yes, it’s important to cultivate romantic relationships, but in efforts to keep the love we find, when do we lose ourselves completely?

In an essay for the Huffington Post, writer Vicki Larson cites the idea of the “Disappearing Woman,” a concept developed by relationship expert and psychotherapist Beverly Engel. In her book, “Loving Him Without Losing Yourself”, Engel writes

No matter how successful, assertive, or powerful some women are, the moment they  become involved with a man, they begin to give up part of themselves — their social life, their time alone, their spiritual practice, their belief and values.

Even in Carrie Bradshaw’s fictional New York, friend Charlotte converted to Judaism to marry her divorce lawyer-turned-husband Harry, and, in the show’s final season, Carrie uprooted her life, career and friendships to follow a Russian suitor to Paris, only to return home after realizing that she had lost her identity in the whirlwind.

In relationships, compromise is necessary, emblems of love can be cute and sometimes, love requires a leap of faith.  But at which point during the swell of the swoon do we become disappearing women, and how can we turn it around?

Do you know women who have changed a lot due to a relationship?

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It certainly is not a slow news day in Hollywood. First we got word that Tom Cruise and his wife of five years, Katie Holmes, are filing for divorce, then we hear that Adele is pregnant with her first child with boyfriend Simon Konecki.

On the topic of the divorce, it’s surprising only in that we would’ve assumed Cruise would’ve pushed to stay married for ten years. We all know how hyper-aware he is of his persona and five years seems too short of a time to convince anyone that they were in it to win it. On the other hand, five years is not that bad in Hollywood considering that Kim Kardashian has lowered the average time of celebrity marriage with her 72-day fiasco.

All we know is that Cruise needs to slow his roll, as this latest marriage to Holmes marked his third. He was previously married to Mimi Rogers and Nicole Kidman. It was only the first marriage for Katie Holmes but seeing that she’s only 33, it is very likely that she’ll be headed down the aisle again (hopefully for the right reasons this time).

On to Adele. This woman is a remarkable, history-making talent but we do have to ask…isn’t she too young to have a baby? At 24, Adele has achieved much of what she’s set out to do in the music world and has had to grow up much faster than her peers in order to manage the pressures of stardom but still…

She’s super young and in a young relationship with her boyfriend as well. Nevertheless, we do wish her the best.

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Last night, while watching TV, I heard a newscaster say something to the effect of “Katie Holmes will talk about Suri’s breakdown” when we return. My mom and I gave each other “the look” almost instantly. Breakdown? The girl is 5.

Turns out what Suri really had was a temper tantrum in a toy store in New York City—the kind of thing every 5-year-old does in a toy store, whether it’s KB Toys or FAO Schwartz. In the midst of my search for what all the fuss surrounding Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise’s daughter was about, I came across a slideshow of the most influential celebrity kids. The Daily Beast ranked more than 70 celebrity children under the age of 6 according to their press and online media mentions in the last year and then asked E-Poll Market Research to measure the relative appeal of children who ranked among the Top 20 in terms of media power.

What kind of power could someone who can barely read, write, or talk have? According to the Daily Beast, “these kids have marketable and measurable influence. They spur clothing sales with what they wear, they sell magazines with their cute faces, and they prop up their parents’ popularity by giving them a human identity far from the glamorous silver and small screen personas.” And what does the site decide to do with that influence? Give the kids a huge dose of unearned fame and unnecessary critiquing.

Next to the names of the top 20 children which include Halle Berrys’ daughter, Nahla; Jennifer Lopez’s twins—with Emma coming in at no. 17 and Max at no. 4; and two members of the Jolie-Pitt clan, is an e-score rank, media rank, and Google rank showing how much influence the child has in each category. All I could think is why is this necessary?

Luckily, these children are too young to know they’re being examined in this way and picked apart for their marketability and influence, but it won’t be long before they become aware and the competitiveness amongst famous siblings grows along with these kids’ hunger for more attention or a recluse from the scrutiny.

I had similar feelings when I came across articles about Zahara Jolie Pitt’s hair extensions this week. Since the articles didn’t take the “why are you putting weave in a 6-year-old’s head” approach, the fact that a young black child was wearing her hair in braids is hardly new and hardly news. Isn’t there an adult celebrity just waiting to be picked on while these people tirelessly comb over how she’s wearing her hair this week?

While there are some celebrity parents who are guilty of drawing the paparazzi’s attention to themselves and their children, the media needs to be weary of the monsters they are creating. Do Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian ring a bell to anyone? The famous for being famous epidemic has gotten out of control and when you start following every insignificant moment of these kids’ lives, they’re being stripped of any sense of normalcy and hyped up to rest on their name as their sole claims to fame for the rest of their lives.

It’s one thing to mention what a kid is doing, it’s another to essentially rank them by how important they are at the age of 6. It sets them up to be critiqued for the rest of their lives—creating either a huge sense of entitlement or an unfair deflated sense of self. It’s almost understandable why Michael Jackson had his kids walk around in masks–almost.

Instead of creating media stories out of nothing, why not sit and wait until these kids do something worth talking about on their own? Celebrity kids never disappoint when it comes to their actions, but let them be of an appropriate age before all the ranking and critiquing starts. They’ve done nothing to warrant it but be born.

Do you think the media has gotten out of hand in their coverage of celebrity’s children? Do you think it will have a bad influence on these children down the line?

Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.

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