Nothing makes a public service announcement like a star-studded cast. Yet, good acting can mask lack of understanding, turning some into public disservice ads. Just consider this new one featuring Leonardo DiCaprio, Felicity Huffman, Jason Bateman, Ed Norton, Chace Crawford and a number of other celebrities:

Felicity Huffman has rejected claims that Desperate Housewives is becoming repetitive.

Speaking exclusively to Digital Spy, the 47-year-old actress – Lynette Scavo on the ABC series – claimed that the show has “new energy” in its current sixth season.

“So far it has not repeated,” she said. “The format is similar – you know, you go dun-dun-dun and the mystery. But I don’t think we can make a decision as to whether it’s just ploughing the same old ground again.

“My character, that’s new energy. There are places where I feel like possibly we’re spinning our wheels at a table-read and then when it actually gets down to shooting, the writers have fixed it.”

She added: “But you can’t get away from the fact that it’s the same people, we live on the same street and you’re now with them for six years. So it’s not like a Martian is going to come down!”

Desperate Housewives continues Sundays at 9pm on ABC in the US and Wednesdays at 10pm on Channel 4 in the UK.

‘Desperate Housewives’ actress Felicity Huffman has said that she misses her former co-star Nicollette Sheridan on set.

Speaking to Digital Spy, the actress, who plays Lynette Scavo in the show, said: “Gosh, well, I miss Nicollette – she was cool.”

“She’s just a really wonderful woman and a cool chick and I think what she brought to the show was a certain vinegar, a certain little spice.”

“They’re going to have to find that kind of thing elsewhere in a different form.”

Sheridan’s character Edie left the show last season.

It’s a special time of year on Wisteria Lane. The Christmas ornaments are up, the housewives are outside decorating a community tree – and disaster is looming.

“Oh crap, who’s dead now?” says an exasperated Susan (Teri Hatcher), sensing yet another casualty when she sees an ambulance down the street.

That’s not even Sunday’s big event, but it might serve as a slogan for Desperate Housewives‘ (9 p.m. ET/PT) seemingly annual mayhem. Over the years, the street and its residents have endured a tornado, a hostage-taking and fires, not to mention numerous deaths.

This time, it’s a plane carrying a banner – Karl’s marriage proposal to the cheating Bree (Marcia Cross) – that crashes the neighborhood’s holiday festival.

“The very end of the episode has dire ramifications for everyone on Wisteria Lane,” creator Marc Cherry says. “There are three deaths. One is a character the audience has never met, one is a minor character on the street and one is a character who we introduced in the very first season, a big player.”

It’s the first time Housewives has had its disaster at Christmastime. Despite the death toll, Cherry says the crash episode will have more comic elements than its destructive predecessors.

The story “seems incredibly huge and funny and tragic all at the same time, which is quintessential Desperate Housewives,” says Cross, pleased that the prim Bree is getting to show “her primal side” this season.

If Wisteria Lane seems like a disaster area, it’s part of the show’s heightened reality, says Felicity Huffman, who plays Lynette.

“I think Marc came up with a great formula, which is all the kind of crazy wickedness that goes on, with a dash of mystery. So with mystery comes danger, and with danger often comes death,” says Huffman, whose character’s pregnancy has complicated home, work and social relationships.

The tree-trimming scene, which features perfectionist Bree laying tinsel perfectly while the less-precise Gabrielle (Eva Longoria Parker) is flinging it in clumps, marks an infrequent gathering of the original housewives, who are often apart on their own story lines.Gabrielle is mad at Lynette, who sued Gabrielle’s husband, Carlos. Bree, preoccupied with her extramarital affair, is finally made aware of Lynette’s pregnancy. And Susan, who has had her hands full with the increasingly mad Katherine (Dana Delany), is trying to keep the peace. (The ambulance has to do with Katherine’s stabbing last week.)

The Gabrielle-Lynette battle “is going to climax in this episode,” Longoria Parker says. Afterward, “they could be friends. Or not. Or one could be dead.”

Cherry says the crash will affect almost every relationship, including Gabrielle and Lynette’s friendship, Lynette and Tom’s marriage and the Karl-Bree-Orson triangle. It will cause the street’s residents to consider their past lives as they fantasize about the future.Housewives (15.2 million viewers) is down 2 million this season but remains a strong ratings performer, ranking 10th in viewers and fifth in the advertiser-coveted 18-to-49 demographic.

Cherry recently signed a development deal that could extend Housewives two years beyond the seven initially planned. The actresses, who would have to negotiate new deals, all say they would like to stay until the end, although Huffman has concerns if Cherry becomes too busy with other projects to contribute his unique voice.

“I’m here for the long haul,” Hatcher says. “I’ve always said that I’m here until I’m the casualty of one of these disasters – which will not be at my request.”

A summer trip to a dude ranch in Wyoming with daughters Sofia Grace, 9, and Georgia Grace, 7 ½, taught Felicity Huffman a valuable lesson in karma — and mother nature! The vacation started out innocently enough; Each girl was enjoying their own personal pony for the week, and mother and daughters took a ride to the top of a mountain.

“My kids are not scared,” the 46-year-old Desperate Housewives actress recalls. “They’re like, ‘Woohoo!’ They’re singing ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ and I’m going, ‘Hold on!‘” At the peak, Felicity, Sofia and Georgia had lunch before descending into a cave.

“There’s a legend, as you go in and come out there are these cool crystals, but you’re not supposed to take them because the cave gets mad,” she explains. “Of course I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah…but the crystals are cool, and I want them for the kids.” Felicity soon learned why the legend exists, however!

“So I was shoving crystals in my pockets, and sure enough as I got close to the edge, I stood up, hit my head, and blood is coming down. My friend comes over and is like, ‘Are you okay?’ I said ‘Yeah, take the crystals.’ And then she hit her head, and blood was coming out.”

Back at home things have been decidedly less dramatic for the girls, who recently welcomed several chickens into their family. “They’re all named,” Felicity shares, “and my kids are just crazy about them.” Especially, it seems, is Georgia — who Felicity has nicknamed “the chicken whisperer.”

“She takes big baskets and puts my expensive towels in there, and takes a chicken and puts it in. And then she decides that the chicken needs a friend so now there’s two chickens in the basket, and then she covers them over with another really expensive towel, and … they go to sleep! So we have baskets of chickens all over the house sleeping.”

So attached is Georgia, she even sleeps alongside her new feathered friends. “The other night I went in to say goodnight, and as I was walking out the door I said ‘Is there a chicken in here?’ And she said, ‘There’s a few under my bed,’” Felicity joked.

Sofia and Georgia are Felicity’s children with husband William H. Macy.

Felicity Huffman takes cancer — and beauty — seriously. The actress has joined Philosophy and the Entertainment Industry Foundation to raise awareness for the fight against women’s cancers. The Desperate Housewives’s star will appear in a public service announcement that encourages people to submit an original line of poetry to Philosophy’s “Unforgettable” poem — featured on the brand’s Shower for the Cure bath gel — and make a donation to the EIF’s Women’s Cancer Research Fund. Other celebs who have signed on to support the campaign and submitted their own lines of poetry include Rita Wilson, Lisa Kudrow, Lori Laughlin, Angie Harmon and James Caan. All entries will be considered for a special edition of the Shower for the Cure bath gel bottle available for sale in October 2010. To enter, visit showerforacure.com.

source: stylenews.peoplestylewatch.com