Names and faces
In person, Chris Hemsworth’s robust frame is impress ive. But he’s not as huge as he appears on film. “I don’t naturally sit at that weight,” the Thor actor said. “I spend four or five months eating protein and lifting weights. Then I spend months getting rid of it.” His routine has paid off: Disney’s Thor: The Dark World earned $109.4 million when it opened overseas last weekend. On Friday, the Marvel sequel hit U.S. theaters, with predictions that it could earn more than $95 million in North America this weekend, toppling Ender’s Game from its No. 1 box-office spot. “Each time these films continue to work — whether it be Captain America, Iron Man, or Avengers — you think, ‘ Oh god!’ You don’t want to drop the ball,” said Hemsworth, 30. Contractually bound to one more Thor film and two more Avengers movies, Hemsworth will continue to reprise his role as the hammer-wielding hero. “I’d do them for as long as they will have me,” he said.
The son of singer Patti LaBelle told a Texas jury Friday that he was hit in the face by a man at a Houston airport terminal after the man shouted racial slurs at his mother. Zuri Edwards testified in the misdemeanor-assault trial of his mother’s bodyguard, Efrem Holmes, 45, who hit West Point cadet Richard King, 23, at the Bush Intercontinental Airport in 2011. According to KTRK-TV of Houston, Edwards testified that King was “intoxicated, loud, obnoxious” and was hurling racial epithets at his mother. Then, he said, “I am instantly struck on my face, on the right side of my face.” Holmes’ attorneys have said their client was defending LaBelle and Edwards from King’s onslaught. Edwards’ testimony came one day after LaBelle testified in Holmes’ defense, calling him “cuddly, very nice, very gentle.” Prosecutors have shown surveillance video showing Edwards chest-bumping King, drawing a punch from King, and Holmes punching King three times in the face. LaBelle’s hairdresser then got between the two and hit King.