Is it just us, or is Charlize Theron more entertaining these days off screen than on? Take her assessment of "The Hills" phenomenon, which has foisted the soulless likes of Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt onto the pop culture landscape. "So I watched a couple episodes. I was doing a world tour at the time, so I watched them in a couple languages. I realized that this [bleeping] show is huge," the Oscar winner told MTV News this week while promoting "Battle in Seattle," the directorial debut of her longtime love, Stuart Townsend. "Now I'm going to ask you a question: Why? Why is it so big? It's about nothing! This is a free country. Freedom of speech! You can tell me right now to my face that 'Reindeer Games' was a piece of s---. That's totally fine." Charlize just can't seem to wrap her head around the popularity of a reality show with so little basis in reality. "I think the girls are beautiful, and when they cry, their mascara runs, and that's real," she said, "but I don't get it!" Theron then paused briefly before concluding she must be out of the show's target demographic: "I am a nana. I'll just take it. I am a nana. Maybe I need to watch the shows some more."

Posh and J.Lo strike their patented poses during New York Fashion Week on Sept. 8.

Also offering up an amusing slice of candor is Kelly Osbourne, who apparently doesn't quite buy the BFF pose struck by Victoria Beckham and Jennifer Lopez as they sat together during New York Fashion Week. "I was directly across from them. I've never seen two people pretend to like each other more in my life," she's quoted as telling the London Daily Mirror. "They were holding hands, but it looked like Victoria was holding a [bleepy] bit of toilet paper!"

Also entertaining, although in more of a laughing-at-you-than-with-you sort of way, is Vanessa Minnillo, the former "Entertainment Tonight" talking head and steady squeeze of Nick Lachey. "My goal is to be acting and winning an Oscar," she tells In Touch of her hopes for the future. "I want to be an actress with an Oscar and babies." Her Academy Award-winning role model? Julia Roberts. "She's phenomenal!" gushes Vanessa, who recently appeared in what reviewers deemed was the fittingly titled "Disaster Movie." "I would love to be just like her." Minnillo's A-list ambitions aren't exactly original. Back in 2005, Tara Reid expressed similar aspirations, declaring, "It would be the ultimate dream for me to win an Academy Award, be in love and have kids."

"If I saw her somewhere I'd say hi, but I try not to go in the same circles." That's Kid Rock, fessing up to Ellen DeGeneres that he tries to avoid crossing paths with Pamela Anderson, who was his wife for four long months back in 2006. "I touched stove, stove was hot," the lesson-learning rocker says of his ostensible discovery that massive yabbos are not a solid foundation for a lasting relationship. "I think I not touch stove anymore."

Leighton Meester's formerly felonious family has landed her on the cover of Us Weekly, which sums things up thusly: "A Gossip Girl's Untold Story: [She] was born to a drug smuggler mom in prison. The remarkable saga of her family's past and how they started over." The actress, who plays scheming Upper East Sider Blair Waldorf on the CW series, arrived in the world just as her mother began serving a federal prison sentence for being part of a drug-smuggling ring. Her dad also landed in jail for his role in the operation, although he tells the mag, "Anything that her mother and I did that was questionable occurred before she was born." According to Meester, her parents' past "makes me very nonjudgmental and open-minded. And I think it just makes me appreciate the things that I have now."

Next: Drew Barrymore's Once Busy Lips Back in Action