Film  

Jeff Bridges on Crazy Heart

The staggeringly laid-back Bridges is Oscar nomiated for a fifth time. Meet 'the most natural screen actor who ever lived'

Harry Potter and the amazingly similar US rival

Boy hero called Percy Jackson to hit the big screen in a children’s film that has parallels with J. K. Rowling’s creation

Hopkins: I'm still an outsider

Despite 50 years at the top, the Welsh-born actor still does not feel at home in his profession. Does he care? No

Making comedy out of climate change

The Friends actress Helen Baxendale has produced a budget film about two misfits on mission to the North Pole

TV & Radio  

Jonathan Ross and BBC ‘top talent’ get £70m

The BBC pays presenters and contributors to television and radio programmes £229 million each year, it announces today

BBC criticised for ‘bullying smaller players’

The corporation is to be review how it deals with commercial rivals after 'unfair' Lonely Planet and U2 deals

Top ten: Small-screen bitches

Shoulderpads: check. Husband stealing? You bet. Nothing beats a good bitch

The several ages of Dimbleby

At 71 age has not wearied David Dimbleby, who hosts The Seven Ages of Britain. And he certainly won’t give up Question Time

Stage  

Hollywood A-listers dominate Olivier nominations

The large number of film stars choosing to tread the boards is reflected in a star-studded list for the stage awards

Meet Royal Ballet’s new boys

Two young choreographers have a chance others can only dream of - taking on the main stage at Covent Garden

David Sedaris: The unquiet American

The satirist David Sedaris has sold millions of books and filled Carnegie Hall but lives a low-profile life in London

How I learnt to love a Russian

As a new Bulgakov play opens at the National Theatre, film director Terry Gilliam explains why he loves the master's work

Music  

Where there isn’t a Will...

She stole the show in Will & Grace. Now actress/singer Megan Mullally is bringing her band and her musical chops to London

Jazz legend Sir John Dankworth dies

The saxophonist, who wrote the theme tune for The Avengers and Modesty Blaise, had been unwell for several months

The Drums just love Manchester

The group's sound is a sort of perky poignancy, where Californian poptimism meets Mancunian miserabilism from the 80s

Single ladies take over the world

How Beyoncé's routine turned into a dance craze leading babies, TV shows and too many men in leotards to put a ring on it

Visual arts  

An Old World newly minted

Tate Modern is right to champion this enigmatic Modernist who, after tragic beginnings, reinvented himself in America

Revealed: the hidden art of Leonardo's tutor

Eighteen months of painstaking work by a National Gallery expert wielding a scalpel recovers painting by Verrocchio

Iran cuts cultural links with British Museum

A delay in handing over the 2,500-year-old Cyrus Cylinder is threatening to end a longstanding relationship with Tehran

The skeletons in Henry Moore's closet

His drawings of Londoners in the Blitz made him a national treasure. But the bluff Yorkshireman had a file of murky secrets

Books  

British Library to offer free ebook downloads

More than 65,000 19th-century works of fiction from the library’s collection are to be made available for free downloads

Unknown crime writer wows Europe

Former odd-jobs man Simon Beckett only found literary success in his mid-forties and is now mobbed at book readings in Germany

Haunted by gaze of drowning author

Acclaimed author JG Farrell's last act was to save the life of a passer-by caught in a violent storm on wild Irish coastland

I turned a pixie into a pot of gold

Lauren Child, author and creator of Charlie and Lola, on where she finds inspiration - from jumble sales to Chinese silks