Evan Rachel Wood is tough Romanian in 'Charlie Countryman'

Evan Rachel Wood may have spent her career looking for films that push the envelope, but the 26-year-old actress found the toughest role of her life when she had her first child via natural home birth this past summer.

Wood plays a tough-talking Romanian cellist and strip-club denizen who entices an American (Shia LaBeouf) in “Charlie Countryman,” opening Friday. But her birthing choice, she says, “was the hardest thing I’ve ever done — and also was the most rewarding experience of my life, ever.

“I just had no idea that birth could be like this,” she adds of delivering her son with actor-husband Jamie Bell. “[Women are told] ‘you’re not going to be able to do it, it’s too hard, too painful.’ I don’t know when something being hard and painful became something we never experience, just because it’s hard.”

You certainly can’t say that about Wood. The Raleigh, N.C., native took to performing early. At 5, she tried out for the role of the young undead girl in 1994’s “Interview With the Vampire” that ultimately went to Kirsten Dunst. But Wood went to steady TV series work (“Once and Again”) until 2003’s big-screen drama “Thirteen” got her a lot of attention at 16 for playing a middle-schooler whose very adult life worries her mom (Holly Hunter).

“It’s odd starting so young, because I think you don’t really know what you’re getting into,” Wood says. “I wasn’t prepared for what it was going to be like, and how people would treat you or look at you.

“I’ve lived many lifetimes already. Definitely being a teenager and having ‘Thirteen’ come out, having my whole life change overnight, was jarring.”

Rather than going the “Twilight” route, Wood did a Western (“The Missing”), edgy indies (“Down in the Valley”), one genuinely tough-to-sell project (Julie Taymor’s Beatles-themed musical “Across the Universe”), Darren Aronofsky’s gritty “The Wrestler” and a two-season stint on HBO’s “True Blood.”

“The reason I go for those roles is because, you’re a twentysomething girl in Hollywood, you mainly get sent movies [where] you’re just the girlfriend, you’re just having sex with someone and then leaving. It’s hard to find roles for women that are, well, like Gabi in ‘Charlie Countryman.’ ”

Wood’s role in the gritty fairy tale is the kind she likes, an independent woman who “doesn’t need to be rescued” by the men in her life.

“I really love doing movies that push me as an actor,” she says. “If something is too easy, I get bored pretty easily.”

Working with LaBeouf, she says, was never boring. “There’s all kinds of things floating around about Shia, but I personally had a great experience working with him,” she says. “He’s insanely dedicated to what he does.”

As for her own dedication, motherhood hasn’t slowed Wood down in the slightest.

“I’m working harder than ever because now I have a whole new reason to, and a reason why, and an inspiration,” she says. “There’s no time to be lazy. I was ready for that in my life.”

She says she and Bell (“Billy Elliot,” “King Kong,” the upcoming “Nymphomaniac,” co-starring LaBeouf) don’t let work overtake their life.

“I’m more the person who is like, ‘OK, [the day’s filming] is over, I don’t want to talk about it,’ ” Wood explains. “But it’s nice when you share the same passions because you can keep turning each other on to different things. But I’m more like, ‘Let’s watch cartoons and videogames, I don’t want to think about movies!’ ”

Though Wood, who used to date goth rocker Marilyn Manson, says dealing with “fame and paparazzi is the worst part” of acting, she nonetheless took to her Twitter account in August 2012 to share that she’s bisexual, an announcement that thrust her into the public eye in a different way.

She characteristically handled it with toughness.

“I’m very happy I did it,” Wood says. “There’s always going to be people that don’t understand and are going to say hateful things. I feel bad for those people, and don’t pay attention to that. I do pay attention to the people that say to me, ‘Thank you, you’ve made me feel so much better about myself.’ That’s the reason I did it.

“If more people came out about it, it wouldn’t be as big of a deal. It’s something I’m very proud of — I don’t let the hate into my life. I don’t regret it at all.”

'The Best Man Holiday' reunites characters from 'The Best Man'

Sanaa Lathan and Taye Diggs as Robyn and Harper in “The Best Man Holiday”

It’s tricky to make a dramedy that also mixes in sex and rude humor. But instead of slapstick gags and tasteless jokes, “The Best Man Holiday,” opening Friday, takes a surprisingly ­poignant look at a group of friends reunited for the first time since we met them in 1999’s “The Best Man.”

Over the years, fortunes have been made and lost, children have been born, and embarrassing clips have surfaced online.

“This is the reality of life after the fairy tale ends,” says Regina Hall, who plays Candy, a former stripper whose past comes back to haunt her. She and her husband Julian (Harold Perrineau) struggle to deal with parts of her youth that neither wants to remember, as other characters from the first movie deal with new dramas.

Malcolm D. Lee is back as both writer and director.

“Such a big ensemble cast is hard for a filmmaker,” adds Hall. “It’s like baby-sitting a group of kindergartners. But for us actors, it’s like sleepaway camp.”

“The Best Man Holiday” takes place during a Christmas reunion at the New Jersey mansion of Lance (Morris Chestnut), now a top football player with the Giants. His former best friend Harper (Taye Diggs) may or may not be trying to write an unauthorized biography of the star athlete. Harper was in big trouble in the first film for writing a “novel” that was a little too close to home for his friends.

Meanwhile Harper’s wife Robyn (Sanaa Lathan) is very pregnant with their first child, yet can’t help but be jealous of her husband’s friendship with Jordan (Nia Long), a high-powered, high-heeled TV producer who’s still single and unwilling to sacrifice her work for love.“Definitely, all these kinds of characters exist in real life,” says Lathan. “One of the things I love about Malcolm’s writing is that it’s universal. Everyone knows someone who is like one of these characters. Whether you’re black or white, young or old, people can identify with what these characters are dealing with.”

That said, Lathan believes the film will hold special resonance for African-American audiences since it stars not one or two black actors, but eight.

“Black people are hungry for this kind of movie,” she says. “Simply because it’s nice to be able to see yourself [reflected] on the screen. It’s getting better, but in the majority of movies we don’t see ourselves.”

Lathan says it’s hard for white audiences to understand what it’s like for black kids growing up and going to movies that usually feature mostly white casts.

“Imagine what that does to your subconscious,” she says. “It works on your self-esteem in a very subtle but very powerful way that is real − and can be damaging.”

Very little of the humor in “The Best Man Holiday” has anything to do with race, though the friends can’t help but take a few jabs when ­Jordan brings home her new white boyfriend. Robyn calls him a “tall vanilla latte.” ­Harper jokes that the new ­boyfriend must like “dating chocolate girls.”

Then there’s Harper’s literary agent, who tells Harper what he wants to see in his new book, and at the same time may be writer-director Lee’s wink at the audience about his own goals for the movie. The agent says he wants the new book to be smart, “and not just ‘black people smart.’”

Long says that line from the book agent “definitely personifies the film,” and that this is a movie about struggles that anyone in love can relate to, regardless of race.

Of her independent character, Jordan, Long says, “To love deeply and reap the benefits of love, you have to be vulnerable. I truly believe the professional contemporary woman is doing it all.

“I think you should have your children when it works for you, as long as your biological clock allows that. There is so much pressure from society to have your kids early. But I had my first child at 30 and second at 40. I would encourage all women who are on the fence about whether they want to have children, there is never a perfect time, do it if you can, you will never regret it.”

There’s at least one person though, who may not be able to relate to “The Best Man Holiday” — Long’s older son, who’s 12.

“My son has no desire to see any of my movies,” the actress jokes. “So I’m hoping if I do a big fancy sci-fi movie, he’ll see it and say, ‘Oh mom, I love what you do.’ ”

jsilverman@nydailynews.com

50 years on, the Beatles and Stones face off again

The Beatles

“On Air — Live at the BBC Volume 2”

(EMI/Universal Music)

4 stars

...

The Rolling Stones

“Sweet Summer Sun: Hyde Park Live”

(Eagle Vision)

3 Stars

Rivalries don’t get more relentless — or more mutually beneficial — than the Beatles vs. the Stones.

The game of compare and contrast between the bands began a half century ago, greatly aided by the groups themselves, who often positioned their releases as call-and-response reactions, to the delight of millions.

That long-running dynamic continues this week when the Good and Bad Boys of rock ’n’ roll each put out “new” music. On Monday, the Fab Four will issue the second volume of their “Live at the BBC” sessions, whose first version was a No. 1 smash when it arrived 19 years ago. Both of the collections disinter troves of previously unreleased recordings made by the Beatles for the BBC between March 1962 and July 1965.

Also Monday, the Rolling Stones will put out the DVD “Sweet Summer Sun,” capturing their concert from London’s Hyde Park this past July. It’s an echo of a storied show held in that same leafy preserve 44 years earlier. That free event served to memorialize guitarist Brian Jones, who had died just two days before.

The 1969 Stones park show featured the debut of 20-year-old guitarist Mick Taylor, the most fluid and expansive ax-man the band has ever employed. The big draw for this year’s show was the return of Taylor — if, sadly, for just one number, “Midnight Rambler.”

The good news: On that song, Taylor’s fingers still give the Stones greater fire and elaboration than they would otherwise have. His leads inspire Keith Richards and Ron Wood to push and pull each other into tighter riffs in the rhythm. The show also features the Stones’ regular backup singer Lisa Fischer taking the panicked Merry Clayton part in “Gimme Shelter.” Not only does she bring to it her own blood-curdling yells, she sports a vintage hippie-era fringe chemise.

Other than Taylor’s cameo, none of these performances rate as crucial to the Stones’ canon. Too many charging, live versions already exist of the same songs to manage that. But the performances do show a band of musical ancients still in tune with each other’s rhythm — deeply enough, in fact, to give their legacy a present-tense charge.

The Beatles’ two-disc set has the great advantage of dating from the pink of their youth. The CDs feature 37 previously unreleased performances, goosed by 23 snips of the boys’ ironic quips and banter, which they traded with buttoned-down radio hosts. Two of the songs were never cut for a Beatles album: a cover of Chuck Berry’s “I’m Talking About You” and the Stephen Foster classic “Beautiful Dreamer.”

Famous Beatles songs, like “Do You Want to Know a Secret” and “Please Please Me,” mix it up with rockabilly touchstones like “Lucille” and Chuck Berry’s “Memphis, Tennessee.” The latter, in a stripped and clean take, has a John Lennon vocal that’s gorgeously casual.

Even toss-offs, like a dash through “Happy Birthday,” have a madcap wit.

Recorded in glorious mono, the performances shake with a rickety brilliance. Cut live, they counter the prevailing image we have of the Beatles as self-conscious studio rats. (They stopped touring in 1966.) Here, we can enjoy them as the down-’n’-dirty performing unit they once were. The songs arrive in frisky bursts, compact in form, crisp in delivery.

Listening feels like falling into a time tunnel or overhearing a secret. It brings us sounds from the past that couldn’t be more of-their-moment. Unlike the Stones release, this isn’t an album about endurance but about the thrill of the new -- providing yet another contrast worth savoring.

jfarber@nydailynews.com

Amy Tan's 'The Valley of Amazement': book review

Amy Tan sets ner novel in the world of courtesans and concubines, and focuses on the 7-year-old daughter of a brothel proprietor.

Amy Tan’s new novel, “The Valley of Amazement,” is rather odd.

It’s no surprise that the “Joy Luck Club” author again offers a literary exploration of complex mother-daughter relationships, but her tale of a Shanghai courtesan is overwrought with dramatic developments worthy of a telenovela. Really, how much can happen to one woman in a lifetime?

Tan’s novel of course brings to mind Arthur Golden’s “Memoirs of a Geisha,” as we once again delve into the intimate world of courtesans and concubines. Taking us there is 7-year-old Violet Minturn, the daughter of the proprietor of what is, in 1905, the classiest courtesan house in Shanghai. It’s also the only one run by a white woman, Lulu Minturn.

The Hidden Jade Path, as it is known to Westerners, is Violet’s erotically infused playground as a child. Given to peeking into the courtesans’ private chambers, her sex ed comes early and is explicit. What remains a mystery is her mother’s past growing up in San Francisco. Who her father is and what happened to him is another provocative, unanswered question.

Through a wicked turn of events, Violet is sold to another high-class brothel as a 15-year-old virgin courtesan to be deflowered by the highest bidder. Tan delivers a delicately phrased but quite thorough exposition on the sexual skills a courtesan must cultivate. She also immerses a reader in the exotic world they occupied as the celebrities of the time, gossiped about incessantly in the “mosquito press,” but doomed to short-lived careers and brutal penury afterward.

My, how Violet’s fortunes change over the course of a lifetime. At one turn she’s a celebrated beauty, the next a concubine sexual slave in the provinces. A brief interlude of happiness in between ends when her Western lover dies and their daughter is forcibly taken from her to be raised in Croton-on-Hudson by his widow. And, there’s even more ...

The plot does verge on the silly at times, but Tan is such an accomplished storyteller that she almost pulls it off. And the underlying appeal of this book is the weave she makes of the three generations of Minturn women — Violet’s daughter returns to take her place in the story — struggling to accept their fate and each other.

No matter how unmanageable “The Valley of Amazement” threatens to become at any point, it remains interesting. And yes, not without its titillations, too.

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

“The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism” by Doris Kearns Goodwin. The popular historian, and author of “Team of Rivals,” tells the tale of the muckraking press amid the larger story of the tumultuous first decade of the Progressive era when some feared the center could not hold.

“Both Members of the Club” by Adam Berlin. The author of “The Number of Missing” now tells another Manhattan-based story about a trio of friends that includes a professional fighter, an aspiring actor and an artist. The last is about to stage her first gallery show just as the fighter’s world is coming unseamed. He can’t take the punches anymore. Tough stuff.

“Tatiana: An Arkady Renko Novel” by Martin Cruz Smith. Renko, an investigator first introduced in the old-school best seller “Gorky Park,” has made the transition to New Russia, where the crimes are as dirty and nasty as ever. A reporter is murdered, and following the trail, Renko is led to Kaliningrad, a Cold War “secret” city where only bad things happen.

sherrylnews@gmail.com

Stasi: Get over it Fox, de Blasio’s the winner

Get over it, Fox News. Get past it, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh — and all the rest of you who are devastated by the Bill de Blasio landslide.

I am crazy for you Bill O’R, but Bill de B is de mayor now, so you gotta get past it.

And I truly appreciate that you, Glenn Beck, apparently received a personal vision from God last week showing that New York City under B de B will be a crime-riddled living hell. But Beck? You live in Texas, which not only produced George W. Bush, the most disastrous President in modern history, but hosts, yes, a museum in the house where W misspent his youth.

What do they have on display? Old liquor bottles? We have the Met and the Modern and you have the Bush and the Wooden Nickel Museum. So seriously, Beck. Just live with it.

B de B won by the biggest landslide by a nonincumbent mayoral candidate in our city’s history, and was voted in by the same regular Joes that all of you guys are always touting as the backbone of this nation. The Joes have spoken. So let it go, or the Joes will let you go.

Will B de B be a great mayor? I have no idea, since God hasn’t visited me with a vision lately. But I do know that no matter what you guys think/say/believe, B de B is not going to kill off all the rich people and bring back track. Black will not be the new white, and no, the de Blasios aren’t making a political statement by not straightening their hair. They like it that way — and apparently so does the rest of the city who aren’t you.

B de B isn’t a pro-crime commie. He really doesn’t want you to be mugged because he is against the practice of stopping and frisking kids who happen to look like his kids — even if they don’t look like your kids.

He doesn’t hate rich people, (well, it’s hard for anyone to actually like Bloomberg, but that’s another story). B de B just believes that people who make piles of dough should help pay for pre-K for kids who desperately need a better start in life. Pre-K comes with breakfast — you know the meal that your staff prepares for your children — a meal which the 474,000 kids who go hungry each day in New York City need desperately.

So for all of you who threatened to move out of the city if he won, get over it. You know you really don’t want to move to Florida even if Rush lives there. That would mean you won’t be a big shark in a small river anymore, but just another manatee in the Gulf.

Please, get over it, so we can all get on with it.

PIRATES OF THE SILK ROAD

Dread Pirate Roberts, aka Ross Ulbricht, who is accused of owning and operating The Silk Road website — a $1.2 billion online marketplace for hit men, hackers, gun runners and drug dealers — showed up in Manhattan Federal Court on Wednesday.

In court, however, Pirate, who is also accused of hiring hit men (in undercover sting operations), looked less like Black Beard the pirate than Five O’Clock Shadow the loser.

Ulbricht came to court with a new lawyer, Joshua Dratel, who claims the feds got the wrong guy. What a relief to know the Pirate is innocent, even though he shares the same lawyer as one-eyed, hook-handed non-pirate terror suspect Abu Hamza al-Masri. It must be the Captain Hook thing.

Question of the day: How is it possible that pirates who did — and still do — rape, rob, rampage, pillage, plunder, torture and murder, inspire a ride at Disney World? What next? The Bin Laden log flume?

DOES GOLD TARNISH?

Senator, doctor and golden boy Rand Paul of Kentucky was quick to not take blame for the recent accusations of plagiarism in a speech, a book and his now killed-off column in The Washington Times.

Paul, who don’t take no crap from nobody, claimed the cribbed writing was just the result of being overwhelmed and overworked, and/or the fault of his staff, who didn’t footnote properly. In his defense, Paul’s senior adviser Doug Stafford issued a statement: “Sen. Paul ... has always presented his own ideas, opinions and conclusions.”

Thing is? Doug Stafford is the not-very-visible co-writer on Paul’s book with the plagiarized passages. Mike Huckabee also came to Paul’s defense, calling the plagiarism accusations “nuttiness.”

He said this knowing the nutty fact that one of Paul’s cribs was from a Wikipedia description of “Gattaca,” about a man who assumes another guy’s identity so he can blast off into outer space. Maybe Rand Paul should consider giving up politics and join Lady Gaga on that rocket to outer space.

SICKENING OMISSION

In an interview with NBC, President Obama said not a good enough job was done in crafting the Obamacare law. You think? The law is — depending on which figures you trust — anywhere from 234,812 to over 400,000 words long. With all those words, how did they forget to include these eight words: “This may cause you to lose your coverage?”

WILL, CHEATING? NYAH

Just because Will Smith (right) and his co-star Margot Robbie (left) got half undressed in a photo booth — before supposedly disappearing into a trailer — does not mean he’s cheating. On his income taxes.

EXPRESS LINES

It’s not shocking that Justin Bieber was busted by the paparazzi coming out of a Brazilian brothel. What’s shocking is that Bieber has to pay for it.

Police Commish Ray Kelly may join JPMorgan Chase as head of security. His first duty will be to arrest everyone there.

Tom Cruise said shooting a movie and being away from his daughter Suri was as tough as serving a tour in Afghanistan. But is it as tough as sitting through “Cocktail”? Doubtful.

CLOSED, NO OPEN, WELL, MAYBE

Long Island College Hospital stopped admitting patients on Wednesday, but then opened on Friday — sort of — by accepting noncritical patients. SUNY says the hospital loses millions, but protesters contend SUNY really wants to close it so it can sell it for hundreds of millions to developers of luxury housing.

Who’s doing the math here? The average cost per patient per day for a hospital room stay in NYC is nearly $2,000 — over $700,000 a year per room, not counting shared rooms. That’s even beyond Russian oligarch Len Blavatnik’s budget. Sort of.

Gore Vidal Underage Sex Hinted At In NYT Profile

A New York Times profile of Gore Vidal,, who died last year, suggests that the often controversial author may have had sex with underage men.

The article, which focuses on the tension around Vidal’s estate, features eyebrow-raising remarks from the writer’s half sister, Nina Straight, and Vidal’s nephew, Burr Steers. Recalling the contentious relationship between Vidal and conservative icon William Buckley, Steers claims that Vidal feared information of his sexual activities with underage men might have been revealed as part of the feud.

Mr. Steers said Mr. Vidal was terrified that Mr. Buckley had evidence that Mr. Vidal had sex with underage men. “Jerry Sandusky acts,” Ms. Straight said, referring to the former Penn State assistant football coach convicted of child molestation.

Steers continued, “I know Buckley had a file on him that Gore feared. It would make sense if that material was about him having underage sex.”

Gawker’s report on the Times article notes that in a 2012 interview with The New Republic, Vidal’s son states that Buckley did indeed keep a file on Vidal.

The Times reports that other friends of Vidal doubt the allegations about underage sex, and there is no direct evidence to support the claim.

During his life, Vidal refused to put a label on his sexuality, but was said to have had relations with both men and women according to the New York Times' obituary from 2012.

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