Chris Rock, the man Oprah calls "the funniest guy in America," stars in a hilarious new film. In I Think I Love My Wife, Chris plays Richard Cooper. From the outside, it looks like Richard has it all—a high-powered investment banking job, a beautiful wife of seven years and two kids. There's just one problem: The spark has left their marriage, leaving Richard and his wife bored out of their minds.
One day, temptation in the form of a sexy ex-girlfriend walks into Richard's life, and he begins to wonder what it would be like to be single again. Suddenly, Richard is torn between his wife and the other woman.
Chris says the movie is based on an old French film called Chloe in the Afternoon, which he picked up while shopping one day. After watching it, Chris called his friend Louie and asked him to watch it, too. "Me and Louie, we're both married. We both have two kids. We both live outside of Manhattan," Chris says.
Chris and Louie decided to write their own version of the movie. "We just thought, you know what? It's time for me to do a grown-up movie," Chris says. "It's time for me to play a grown man with grown problems. ... And I wanted to do a serious comedy."
As a comedian and actor, Chris always has his finger on the pulse of current events. He discusses some recent headlines with Oprah.
The O.J. Simpson book scandal: "He should have written another book called If the Book Would Have Came Out," Chris jokes.
On whether Britney Spears's bald haircut is a cry for help: "It's a cry for hats," he says.
Michael Richards's rant: "His first crime is that he was being unfunny. ... There's a part of me that actually feels sorry for him like in the sense that, okay, yeah, what he did was absolutely wrong, but can a brother have a bad night?"
Chris and his wife, Malaak, have been married for 10 years and have two daughters, Lola and Zahra. Chris says he added small, real-life details of his family life to the film. "I put it in some of the flavoring of the movie, like watching The Wiggles on TV and checking to see if there's any black kids at the play dates."
Malaak says she's often asked if I Think I Love My Wife is based on her marriage. It isn't, she says. "It's a French remake of a movie, but you do see bits and pieces of our marriage, for sure, and our life," she says. "You know, certain things don't happen when they should happen when you have toddlers in the house."
O, The Oprah Magazine recently named Chris one of the
12 most authentic people of our time. In the article, Chris talks about how people become obsessed with things that draw their energy away from more important issues. "You know, Britney cut her hair off. Yeah, but how many people were killed in Iraq yesterday?" he says.
Society has become too interested in the "gotcha" moments of celebrities that are made possible by cell phone cameras, Chris says. "There's a saying in the Bible that you shouldn't judge a man by his worst day, you know what I mean?"
Chris, Malaak, and their two daughters, Lola and Zahra, traveled to South Africa over New Year's to help Oprah celebrate the opening of the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls—South Africa.
Chris is most impressed with the 152 girls who make up the first two classes of the academy. "These girls are really smart. You can't give education. You have to want education," he says. "I hope they build another school like this for some boys so these girls can have somebody to marry."
Chris and his group toured the dorms, classrooms and library. Oprah asked each person visiting to bring their favorite book to add to the library's ever-growing collection.
Although Chris donated In Search of Satisfaction by J. California Cooper, another book in the pile catches his eye: Life Doesn't Frighten Me At All by Maya Angelou. "I wanted kids so much that I bought children's books before I even had kids, and this is one of the books I bought."
After seeing the rest of the campus, Chris is left with a strong impression. "This is heaven on earth," he says. "You girls are in heaven."
Malaak calls the trip to South Africa and the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy "life-altering" because it reinforced some important lessons about service and volunteering for her family.
Malaak hopes that taking her girls to South African shanty towns, where children live in poverty, and then contrasting that experience with the hope and opportunity of the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy will really help her children understand those lessons. "It made my message to my children so much easier," she says.
"I'm always telling these children that, 'You're so blessed,' and that, 'You must give back,' and that, 'Most people in this world don't have what you have,' and you can't really show that in America," Malaak says.
Chris keeps audiences in hysterics with his sharp, witty comedy, but he has the time of his life raising his daughters. "When I was a kid, I used to catch my father just staring at us a lot, and I used to feel sorry for my father because he worked so hard. ... I used to go, 'I wonder what he really wanted to do. What did he really want to do? All these kids—he could have done so much,'" Chris says. "And now that I have children, I realize taking care of my children is more fun than anything in the whole world. It's like what he really wanted to do is take care of his kids, and that's what I really want to do."
Having children also changed his perspective on fame. When Malaak was pregnant with Lola, she says Chris was worried the commotion of photographers and fans would prevent him from taking his kids out in public. But now he plays with Lola and Zahra in the park all the time. "You know, you get famous and you work in these weird jobs and you don't have a lot in common with people. But once you have kids, you have everything in common with everybody," Chris says.
In 2004, 19-year-old Fantasia Barrino went from singing in her church choir to dazzling audiences of millions with her powerful voice on American Idol. After a total of 65 million people voted in the final round, Fantasia won the competition—and her life changed in a single moment.
Four weeks later, her debut single, "I Believe," rocketed to the top of the charts. Her first album, Free Yourself, went double platinum and was nominated for four Grammy Awards. And in late 2006, her self-titled album, Fantasia, entered the Billboard R&B charts at number 3.
With her musical achievements, tours, a best-selling book and a movie about her life, Fantasia is proving there is nothing she can't do.
Fantasia is set to play the lead role of Celie in the musical
The Color Purple beginning in April 2007. The Color Purple was the first musical Fantasia had ever seen on Broadway, and now it will be her Broadway acting debut! "It's such an inspirational play. I was crying. I was saying, 'Oh, Lord, I hope I'm not the only one crying,'" she says.
Fantasia says she can
really relate to the character of Celie. "She went through so many things. She
had people telling her she wasn't this, she wasn't that, she was ugly," she
says. "But she still kept the faith, and she still kept her smile on her face.
And at the end, she said, 'You know what? I may be poor. I may be ugly. But I'm
here.'"
Fantasia calls her rise to fame and fortune a blessing. "[I look at] where I come from and my past and some of the things that I did in my past, and I look now and I say, 'Wow, you can't tell me God ain't good," she says.
After going from having very little money to having a lot of money very quickly, Fantasia says life got "a little crazy" at first. "Everybody expects so much and wants so much," she says. But Fantasia, now 23, says she has learned how to say no with the support of her mother and grandmother.
Fantasia gives an emotional performance of one of Oprah's favorite songs
from The Color Purple, "I'm Here."
She says while the Broadway
schedule is demanding, the chance to perform each day as a character she relates
to will give her some emotional release. "Even now, with where I am today, we
still go through things. We still have troubles, just different things," she
says. "And I feel like I can take all of that and put it out there on the
stage."
