Hollywood Exclusive by Marilyn Beck & Stacy Jenel Smith

The highly anticipated sequel to "Twilight" is now before the cameras — with Chris Weitz ("American Pie," "The Golden Compass") directing instead of the original film's director, Catherine Hardwicke. So, will "New Moon" be a whole new kind of movie?

"I don't think Chris is going to try to mimic the first one at all," says Peter Facinelli — the sympathetic, astonishingly youthful, 300-year-old patriarch of the good vampire clan, Carlisle Cullen, to fans of the blockbuster. "He has his own taste. He's an artist. You can't ask an artist to come along and paint the same picture," he notes. "But they can paint the same subject and put their own artistic integrity into it."

Hardwicke, notes Peter, "is very passionate, and it's almost like this wild interior decorator coming in and saying, 'We're going to do this! We're going to do that!' and it's very infectious. Everyone gets caught up in it.

"Chris is very laid back. He looks at everything carefully. He's very intelligent, a calming presence even if there's a stressful situation around. I told him he reminds me of Carlisle Cullen."

Facinelli's in the midst of a two-week break before he goes back to the "New Moon" set to complete his last two days of work. However, he's already anticipating getting back into his Carlisle groove "later this year, in August. We're going to be doing the third one ("Eclipse"). David Slade, who did 'Hard Candy' is going to be directing" — and bringing in his own vision.

MEANWHILE: Facinelli has a full plate even without "New Moon" and "Eclipse." The actor, who has 12-, 6- and 2-year-old daughters with wife Jennie Garth, also has Showtime's very, very on-the-edge "Nurse Jackie" series — with Edie Falco as a pill-popping, adulterous nurse — which debuts June 8 on the cable network with an online debut preceding. And he's getting ready to produce "Loosies" from his own script, hoping to squeeze production in before "Eclipse." He tells us, "It's about a pickpocket in New York, this fast, loose Steve McQueen type who ends up getting a girl pregnant and having his world turn upside down.

As far as the leading lady? "We're talking to someone right now. If that person comes on, we'll be good to go in June. The problem with these actors is it takes them two weeks to read a script, and I don't have two weeks to wait for people," he says with a smile.

THE BIG SCREEN SCENE: Emilie de Ravin's next two big-screen outings — the July 1 Johnny Depp-Christian Bale gangster picture, "Public Enemies," and the December release French film "The Chameleon" — are a far cry from "Lost." But the latter definitely shares an out-of-the-ordinary quality with the series on which the beautiful actress rose to fame. Of "Chameleon" she says, "It's a very interesting story, based on a true story about this Frenchman, Frederic Bourdin, who is in his mid-thirties now, but since he was young he started impersonating fictitious teenage boys. This continued into his 30s. Not for any malicious reason, just that he wanted to be loved and accepted into a family situation. He did this all over the world." She notes that the movie "is based around the part of his story where he deceives a family in Baton Rouge. He had to pretend he was a real missing child because otherwise the authorities would have turned him in. It's a great cast — Ellen Barkin, Nick Stahl … " and Marc-André Grondin as Bourdin.

WIN SOME, LOSE SOME: Nothing like a featured role in a blockbuster to help a guy get over the pain of his cancelled TV series — and that's what "Star Trek" cast member Greg Ellis (Chief Engineer Olsen) has going for him. "The premise of the story is fantastic, and the movie has a heart. A lot of the issues are very parallel with what's going on today," he gushes about J.J. Abrams' Friday-opening re-imagined "Star Trek." Still, he admits he's still mourning the loss of TNT's Eric McCormack-Tom Cavanagh dramedy "Trust Me," which was canceled after one season. "We kind of knew with the way the ratings were. It was a fun comedy on a network that does drama, so it was a tough sell in that respect, but we were very proud of the show we did. We felt like we were getting into our groove, and we were excited to do a second season, but unfortunately, we didn't get the opportunity."

With reports by Emily Feimster.

To find out more about Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith and read their past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2009 MARILYN BECK AND STACY JENEL SMITH

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