Shirley MacLaine is set to play Coco Chanel in a Lifetime miniseries about the rise of the fashion icon, starting with her upbringing in an orphanage outside Paris. The first part of the series will examine Ms. Chanel's move to reinvent herself in her 70s, after spending years in exile. The show will premiere in 2008.

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Shirley MacLaine was just honored with a lifetime achievement award at the Santa Fe Film Festival, and according to the 73-year-old film star, the win meant more than her 1983 Oscar for a poignant, now-iconic turn in director James Brooks’ Terms of Endearment. “Of all the awards I've gotten all over the world—and I have been in this business a long time—this means more to me because I'm being awarded this in a place that I seriously and deeply love,” she said. Channeling Georgia O’Keefe, Ms. MacLaine elaborated on her love for the arid state, touching on the spiritual peace she finds only in the American Southwest, where she becomes “reassembled and renewed and reorganized.”

The American Southwest is also where she gets a little freaky. Those who missed Larry King’s totally bizarre episode on U.F.O. cover-ups that recently aired on CNN—during which Ms. MacLaine waxes wacky on the presence of alien beings—can watch the clip here. The talk show appearance might be one of the few things more heartbreaking than Terms of Endearment.  read more »