Marshals order Wesley Snipes to start sentence by December 9

ORLANDO, Florida | Wed Dec 1, 2010 7:47pm EST

ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - The U.S. Marshals Service has ordered actor Wesley Snipes to report to prison in northwest Pennsylvania no later than noon on December 9 to begin serving a 3-year sentence on tax charges, according to a notice filed in the U.S. District Court in Ocala on Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge William Terrell Hodges later on Wednesday issued an order denying a pending motion by Snipes to remain free while he appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Hodges ordered Snipes to surrender himself in accordance with the notice from the U.S. Marshals Service, according to court records.

Snipes has been convicted for willful failure to file federal income tax returns.

The notice tells Snipes to report to Federal Correction Institution McKean in Lewis Run, Pennsylvania.

McKean, 90 miles south of Buffalo, New York, is a medium-security facility for men with an adjacent satellite prison camp for minimum security male inmates, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons website.

Snipes' lawyer Daniel Meachum of Atlanta could not be reached immediately for comment.

However, Meachum filed a notice on Wednesday that he will appeal to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeal an earlier ruling by Hodges that had rejected Snipes' arguments for a new trial and ordered him to prison.

Snipes was charged in a 2006 indictment with trying to illegally collect a $7.3 million federal tax refund and failing to file tax returns from 2000 to 2005. The indictment included felony tax fraud charges, but Snipes was convicted in 2008 of only three misdemeanor charges of willful failure to file three federal income tax returns.

At his sentencing, prosecutors said Snipes had earned more than $38 million since 1999, but as of that date, had filed no tax returns and paid no taxes. The day of his sentencing, his lawyers brought checks totaling $5 million which they gave to IRS agents during a recess. The lawyers also said Snipes was working to resolve his tax debt in a civil setting.

(Reporting by Barbara Liston; Editing by Jerry Norton)

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Johnny Depp driven "nuts" by French language

By John Irish

PARIS | Wed Dec 1, 2010 3:23pm EST

PARIS (Reuters) - Having trouble with your French conjugations? Struggling to tell masculine from feminine? Fear not. Hollywood's No. 1 francophile, Johnny Depp, is in the same boat.

The 47 year-old star may consider France his spiritual home and have Parisian actress and singer Vanessa Paradis as his companion to help, but like so many before him, the subtleties of the Gallic tongue are proving a little frustrating.

Speaking to Reuters ahead of next week's premiere of action-filled, romantic comedy "The Tourist," in which he stars with Oscar winner Angelina Jolie, Depp smiles when asked how his French is coming along.

"Good? I don't know. It's difficult still, the conjugation ... the masculine and feminine thing," he said in French with a hint of an American accent. Then, he added in slang. "It drives me nuts."

Depp met Paradis in 1998 and the couple now divide their time between the Hollywood Hills and a farm in southern France as well as homes near Paris, Manhattan and the Bahamas.

Taking a break from his usual line of eccentric characters, the star of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" film franchise plays an everyday math teacher in "The Tourist," who gets embroiled in a web of deceit spun by Jolie's glamorous character.

For Depp, France gives his life a measure of simplicity which may have easily been taken away in Hollywood by his superstar status.

"France is everything," he said, puffing on a roll-up cigarette. "It's afforded me the idea of a semi-normal life ... There's something magnetic (here), I don't know what it is."

Set in the backdrop of Paris and Venice, "The Tourist" brings Depp and Jolie together on the big screen for the first time. The pair had not previously met.

Jolie, 35, admits that working with Depp has encouraged her to try a little harder to stretch herself as an actress. To illustrate her point, she said that while making "The Tourist" the actors discussed Maleficent, the wicked fairy godmother character in the film version of "Sleeping Beauty."

"I think before working with Johnny, I would have approached it a little more self-consciously, but having met him and watched his work, you get the sense you should try to have as much fun as possible," Jolie said.

Depp doesn't hold back when asked about what sort of roles suit Jolie. Shakespeare's ultimate femme fatale, Lady Macbeth, is one of his suggestions.

And still inspired by the French, he went one further and offered that the decadence and eroticism of French poet Charles Baudelaire was not beyond Jolie's reach.

"She has a depth, great humor, a healthy amount of rage ... she could bring the 'Flowers of Evil' to life," Depp said.

(Reporting by John Irish; editing by Bob Tourtellotte)

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