Lady Gaga breaks iTunes records, says on "drunk diet"

LOS ANGELES | Fri Feb 18, 2011 2:47pm EST

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" has become the fastest-selling single ever on Apple's iTunes store worldwide, racking up more than one million downloads in five days, Apple said on Friday.

Apple said the song -- a Madonna-influenced dance track that the 24 year-old singer performed after "hatching" from a giant egg at the Grammy Awards -- had hit the No. 1 spot on iTunes in 23 countries.

"Born This Way", the title track of a new album to be released in May, also went straight to the top of the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 singles charts earlier this week.

The flamboyant performance artist also revealed her secret for staying so thin, and how she gets her creative juices flowing.

"I am on the drunk diet," she told Sirius XM radio on Friday.

"I live my life as I want to, creatively. I like to drink whiskey and stuff while I am working. But the deal is I've got to work out every day, and I work out hung over if I am hung over. And it's about the cross-training and keeping yourself inspired. I have to say, I do a ton of yoga," she added.

The singer said in a television interview last weekend that she also smoked marijuana while writing her songs.

After headline-grabbing outfits, live performance stunts and a best-selling tour, Lady Gaga may be turning her thoughts to a possible new career -- in movies.

Asked if she saw herself becoming an actress, she told Sirius XM ; "I think at some point, yes. I think I'm sort of destined for that screen at some point."

But if there was a movie of her life, Lady Gaga said she would like to be played by Marisa Tomei -- the Oscar-winning actress from "My Cousin Vinny".

"I am such a Marisa Tomei fan. All my friends call me Marisa when I get angry. Because my New York accent just flies out of my body and I start smacking my gum," she said.

(Reporting by Jill Serjeant, editing by Christine Kearney)

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Paparazzi lie in wait for prince's bride-to-be

By Michael Holden

LONDON | Fri Feb 18, 2011 6:44am EST

LONDON (Reuters) - When Kate Middleton said "yes" to Prince William's marriage proposal, she was not just agreeing to become the wife of a future British king.

She was also signing up to massive media intrusion in her private life and years of intense attention from paparazzi photographers.

The question she and her future husband will now be pondering is whether that attention can be managed or if they will suffer from the same insatiable press frenzy that ultimately led to the death of William's mother, Princess Diana.

"There's huge interest. William has become the star of the royal family that his mother was and Kate's an attractive girl, so from a paparazzi point of view she potentially means a lot of money," said Max Clifford, Britain's best-known publicist.

"And these days the paparazzi are anyone -- anyone with a camera, anyone with a mobile phone," he told Reuters.

The couple's wedding on April 29 comes almost 14 years after Diana was killed with her lover Dodi al-Fayed when their limousine crashed into the wall of a Paris tunnel as they tried to escape from a posse of chasing paparazzi.

A British inquest in 2008 concluded the actions of the photographers were partly to blame for the fatal accident.

So far William and Kate, who began dating while at university in Scotland, have been largely spared the level of scrutiny that Diana suffered, partly through media restraint and because of more robust action from the royal family itself.

MOBBED

However, Middleton was mobbed by photographers on her way to work on her 25th birthday in 2007 and later that year formally complained to Britain's media watchdog, the Press Complaints Commission (PCC), after one newspaper published a picture of her which she said was taken as the result of harassment.

William has also complained that photographers on motorbikes had aggressively followed them after leaving a nightclub, while Queen Elizabeth has written to editors about paparazzi intruding on the royal family's privacy.

The crucial factor for the future will be the attitude of newspaper and magazine editors. If they do not use or pay for paparazzi pictures, there will clearly be less incentive for photographers to hound the royal couple.

"The judgment that editors will make will be 'can we justify showing this photo, breaking this news story, with our readers?'" Clifford said.

"Is it going to put them off or make more of them want to buy the paper or magazine? And that's the most important thing to all newspaper editors."

He predicted the couple's easy ride would continue initially, because upsetting the popular newlyweds is likely to upset their readers too.

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