Kate Hudson - “Elle” February 2009

Kate Hudson looks yummy in yellow on the February 2009 cover of Elle.

In the featured article, we learn that Jennifer Meyer, the jewelry designer and wife of Tobey Maguire, has known Kate since childhood (her dad was the agent of Kate’s mom, Goldie Hawn). In high school, Jennifer recalls Kate getting sent home for wearing her skirts too short. Scandalous!

Kate also sounds off on the paparazzi enraging her. “They’ve become an entity to themselves,” she says. “But eventually they’ll implode. They’re creating a house of cards that will inevitably fall. These are not nice people. When you’re taking your child to school, and they’re trying to get on school property to get a picture, it literally makes you want to just smack them.”

During the interview, the 29-year-old actress gets defensive at the suggestion that she lacks range. She says, “I could be in an interview and people would keep going, ‘So why do you always do romantic comedies?’ Do I want to do darker roles? Of course. It has to be the right thing, though. I’m not just going to, like, make a movie that’s, Oh, she’s a whore, prostitute, and heroin addict.”

Jennifer Hudson, New 007 Lead Academy Invitees

Eddie Murphy, Jennifer Aniston, Steve Carell and Academy Award winner Jennifer Hudson have been asked to join Hollywood’s most exclusive club.

They were among 115 actors, filmmakers, studio executives and others invited into the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the group that hands out the Oscars.

Others on the invitation list released by the academy Monday include actors Daniel Craig, Aaron Eckhart, Christopher Plummer, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Danny Huston.

Along with Hudson, the former “American Idol” finalist who won the supporting-actress Oscar for last year’s “Dreamgirls,” Oscar winners from 2006 invited to join the academy include screenwriters Michael Arndt (“Little Miss Sunshine”) and William Monahan (“The Departed”); makeup artists David Marti and Montse Ribe (“Pan’s Labyrinth”); and composer Gustavo Santaolalla (“Babel”).

Besides Murphy, nominated as supporting actor for “Dreamgirls,” nominees from last year asked to become academy members include actors Adriana Barraza (“Babel”), Ryan Gosling (“Half Nelson”) and Jackie Earle Haley (“Little Children”); directors Paul Greengrass (“United 93”) and James Longley (the documentary “Iraq in Fragments”); screenwriters Guillermo Arriaga (“Babel”); Patrick Marber (“Notes on a Scandal”) and Peter Morgan (“The Queen”); and costume designer Consolata Boyle (“The Queen”).

Academy rules would have allowed nearly 150 new members this year, but the group’s selecting committees endorsed fewer candidates than the maximum. The academy adopted policies four years ago to slow its growth, with the number of members eligible to vote on the Oscars holding steady at a bit below 6,000 since then.

“The numbers are stabilizing nicely,” said Bruce Davis, the academy’s executive director.

Among other notables invited into the academy were J.J. Abrams, creator of “Lost” and director of “Mission: Impossible III”; composer Carter Burwell, a frequent collaborator of the Coen brothers; directors Antoine Fuqua, Monte Hellman and D.J. Caruso; and producer Jonathan Glickman, son of Dan Glickman, who heads the Motion Picture Association of America.