Penelope Cruz and her sister Monica are vacationing on the island of St. Barts. They look like they’re having a great time as they splash in the water and play on body boards.

The Daily Mail reports that they also kayaked together, with Penelope in front of the boat. 29 year-old Monica is a well known actress in their native Spain.

This seems to me like an occasion where the paparazzi were tipped off as to their whereabouts. The pictures are just a little too good to be true.

Pictures from Hollywood’s Best.

Nicole Richie is moving quickly with her new boyfriend, Hillary Duff’s ex Joel Madden of the band Good Charlotte. Joel’s twin brother and bandmate Benji Madden lives right next to him and is said to be annoyed that Nicole is staying over at his brother’s house all the time and plans to move in:

Nicole and Joel seem to be moving rather quickly and not everyone’s a fan. We know Hilary thinks Nicole is a “skank” and now it seems as if Joel’s BFF and brother Benji does not like his new lady either. The problem is, they may already be moving in together.

Sources close to Richie say she is “moving stuff out of her West Hollywood condo into his Glendale home,” and Joel’s bandmate, brother, and next-door neighbor Benji is “furious.” The source also said Joel and Nicole “have already become inseparable, and spend almost every night together.

It seems Benji might be too busy with his personal life to worry too much about his brother. He just announced that he is engaged to cute Australian actress Sophie Monk. He proposed to her while they were staying in Australia for New Years. Unlike Benji, Joel is said to approve of his brother’s choice in women and is quoted as saying “She’s so cool. I hang out with her, we have a great time.”

Joel and Nicole spent New Year’s Eve in Las Vegas, where Joel hosted a bash at Ghostbar at The Palms Casino. They were photographed kissing and cuddling during the party. Pictures from Flynet Online.

Our artist in residence created this original New Year’s illustration for us. He told me he wanted to work Brad in “as either a pattern on the hem of her dress — or in the background holding her purse … but it got a little crowded.”

I think it’s a double play on Angelina’s status as top mommy and vilified home wrecker, but the artist lets us read our own meaning into his work.

The National Enquirer quotes a supposed insider who claims that Lionel Richie wants his tiny daughter Nicole to spend some time in jail with the hope that she’ll be scared straight. Nicole, who claimed her weight was 88 pounds, admitted to police officers that she was under the influence of pot and Vicodin at the time of her arrest for driving the wrong way on the freeway. She later had a friend tell news outlets that she was taking the prescription painkiller for period cramps.

“Lionel’s stood behind Nicole through three arrests, drug rehab and her drastic weight loss,” a family friend told The ENQUIRER.

“But enough is enough!”

Lionel held an intervention with his pot-smoking daughter last October, begging her to get treatment, said the friend.

“But all she agreed to was some outpatient medical tests. Lionel was incredibly disappointed.

“When he heard of her latest arrest, he sighed to a friend: ‘Let her go to jail. It might do her some good. Maybe it will frighten some sense into her.’”

This article makes it seem like the “intervention” Lionel held for Nicole was for drugs, but he admitted taking Nicole to a doctor to be evaluated for a possible eating disorder. The doctor said that Nicole was suffering from stress, which was making her thin.

If Nicole is convicted of DUI, she will be sentenced to a mandatory five days in jail under California law. She pled guilty to a previous DUI offense in 2002, and if she’s convicted of another one she’ll have to go away for at least five days. Commentor Phin notes that a coworker of his got six months in jail for his second DUI after a lackluster performance in court in front of tough judge. Maybe Nicole should plead guilty and serve her five days. It worked for Martha.

Everyone is saying Britney stepped out with a “mystery guy” yesterday, but this is the same guy she bought toys with about three weeks ago, an agent at the William Morris agency called Jason Trawlick. She ran into him back then at one of Paris Hilton’s parties and is said to have spent a night or two with him. People are joking that Britney is too lazy to date people she doesn’t work with after she was spotted kissing music producer JR Rotem last week, having just ended a marriage with a guy she also met through work. This latest guy seems to fall into that same pattern, although if he is indeed dating Britney he seems surprisingly clean cut for her.

Britney was seen out with her little sister Jaime Lynn at the LA Lakers game last night. She seems to have forgotten a few buttons on her shirt. Jaime is wearing a “Little Miss Naughty” shirt, similar to the “Little Miss Sunshine” shirt that Britney wore for nearly a week straight when she also thought it was a good idea to flash her vag. I wonder if it was a gift from Britney?

Pictures from Splash News Online and Faded Youth.

Update: TMZ is reporting that when Britney’s face was shown on the Jumbotron at the game, she was booed loudly by the crowd, upsetting her so much she left before halftime. Aww.

While Britney gets constant press for stepping out drunk in various stages of undress, K-Fed tries to prove what a great dad he is by taking his kids with Shar Jackson to Disneyland. Shar was pregnant with K-Fed’s second spawn when he left her for Britney, but since he still supports her she has only praise for him in the press.

K-Fed took his daughter, Kori, and son, Kaleb, (his children with actress Shar Jackson) on a five-and-a-half hour excursion to Disneyland on Wednesday evening, The ShowBuzz has confirmed.

Federline arrived at the California theme park just before 5 p.m. with his two children, an assistant and two others who appeared to be security guards.

“We had been notified the day before that they wanted to come so we made the appropriate arrangements,” a source from Disneyland says.

Father and daughter first jumped on the Disneyland railroad, went to New Orleans Square and got on the Haunted Mansion, which is decorated for the Tim Burton film “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”

“Kori said it was her first time at Disneyland … She clearly loved her dad and she was having fun,” the source said. “He was asking her ‘What do you want to do next?’ ”

Kori went on rides with her father while little Kaleb slept. “Kaleb was actually asleep in the stroller and he didn’t want to wake him up,” the source says.

They all stayed to watch the Christmas parade and the Christmas fireworks show and left at about 10:30 p.m., after fake snow fell on Main street.

“He was just like any dad with his kids. She was a very sweet little girl,” the source said.

K-Fed is suing Britney for custody of his other two children, in what people say is a move to secure a larger settlement in the divorce. He’s obviously using his kids with Shar to make him seem like a better dad to the public, and his ploy might just work. Britney is doing herself no favors by being seen out half dressed at high profile nightspots in the middle of the week.

Britney is shown in these pictures with a backless see-through lace dress, which she wore to her mom’s birthday party. Pictures from Splash News Online.

Everyone is going to roast me for this but I think Brad and Angelina are actually good parents.

Maybe it’s holiday goodwill, or too many holiday cocktails but I am changing my white trash view Brad and Angelina’s parenting. Call me a sucker but I’m starting to think they actually be for real. Or at least, as real it can be for Hollywood.

I saw a story in Life & Style about a recent holiday shopping trip for the family. As their movie star peers shower their offspring with expensive gadgets, the Jolie-Pitts (or Pitt-Jolies?) purchased bunch of craft and art stuff:

On Dec. 8, the couple visited one of their favorite NYC stores, Lee’s Art Shop, on 57th Street, with Maddox, 5, and Zahara, nearly 2.

The store closed its fourth floor, otherwise known as Toy World, while the power couple and their tykes decided what to take home, an eyewitness tells Life & Style.

“They were really interested in the creative kits and projects and the things they could do together with the children,” says the eyewitness. “Angelina got down on her hands and knees to examine things with her kids. You can tell that she’s a wonderful mother. They were looking at activities that could expand the kids’ minds and things they could do as a family.”

Some more photos from Angelina’s spread in Vogue have come out. She looks damn good to me.

One of the revelations in Angelina’s interview with People is that she’s the disciplinarian, and the Brad often gives in to the kids. She said the Maddox is a calm kid and that Zahara is “dramatic and creative and loud and charming.” Aww.

Thanks to Faded Youth for these pictures.

Just when I thought that two Brad and Angelina stories was enough for the day I hear about Angelina’s incredibly candid interview in the upcoming issue of Vogue. She reveals how she felt a strong kinship with Brad while they were filming “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” and how she looked forward to going to work just to see him every day.

She said she once shook hands with Jennifer Aniston but never really sat down with her. She claimed she would be willing to have a long talk with Aniston, but that’s it’s up to her. She said that she and Brad are “legally bound” to their children and have both been married before so they don’t see a need to do it again.

Angelina said that she hardly trusts anyone at all, except maybe her mother and Brad. She also revealed that she’s not comfortable hugging or kissing people casually, but that she feels differently with her children:

“I think we were the last two people who were looking for a relationship. I certainly wasn’t,” she said. “I was quite content to be a single mom.”

The “Tomb Raider” babe admitted she was thrilled working with Pitt every day while shooting “Smith” in 2003 and 2004.

“Because of the film, we ended up being brought together to do all these crazy things, and I think we found this strange friendship and partnership that kind of just suddenly happened. I think a few months in I realized, ‘God, I can’t wait to get to work,’ ” she said.

“Whether it was shooting a scene or arguing about a scene or gun practice or dance class or doing stunts - anything we had to do with each other, we just found a lot of joy in it together and a lot of real teamwork. We just became kind of a pair…”

“And it took until, really, the end of the shoot for us, I think, to realize that it might mean something more than we’d earlier allowed ourselves to believe,” Jolie said. “And both knowing that the reality of that was a big thing, something that was going to take a lot of serious consideration.”

Jolie said she and Pitt remained “very, very good friends” after shooting “Smith.” They were resigned to staying nothing more than pals, Jolie said, until Pitt and Aniston announced their breakup in early 2005.

Pitt and Aniston filed for divorce that spring, amid rampant reports that the Hollywood hunk had his eye on Jolie the whole time.

Vogue didn’t directly press Jolie on whether she and Pitt fooled around behind Aniston’s back. But Jolie said she realized, early on, that she shared a deep, emotional bond with Pitt before they formally hooked up post-Aniston.

“Not as exciting as what a lot of people would like to believe,” Jolie said. “We spent a lot of time contemplating and thinking and talking about what we both wanted in life and realized that we wanted very, very similar things.”

“And then we just continued to take time. We remained very, very good friends - with this realization - for a long time,” she added.

“And then life developed in a way where we could be together, where it felt like something we would do, we should do…”

Jolie said she hasn’t spoken to her dad, actor Jon Voight, for five years.

Although she keeps up with mom Marcheline Bertrand, Jolie said she doesn’t allow many people into her inner circle.

“I don’t trust anyone,” Jolie admitted.

“I don’t think it’s a good thing. This is going to make you think that maybe I should get some therapy, but trust is such a bizarre word. I’d like to say that I trust my mother, but I also don’t know if she might do something that she thinks is in my best interest.

Still, “I trust Brad will never do anything,” she said.

But after a few moments, Jolie then added, “I don’t know. I don’t trust anybody completely.”

Jolie said she won’t wear emotions on her sleeve - because it wouldn’t do her any good.

“It’s not going to accomplish anything to cry. It’s not going to help you to get a hug!” she said.

“I’m not a hugger. People make fun of me. It’s something that I have a hard time with. If someone hugs me, I hold my breath. Snuggling, cuddling, hugging, crying . . . all that stuff makes me very uncomfortable.”

Except when it comes to her kids, the star said.

“Oh, I love hugging my kids,” she quickly added. “It’s a different thing because you feel such a genuine grab from them.”

She’s very articulate and well spoken, but it’s hard to believe she was this candid in an interview. Why is she revealing so much? Maybe she thinks that if she gives people what they want, they’ll stop speculating so much about her. She’s trying to say that she hooked up with Brad only after he was separated from Aniston, and that he wasn’t really as well suited to Aniston as he was to her. People who think she broke up their marriage aren’t going to change their mind after hearing this. She may as well have kept quiet about it.

All this information about her intimacy issues might come back to bite her in the butt someday. If she doesn’t trust anyone, why does she trust us with so much information about her personal life?

The beautiful Brangelina family, complete with their littlest one, is on the cover of Hello! Magazine’s December 19th issue. I love how Maddox looks protective of baby Shiloh. It’s nice to see her with the family as she’s not usually out with them in public. People wonder if there’s some kind of strategy on Brad and Angelina’s part to keep Shiloh out of the spotlight while bringing out Maddox and Zahara, but it could be also be a matter of convenience.

Angelina Jolie has said that she wants to have “many more” children, and that it makes her sad when people offer to take her children places she can never go as a famous celebrity, like Disneyland. She said she tries to give her family as much a normal life as possible:

“I’m very, very lucky. I love the different elements of my life. I love working abroad, and I love being with my kids and I love being with Brad,” Jolie, 31, said Friday at a press event for her movie The Good Shepherd. “I’d like to add many more children and many more obstacles and many more things to my life.”

Asked if she’d ever again work with Pitt, with whom she costarred in last year’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith, she replied with a laugh: “Who’s going to watch the children?”

Indeed, she chooses her films with Maddox, 5, Zahara, 23 months, and Shiloh, 6 months, in mind. “I don’t think that I’ve shot for more than seven weeks on a movie in two years,” she said. “I need to make sure that I have time with my kids.”

And she makes every effort to give her children a normal life, despite her own fame. “I’ve made a point to not let it change the way that I live my life, other than I carefully plan my holidays or where we go or where we stay or things like that to try to ensure some kind of quality of life that is private and nice for the kids. But we simply don’t let it affect us.”

She does admit, though, that there are challenges: “I think that the only time that it is hard is when the kids want to go somewhere and want to see something. I’ve had so many people offer to take my children to Disneyland or places that I can’t take them. And they don’t understand how upsetting that is.

“People offered to take my kids trick or treating or take my kids to whatever – things that they assume my kids can’t do. So we plan to find ways to do all of those things. There are worse problems and so we’re okay.”

Pictures from JJB.