People: Aug. 14, 2000

HE HAS RADIOACTIVE BLOOD. NOW ABOUT THOSE PECS

Actors who play comic-book superheroes are generally well-built stiffs like Val Kilmer. (That was no bat mask, just his only facial expression.) But TOBEY MAGUIRE, 25, the cerebral and slightly doughy star of The Cider House Rules, bucked the trend last week by landing the part of Spiderman in the upcoming Sam Raimi-directed movie, beating out the Kilmeresque Freddie Prinze Jr. Though he hasn’t started working out yet (“Hey, I just got this thing last Friday”), Maguire aced a crime-fighting screen test in bulge-revealing spandex, and he’s already endured a fitting for Spiderman’s skintight suit. “They put some kinda grease on my body and then layer after layer of this…stuff. When it hardens, they take it off, and it’s a little bit painful ’cause I have hair on my body.” Spiderman always was kind of a wuss.

DON’T BE FOOLED BY THE STRAIGHT STORY

“New York is supposed to be the center of the art universe,” says DAVID LYNCH. “Ha!” Forgive Lynch his New York City animosity. In June the director was asked by the people behind the kid-friendly Cow Parade NYC 2000 to turn a fiber-glass heifer into art for the city’s streets. Most of the 1,200 other art cows are as amiable as their living counterparts, but, as you can see below, Lynch did something a little different. The cow was displayed for a week in San Francisco without incident but never made it out of packaging in New York, where parks commissioner Henry Stern said he thought the bovine looked more like the work of Charles Manson. “I was told as long as it’s not sexual or X-rated-type stuff, it would not be censored,” says Lynch, whose cow will be returned to his California studio. “I just want them to show my cow. Believe me, people on the streets of New York have seen far more disturbing things.”

HANK AND MAC: HOME ALONE 2

Defying the expectations of, oh, dozens of people, the two-year marriage of actors MACAULAY CULKIN and RACHEL MINER has hit a snag. The couple, who wed when both were 17, have announced a temporary and “amicable” separation. Maybe they’ll be comforted to know stars almost 20 years older don’t find the love-honor-cherish thing any easier. HELEN HUNT and HANK AZARIA, married only half as long but dating since 1994, have also announced a split. They too “are still very good friends.” Both couples are apparently too chummy to talk divorce.

BUT THE FLOPPY HAIR IS 100% TRUE

When Hugh Grant was caught in history’s most infamous act of automotive congress, ELIZABETH HURLEY stayed resolutely silent. So it seems a bit odd that Hurley, 35, would open the floodgates now, telling Jane magazine that sex with ex-boyfriend Grant was “less than adequate,” and that “we haven’t had sex since we split up. I don’t miss it.” Juicy as the quotes are, Hurley insists the words never passed her lips. “The quotes regarding mine and Hugh’s sex life bear no resemblance to anything I’ve ever said,” Hurley said in a fax from her London office. Offering further proof, Hurley noted it would have been impossible for her to complain about Hugh’s watching sports in bed because “we don’t even have a TV in our bedroom.” Thankfully, Hurley refused to cite that old stereotype about hot-blooded British men. Jane stands by its story.