People: Penn helping in post-quake Haiti

Associated Press files

Actress Kate Winslet and her husband, director Sam Mendes (shown in February 2009) were married in 2003.

Look closely at the foreigners buzzing around a hospital tent above one of Haiti's biggest earthquake-refugee camps and a face stands out: There, carrying the box of supplies, that's Sean Penn.

Now he's guiding a Haitian girl to waiting doctors. Now he's lobbying the chief of U.N. peacekeeping operations to provide better security for the camp's 45,000 people. And now he's talking to the press.

"These people are going to have nowhere to go, by and large, in the rainy season," the Oscar-winning actor said Sunday. "The efforts that we've seen ... have been extraordinary -- down the line. But this is an impossible kind of situation."

The actor came to Haiti about a week after the Jan. 12 quake killed an estimated 230,000 people and made 1.3 million homeless. He's left just a a few times since and doesn't plan to leave again until mid-April.

His blue-shirted workers with the newly formed Jenkins-Penn Haiti Relief Organization provide medical care, water filters and food. On Sunday, workers, including actress-turned-aid worker Maria Bello, opened a health clinic in Port-au-Prince for mothers and victims of a growing sexual assault epidemic.

"As long as this camp is here, we'll stay here. When this camp's not here anymore, then we'll have to be where we are accessible to people," said Penn, 49.

Winslet splits from husband

British movie star Kate Winslet has separated from her film director husband, Sam Mendes, after nearly seven years of marriage, their law firm said Monday.

Associated Press files

Actress Kate Winslet and her husband, director Sam Mendes (shown in February 2009) were married in 2003.

The surprise split puts an end to a golden couple of Britain's show business world, buttressed by matching Oscars. The pair's law firm, Schillings, said the split was "entirely amicable and is by mutual agreement."

Winslet, 34, shot to international stardom on the back of her appearance opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in James Cameron's "Titanic," and sealed her reputation with an Academy Award for best actress for her role in "The Reader" in 2009.

Mendes, 44, was already an acclaimed stage director by the time he won an Oscar for directing "American Beauty" in 1999.

The pair married in May 2003. Winslet has an 9-year-old daughter, Mia, from her marriage to British director Jim Threapleton and a 6-year-old son, Joe, with Mendes.

It wasn't clear whether divorce proceedings have begun.

Burton, Cotillard get French honor

American movie director Tim Burton and Oscar-winning French actress Marion Cotillard were added to France's cultural honor roll in a Paris ceremony Monday.

Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand pinned green and gold medallions on the two, making the "Alice in Wonderland" and "Edward Scissorhands" director an officer in France's National Order of Arts and Letters, while the "Nine" and "La Vie en Rose" star was made a knight.

Burton called it "one of the biggest honors I've ever received."

Cotillard thanked Burton, whose 2003 film "Big Fish" was among her first U.S. movies.

-- From Our Press Services

Today's birthdays

Comedian Jerry Lewis, 84; movie director Bernardo Bertolucci, 69; game show host Chuck Woolery, 69; actor Victor Garber, 61; actor Erik Estrada, 61; actress Kate Nelligan, 59; actor Clifton Powell ("Ray," "Norbit"), 54; rapper Flavor Flav of Public Enemy, 51; folk singer Patty Griffin, 46; actress Lauren Graham, 43; actor Judah Friedlander, 41; singer Blu Cantrell, 34.

© 2010 Go Memphis. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.