Angelina Jolie fears she can’t keep up her façade of happiness with Brad much longer. Jackie Brygel reports.

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie act for a living, but the strain of also pretending off-camera took its toll on Ange last week. In a break from filming The Tourist on the streets of Paris, the normally composed 34-year-old was fighting back tears.

The star quickly covered her face with her hand, but it was clear she was struggling to cope with the publicity spin she’d set in motion.

Since news broke seven weeks ago that Ange’s relationship with Brad was in trouble, the pair have orchestrated public displays of unity.

They appeared at the Directors Guild Awards in Los Angeles and had a make-out session at the Super Bowl. But their most obvious PR exercise came last week when they took their six kids to Venice for a working holiday.

“All Angelina cares about is not having anyone find out what a terrible state her relationship with Brad is in,” an insider has told In Touch magazine.

“They have made more public appearances in the last few months than they’ve made in five years together – and especially with all six children,” a friend agreed.

Arriving in Venice on February 16, the Jolie-Pitts piled their luggage into two water taxis and sped to the ritzy Palazzo Mocenigo, a grand house right on the water.

Followed by hordes of paparazzi, Brad and Ange were all smiles and – for the first time since January 27, 2009, when the whole family were spotted at an airport near Tokyo – all eight of them made the photo call.

Twins Knox and Vivienne, who’ve only appeared twice publicly since their birth in July 2008, were suddenly front and centre as the world watched. Two days later, Ange’s estranged father, Jon Voight, emerged too.

More cynical observers claim these weren’t chance encounters.

“It was suggested that Angelina try to repair her public image before filming started,” a friend told In Touch magazine. And Brad just had to tag along.

“She pretty much knew that he wouldn’t want to be away from the children for weeks, if not months. That’s why she decided to uproot the family to Italy.” While they are all kisses and hugs for the cameras, things are different behind closed doors.

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Her Olympic dream fulfilled, the Aussie golden girl can now concentrate on her June wedding. Rose Fylder reports.

Snowboard queen Torah Bright stood nervously on the lip of the halfpipe at Vancouver’s Cypress Mountain, searching for one face in the crowd. From the moment she locked eyes with American Jake Welch, her fiancée of six months, the 23-year-old seemed transformed.

Calm and composed, Torah bravely executed a dazzling series of tricks to win gold in the Ladies’ Halfpipe, and a place in the nation’s heart – although hers belongs to Jake, a fellow pro snowboarder and Mormon from Salt Lake City, Utah. “He’s the coolest guy – sweet, kind and gentle. He’s helped me so much.

From the moment we clicked two years ago we’ve been joined at the hip,” beams the golden girl.

“It goes beyond being in love. Being with Jake has balanced me in every way – in my personal life, and when I’m on my snowboard. Things seem to be easier these days,” says Torah, who stands to become Australia’s top-earning female athlete, with her agents predicting she could attract up to $5 million in sponsorship annually.

The win feels all the sweeter given she placed fifth at the 2006 Winter Olympics, despite being a favourite for gold at the time.

“I’ve had to keep busy, biding my time for the last four years,” jokes Torah, who also had to contend with a fractured jaw, concussions and migraines in the lead-up to the Games.

Not that life looks like slowing down because now there’s a June wedding to organise.

“When you find the person you love, you don’t wait,”grins Jake, 23, who met Torah at a soccer game in his hometown, where the Cooma, NSW, girl had moved as a 14-year-old to follow her boarding passion.

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Laura De Gois tells Patrice Fidgeon why she’s disgusted the actress agreed to play her mum in a movie.

Rebecca Gibney has won the hearts of Australians as beloved mum Julie Rafter on popular sitcom Packed to the Rafters.

But a new sexy role has caused her nothing but heartache and viciously raked over a family’s painful memories.

Barely recognisable in the role of Maria Korp, with dyed hair and racy attire, in controversial new telemovie Wicked Love, Rebecca says she relished the challenge of playing a more sultry character. The movie chronicles the final months of Maria’s life after the Melbourne mum-of-two was strangled and left for dead in 2005 by her swinger husband and his young mistress.

“This is very sexy. I have lots of cleavage and you couldn’t get more different from playing Julie on Rafters,” she says. “It’s fun because all of a sudden, as a woman as well, you are heading towards that age when you don’t think you can be sexy any more.

“Julie is a mum. I don’t ever think for a second anyone is ever going to look twice,” she adds in her interview with The Daily Telegraph.

“Then, in this role, I put on the high heels and low-cut tops and I’m getting wolf whistles. I’m like, ‘I can do sexy, even for a 45-year-old I’m OK, I can pull if off’.”

It’s precisely these comments that have outraged Maria’s children, Laura and Damian, who are devastated to hear Rebecca describe playing their dead mother as “fun” and brag about feeling “sexy” in the role.

“She’s been quoted as saying that playing Maria was ‘fun’,” Laura tells Woman’s Day in an exclusive interview. “She is talking about a role that is supposed to be my mother.

“How do you think I feel when I read it was ‘fun’ to play my mother? The mother I lost in the worst imaginable circumstances, brutally attacked and left to die the way she was?”

Playing the ill-fated Maria was seen by many as a career-defining role for the leading lady of Australian television.

The bizarre true story of Maria’s murder had it all: sex, violence and criminal intrigue. And her gruesome death gripped the nation five years ago as the “body in the boot” case played out in headlines across the country.

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Princess Mary appears worryingly thin after starting a new diet and fitness regime. Has she gone too far? Lucie Morris-Marr reports.

With her achingly slim frame, tiny pinched waist and shrinking hips, Princess Mary has become a wisp of her former self.

Attending a formal engagement at a Danish school recently, Mary’s once feminine curves seemed to have vanished. Despite wearing a thick jumper beneath a woollen dress, she looked considerably thinner than she has at previous public appearances.

Now royal watchers are asking whether the Tasmanian-born princess is buckling under the pressure of the constant talk she may become Queen of Denmark within months.

Knowing she may soon be catapulted onto the world stage – if rumours are true that Queen Margrethe will abdicate on her 70th birthday – the stress is said to have prompted Mary, 38 to embark on an “extreme” diet that’s causing the kilos to melt away. But such rapid weight-loss is “a great worry”, warns Sydney nutritionist Joanna McMillan Price.

“She looks quite tiny,” Joanna tells Woman’s Day. “I would not want her losing any more weight at all – even her arms look thin. If I was her trainer, I would be worried.”

While Mary has always maintained a slender yet healthy size 8-10 figure, Joanna believes Mary may have lost 6-8 kilos in recent weeks, and as a result has now shrunk to a size 6.

“If you are doing extreme exercise, you have to have the diet to support it, otherwise you can lose weight very quickly and not always healthily,” she says. “I see all too often women who go too hard at it and then get sick with fatigue or a virus, as they have stressed out their body.”

The princess is said to have shown “great dedication” to a tough training method called HardCORE, developed specially for the mother-of-two by her former trainer Jacob Sondergaard. And it’s certainly not your average gym session. A typical HardCORE workout includes push-ups, as well as muscle-building exercises including throwing 15-kilogram sandbags.

Such hefty loads would cause Mary’s body to strengthen, which in turn would increase her metabolism – meaning she’s burning fat faster. But these new pictures have left many wondering whether she should ease up.

Although incredibly challenging, Jacob says Mary took to the exercise program with gusto.

“Mary was very committed and goal-oriented in her training,” says Jacob, who worked with Mary for a year after she gave birth to her second child, daughter Isabella.

As well as spending hours training, Mary has also made significant changes to her diet. She now avoids even occasional treats and sticks to raw vegies, low-fat milk, fish, chicken and fruits, and lots of water.

Read the full story in Woman’s Day (on sale March 1, 2010)

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The Aussie cricket star is left red-faced after nude photos of his fiancée surface, just days after an embarrassing public spat at the SCG.

As the partner of Australian cricket team captain-in-waiting Michael Clarke, Lara Bingle worked hard to shed the title of home-wrecker she earned after a sordid affair with rogue AFL star Brendan Fevola.

But that scandalous past continues to haunt the model and is again threatening to bring down her high-profile engagement to the cricket superstar.

Woman’s Day can reveal exclusively how an explosive nude photo scandal is engulfing the often volatile union between Lara and Michael – just days after her public meltdown at the Twenty20 match against the West Indies at the Sydney Cricket Ground on February 23.

As Lara lost her cool with Michael in front of hundreds of SCG members, the Speedo model was also dealing with the embarrassing reality that a raunchy naked photo of her was being distributed to our elite sportsmen.

The revealing image, taken on a phone camera, was allegedly snapped by Brendan during their affair more than three years ago, according to one AFL player who spoke to us on the condition of anonymity.

It has been confirmed to Woman’s Day that the steamy image of Lara in the shower has become the electronic equivalent of a chain letter, being willingly sent via text message to and from AFL players, across multiple clubs.

“The image is on a lot of people’s phones,” confirms the footballer, who admits he received it from a third party.

The latest controversy engulfing Lara, 22, puts more pressure on her relationship with Michael. The couple have already delayed wedding plans as they spend less time with each other because of their respective careers.

Michael, 28, is understood to have stayed at Quay West apartments in Circular Quay with his team-mates last week, instead of travelling the 10 kilometres home to Bondi Beach, and Lara.

Certainly tempers were fraying at the SCG when a clearly distressed Lara lashed out at Michael in the Members Stand, while dozens of cricket fans watched and took photos of the couple on their mobile phones. Photographs showing the couple fighting were published in News Limited papers last week. “Michael was clearly embarrassed and tried to shield Lara from everyone who was craning their necks to see what they were fighting about,” confirms one onlooker.

“They went at it for about 10 minutes and Michael kept turning around to see who was watching. I felt really sorry for him.”

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