Sideshow: He's ending his drinking, too

It's certainly understandable that 10 years of playing Harry Potter would drive you to drink.

But 21-year-old actor Daniel Radcliffe said he's done with alcohol, realizing he has been partying too hard since filming the sixth movie (for those living under a rock, the seventh premieres next week) in the Harry Potter series.

"I became so reliant on [alcohol] to enjoy stuff," he said in a GQ magazine interview released Monday. "There were a few years there when I was just so enamored with the idea of living some sort of famous person's lifestyle that really isn't suited to me."

Radcliffe became famous at age 11 after he was cast for the movie adaptations of J.K. Rowling's popular books. Now he says he's determined to prove that child actors can build long careers - and going cold turkey on the Wild Turkey will help.

"If I can make a career for myself after Potter, and it goes well, and is varied and with longevity, then that puts to bed the 'child actors argument,' " he said.

The last movie in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, opens July 15.

People don't buy records anymore, says Mötley Crüe man and Pam Anderson-ex Tommy Lee in an interview with the St. Petersburg Times. "They buy song to song, something that blows their skirt up. For you to sit there and rip your hair out and put six, eight months into making a full record for someone to buy one song from, that is stupid." Makes sense to those at Sideshow, but a turn like this would mean being denied classics like Girls, Girls, Girls - a certain-to-blow-your-skirt-up masterpiece, no?

British actress Anna Massey, whose roles ranged from lonely spinsters to Margaret Thatcher, died Saturday of cancer at 73. A member of an acting dynasty - her father was Canadian actor Raymond Massey, her mother British actress Adrianne Allen, her brother actor Daniel Massey, and her godfather director John Ford - Massey made her stage debut at 17 in The Reluctant Debutante and her film debut in Ford's 1958 police procedural Gideon's Day

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She had roles in films including Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy and the 2002 adaptation of The Importance of Being Earnest, in which she played the comic governess Miss Prism. She once said that as an actor, "I'm not instinctive. It takes enormous discipline and bravery to get me there."

Hot diggity dog

Nothing says "Fourth of July" like a hot dog-eating contest, yet this year marked the first-ever women's competition at the Nathan's Famous International event - and 105-pound Sonya Thomas (known as the Black Widow of competitive eating) chowed her way to victory. Eating 40 hot dogs, Thomas easily swept eight other competitors Monday to win the gulpfest at New York's Coney Island. Second-place finisher Juliet Lee consumed 291/2 hot dogs in the 10-minute race. In the men's division, Joey Chestnut (also three-time champion of Philadelphia's Wing Bowl) devoured 62 dogs to win his fifth consecutive contest. This fell short of his record-setting 68 dogs in 2009, but he still finished with a nine- dog lead over runner-up Patrick "Deep Dish" Bertoletti, also a well-known Wing Bowler. Let freedom ring.

Can one be old school about their homophobia?

In the case of a London opera written by Billy Elliot playwright Lee Hall, it seems so. Education officials had objected to what they called offensive and derogatory language in the opera Beached - which involves hundreds of children from an East Yorkshire primary school - but Hall accused the school of having dated views. The writer said he had refused to remove the lines "I am queer" and "I prefer a lad to a lass." A representative of the school said it "did not have an issue with having a gay character - it was the language and tone of the scene that were problematic." The school withdrew the 300 pupils involved in the show.

Americans celebrated with fireworks, but the real sizzle happened abroad. Between Tuesday night and Sunday, Transformers: Dark of the Moon sold an estimated $210 million in tickets overseas, a 51 percent increase over the same opening stretch for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, the franchise's previous entry, in 2009. The 3-D shows set sales records in seven countries, including South Korea. Here, the third installment - despite its many, many, many car crashes - fell notably short of its predecessor. And yet what says anything-is-possible-in-America like kids' action figures turned into movie stars?

Weston Cage, the less-talented son of Nicolas Cage, and his wife, Nikki Williams, were promptly booked on domestic violence charges only a few days after the couple left rehab, according to TMZ.com. Cage, 20, walked out of jail Monday morning and showed reporters the bloody cuts his wife allegedly delivered with a glass bottle. "Don't get married," he told onlookers. Readers: a lesson in romance.