People in the news

• Tweet

The latest news on today's hottest celebrities ...

LARRY KING: Iconic U.S. interviewer Larry King has ended his CNN program "Larry King Live" after 25 years.

King has conducted tens of thousands of interviews during his tenure at the cable news network.

"Welcome to the last 'Larry King Live.' It's hard to say that," King said at the top of his show Thursday.

Time magazine said comedian Bill Maher and television host Ryan Seacrest joined King on the set to help him say goodbye.

Although British TV personality Piers Morgan is to take over King's regular time-slot next year, King plans to preside over occasional specials for the network in the future.

The finale of "Larry King Live" featured tributes to King by President Barack Obama, former President Bill Clinton, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, singer Tony Bennett, and broadcast journalists Barbara Walters and Katie Couric.

"This is not Larry's funeral. Larry is hopefully going to be in our living rooms for years to come. This is the end of a show, not the end of a man," Time quoted Maher as saying.

PRINCE HARRY: Britain's Prince Harry said in Berlin his mother, the late Princess Diana, serves as his "role model" for his charity work with AIDS-orphaned children.

Harry, 26, received a Golden Heart award at the A Heart for Children gala in Berlin for his charity work in Lesotho. He said the late Princess of Wales was the inspiration for "everything I do" and he hoped his "role model" would have been "proud" of his work, The Daily Telegraph reported Friday.

"My mother was to me, like my brother, a role model. And also to many people worldwide. I believe people took to her so warmly because she possessed the ability to take away their embarrassment in whatever situation she met them in. She was immediately sympathetic," the prince said. "Exactly like her, I know that I enjoy a privileged position as a member of the royal family and I must use what was given to me to try to make a difference in important topics."

Harry was honored for his work with the Sentebale charity, which he founded in 2006 to help children in Lesotho who lost their parents to AIDS.

WINONA RYDER: U.S. actress Winona Ryder says Mel Gibson made homophobic and anti-Semitic comments to her more than a decade ago.

Gibson, star of "Lethal Weapon" and "Braveheart," has become a polarizing figure in Hollywood after making anti-Semitic remarks to a police officer during a drunken driving arrest several years ago. He has since apologized for his behavior.

Audio of Gibson allegedly uttering racial slurs during a heated argument with his ex-girlfriend, who has accused him of domestic violence, hit the Internet this summer.

Ryder -- who starred in "Lucas," "Beetlejuice," "Edward Scissorhands," "Reality Bites," "Little Women" and "The Age of Innocence" in the 1980s and 1990s -- has kept a low profile since a 2002 conviction for shoplifting.

Ryder is enjoying a career revival in "Black Swan" and said in an interview for the January issue of GQ magazine she heard Gibson use anti-Semitic and homophobic expressions well over a decade ago.

"I remember, like, 15 years ago, I was at one of those big Hollywood parties. And he was really drunk. I was with my friend, who's gay. He made a really horrible gay joke. And somehow it came up that I was Jewish. He said something about 'oven dodgers,' but I didn't get it. I'd never heard that before. It was just this weird, weird moment. I was like, 'He's anti-Semitic and he's homophobic.' No one believed me!"

ABCNews.com said Gibson's publicist did not immediately respond to its request for comment Friday.

REESE WITHERSPOON: Hollywood actress Reese Witherspoon says she was advised early on in her career not to sing.

Witherspoon, 34, would famously go on, however, to win an Oscar for her portrayal of late country music star June Carter Cash in "Walk the Line," a film for which she recorded her own vocals.

While talking to reporters in New York recently about her new romantic comedy "How Do You Know," the actress was asked what advice she received early in her career turned out to be right or wrong.

"I really wanted to be a Broadway kid and so I went to all these camps in the Catskills and I had to sing and dance and act and I remember getting through to the singing coaching session at the end and I had my evaluation and they said, 'Whatever you do, don't sing,'" Witherspoon recalled during the press conference. "I think that I told that story when I won an award for 'Walk the Line.' I was like, 'Thank God, I didn't listen,' but it was hard to get over that mental block because someone had told me, basically: 'You don't know how to do that. Don't do it.' So you have to be careful what you say to people."

Co-starring Jack Nicholson, Paul Rudd and Owen Wilson, "How Do You Know" is in theaters now.