LOS ANGELES - Canadian Alanis Morissette is now an American citizen.
The 30-year-old singer was among some 4,500 people who took the citizenship oath during a ceremony last week at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Morissette isn't turning her back on Canada - she's maintaining dual citizenship.
"I will never renounce my Canadian citizenship," Morissette said in a statement Wednesday. "I consider myself a Canadian-American.
"There was a turning point during the ceremony where I felt connected to this country in a way that I didn't quite expect," she said. "America has been really great to me and I have felt welcomed since the day I came here."
Morissette's songs include "Ironic" and "You Oughta Know."
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BERLIN (AP) - Daniel Day-Lewis says he's become increasingly cautious about taking on new movies as he allows himself to be "distracted by life."
The actor was at the Berlin International Film Festival Tuesday to present "The Ballad of Jack and Rose," directed by his wife, Rebecca Miller. Day-Lewis' lead role is his first movie appearance since "Gangs of New York" three years ago.
"It's not that my love for the work is diminished in any way," said Day-Lewis, 47.
"I probably approach it with greater caution than I used to, and the test is a more severe one," he told reporters. "I always had a feeling that it was a job that you had to feel compelled to do."
"I'm distracted by life for periods of time," the actor said.
In "The Ballad of Jack and Rose," Day-Lewis plays Jack Slavin - the last hippie living in a commune off the East Coast of the United States in the mid-1980s. Suffering from a degenerative illness, Jack struggles to cope with his only companion, 16-year-old daughter Rose (Camilla Belle).
Day-Lewis said Miller first sent him the story nine years ago, before the couple met.
The film "required something of me that I didn't feel able to give at that time," he said. Having children "probably helped me a lot" to play the part, he added. (Day-Lewis has three sons; two with Miller.)
The husband-and-wife team said their closeness helped in making the movie.
"You understand each other very quickly without a lot of words," said Miller, the daughter of the late playwright Arthur Miller. The film is showing outside the main competition at the Berlin festival, which ends Sunday.
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NEW YORK (AP) - Could a book be called deadpan or button-down? It could, if Bob Newhart's writing it.
The 75-year-old comedian has agreed to write a memoir, scheduled for publication in fall 2006. Hyperion describes the book, not yet titled, as a work of humor that will be "organized thematically and will include stories and anecdotes from throughout Bob Newhart's life and career, as well as thoughts and observations on a multitude of topics."
"He is a national treasure," Hyperion Editor-in-Chief Will Schwalbe said in a statement Tuesday. "We are thrilled to be publishing his first-ever book, which promises to be every bit as funny and delightful as Bob Newhart himself."
Newhart is best known as the star of the sitcoms "The Bob Newhart Show" and "Newhart." He also has appeared in numerous films, including "Catch-22" and "In & Out."
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