I'm always going to be doing music no matter how big I am, so I'd be satisfied, but you don't know what's going to happen," she says. But Kreviazuk says that instead of worrying about her past success, Lavigne is more interested in being a well-rounded artist. And she's learned to shrug off the barbs she's received, let down her guard and let people see there's something more to her than an angry stare. "I slowly watched this metamorphosis. I think one of the things she may have learned is that you can be cool and you can be happy. She has so much to celebrate, and she's aware she's got so much to celebrate," says Kreviazuk. "She doesn't need to be tough about it." -Nekesa Moundy.

Geoffrey Rush and Charlize Theron

Photos: Charlize Theron

For a movie about the life of Peter Sellers, who could possibly star as the comic genius who played Dr. Strangelove and Inspector Clouseau? Answer: Geoffrey Rush, the man who played the Marquis de Sade and Leon Trotsky. In The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, the Academy Award winner gave one of the Cannes Film Festival's strongest performances playing the tormented title character and his pantheon of comic creations. The role was so daunting that Rush initially turned the part down. "I was very frightened of putting myself on the line," the Australian actor said  before the film's Cannes debut. But after shooting the athletic sword-fighting scenes for Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Rush felt ready to take on another challenge, he said. Then there was the lure of transforming himself, over and over again. To play Sellers and his characters, Rush spent an average of five hours a day having his hair and makeup done. He had 38 wigs and false teeth, noses, chins, lips and cheeks. "I used to love, in the theatre, putting putty on my nose and socks down my tights and transforming myself in some ludicrous way," said Rush, who played Russian revolutionary Trotsky in Frida and the imprisoned Marquis de Sade in Quills. The new film, to air on HBO in the United States, is competing for the top prize at Cannes. While Sellers never won an Academy Award despite two nominations, the movie about his life stars two Oscar winners. Besides Rush, there is Charlize Theron as Britt Ekland, the Swedish actress who became his second wife. Emily Watson plays Sellers' long-suffering first wife. The movie follows Sellers' rise from a radio performer in Britain to his successful career in Hollywood to his retreat to a Swiss chalet. From the start, it appears that Sellers wasn't easy to live with. Early in his acting career, he is cast alongside beautiful Sophia Loren. He falls desperately in love (though she doesn't return his feelings) and decides to tell his wife and young children. Sellers' daughter asks if he still loves them. Of course, Sellers responds, "Just not as much as I love Sophia Loren." It's engrossing to watch Rush tackle Sellers' best roles. In one funny scene, Sellers prepares himself for the Pink Panther by shaving his beard into a trim little moustache while locked in an airplane bathroom. He emerges as the bumbling Inspector Clouseau and drives an airline attendant crazy with his antics and French accent. Sellers played three roles in Dr. Strangelove, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, including the creepy title character with the misbehaving bionic arm. In one scene, Sellers' mother comes to visit the set. When he sits down to eat with her, he stays in character as the mad scientist. That happened in real life, said director Stephen Hopkins. The movie suggests that Sellers was so good at playing other people that he didn't have a solid grasp on who he really was. It was a lifelong struggle. "If you really want to find out about Sellers, you have watch his movies a lot, because I think that's the only way he ever really spoke," Hopkins said. "It's the only way he could really get out what was inside him. -Angela Dowland

Arthur Conan Doyle: He died in 1930 and he is still the hottest author.

LONDON (AP) -- Thousands of personal papers belonging to Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle fetched almost $1.8 million US at an auction Wednesday, with many of the items sold to private U.S. collectors. Christie's Auction House had expected the entire archive of letters, notes and handwritten manuscripts to raise about double the amount. However, 31 of the 135 lots on offer failed to meet their reserve price and remained unsold. The highest successful bid for an individual lot was $250,000 US for a collection of items including the author's notebooks from his time as a young medical doctor in Southsea, southern England. The lot, which was snapped up by a private American buyer, also contained the author's drawing for the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes in the novel A Study in Scarlet, with the original title of the book, A Tangled Skein, crossed out. A Study in Scarlet was published in 1887. Over the following 40 years, Conan Doyle published 56 short stories and four novels featuring Holmes and his faithful sidekick, Dr. Watson, who, like Conan Doyle, was a physician, a writer and had served in the British army. The author died in 1930. There also was plenty of interest at the auction in Conan Doyle's private life. Letters the author wrote to his brother Innes, which included an acknowledgment that Conan Doyle began a relationship with a new woman before the death of his ailing first wife, sold for $129,000 US. The letters were sold to British book dealer Bernard Quaritch Ltd. A Christie's spokeswoman said many of the lots went to private U.S. collectors. She declined to provide details on the unsold lots. The auction was a great disappointment to scholars who had hoped the papers would be donated to a public institution.

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