National Enquirer says :

“Patrick recently got word that the cancer had spread to his liver and that is what his doctors said would begin the countdown to the end. Patrick knew it was coming because he was suffering increased weakness.

“At times, he was so weak that he could barely walk without feeling faint. Sometimes he feels out of breath and has to sit down.”

Credit: Moviehole / National Enquirer

Newman, whom had previously given up directing a film adaptation of Of Mice and Men earlier in the year, was nominated for an Oscar ten times (winning once) and most recently lent his legendary voice to the Pixar film Cars. Newman’s charity work is as legendary as his acting career, donating the profits of his salad dressing line ($175 million in all) to charitable causes as well as setting up camps for severely ill children.

The InsidePulse family wishes to extend their condolences to Newman’s family. He will be missed.

Hat Tip - Associated Press, Yahoo! News

LaFontaine made more than 5,000 trailers in his 33-year career working for the studios and television networks. He was also the voice of the Screen Actors Guild Awards and the Academy Awards telecasts.

In a rare onscreen appearance in 2006, he parodied himself in a television commercial for Geico car insurance. Playing himself, he told a customer, “In a world where both of our cars were totally under water…”

In an interview last year, LaFontaine explained the strategy behind his signature phrase.

“We have to very rapidly establish the world we are transporting them to,” he said of his viewers. “That’s very easily done by saying, ‘In a world where … violence rules.’ ‘In a world where … men are slaves and women are the conquerors.’ You very rapidly set the scene.”

LaFontaine insisted he never cared that no one knew his name or his face, though everyone knew his voice.

Born in Duluth, Minn., LaFontaine served in the Army, where he worked as a recording enginer. He moved to New York to work in the promo industry in the early 1960s. As an audio engineer, he produced radio spots for movies with producer Floyd Peterson.

When an announcer didn’t show up for a recording session in 1965, LaFontaine voiced his first narration, a promo for the film Gunfighters of Casa Grande. The client, MGM, liked his performance.

He worked as head of production for trailer house Kaleidoscope Films and then started his own production company, Don LaFontaine Associates. In 1978, he became head of the Paramount Pictures trailer department, becoming the “voice of Paramount” for several years. He left Par in 1981 to work independently and became known as “the king of voiceovers,” voicing campaigns for NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox and UPN as well as TNT, TBS and the Cartoon Network. He is thought to have signed more SAG contracts than any other actor.

LaFontaine remained active until recently, averaging seven to 10 voiceover sessions a day. He worked from a home studio his wife nicknamed “the Hole,” where his fax machine delivered scripts. He was also active in working with the Silver Lake Children’s Theater Group in Los Angeles.

LaFontaine is survived by his wife, singer-actress Nita Whitaker, and three daughters.

Credit: Variety

“Actor/comedian Bernie Mac passed away this morning from complications due to pneumonia in a Chicago area hospital,” his publicist, Danica Smith, said in a statement from Los Angeles.

She said no other details were available and asked that his family’s privacy be respected.

The comedian suffered from sarcoidosis, an inflammatory lung disease that produces tiny lumps of cells in the body’s organs, but had said the condition went into remission in 2005. He recently was hospitalized and treated for pneumonia, which his publicist said was not related to the disease.

Recently, Mac’s brand of comedy caught him flack when he was heckled during a surprise appearance at a July fundraiser for Democratic presidential candidate and fellow Chicagoan Barack Obama.

Toward the end of a 10-minute standup routine, Mac joked about menopause, sexual infidelity and promiscuity, and used occasional crude language. The performance earned him a rebuke from Obama’s campaign.

But despite controversy or difficulties, in his words, Mac was always a performer.

“Wherever I am, I have to play,” he said in 2002. “I have to put on a good show.”

Mac started his comedy career at age 8, with a standup performance at a church dinner. In 1977, at age 20, he took that act to comedy clubs in Chicago.

His film career started with a small role as a club doorman in the Damon Wayans movie “Mo’ Money” in 1992. Mac went on to star in the “Ocean’s Eleven” franchise with Brad Pitt and George Clooney and his turn with Ashton Kutcher in 2005’s “Guess Who?” — a remake of the Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn 1967 classic “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” — topped the box office.

Mac also had starring roles in “Bad Santa,” “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle” and “Transformers.”

The comedian drew critical and popular acclaim with his Fox television series “The Bernie Mac Show,” which aired more than 100 episodes from 2001 to 2006.

The series about a man’s adventures raising his sister’s three children, won a Peabody Award in 2002. At the time, judges wrote they chose the sitcom for transcending “race and class while lifting viewers with laughter, compassion — and cool.”

The show garnered Golden Globe and Emmy nominations for Mac. He also was nominated for a Grammy award for best comedy album in 2001 along with his “The Original Kings of Comedy” co-stars, Steve Harvey, D.L. Hughley and Cedric The Entertainer.

In 2007, Mac told David Letterman on CBS’ “Late Show” that he planned to retire soon.

“I’m going to still do my producing, my films, but I want to enjoy my life a little bit,” Mac told Letterman. “I missed a lot of things, you know. I was a street performer for two years. I went into clubs in 1977.”

Mac was born Bernard Jeffrey McCullough on Oct. 5, 1957, in Chicago. He grew up on the city’s South Side, living with his mother and grandparents. His grandfather was the deacon of a Baptist church.

In his 2004 memoir, “Maybe You Never Cry Again,” Mac wrote about having a poor childhood — eating bologna for dinner — and a strict, no-nonsense upbringing.

Mac’s mother died of cancer when he was 16. In his book, Mac said she was a support for him and told him he would surprise everyone when he grew up.

“Woman believed in me,” he wrote. “She believed in me long before I believed.”

We here at Inside Pulse and Popcorn Junkies keep his entire family and all his friends in our prayers as they deal with this tragedy. May you rest in peace Bernie Mac.

Credit: Associated Press

Regional Medical Center spokeswoman Kathy Stringer says Freeman is in serious condition.

The hospital, commonly known as The Med, is an acute-care teaching facility that serves patients within 150 miles of Memphis.

Ashley Norris, manager of the Ground Zero Blues Club in Clarksdale that is owned by Freeman, confirmed the actor was in a wreck. Norris said she had no other details.

The accident apparently occurred in Tallahatchie County Mississippi, but the sheriff’s department referred calls to the Mississippi Highway Patrol. A highway patrol spokesman was not immediately available for comment.

Credit: Associated Press

Getty, who suffered from advanced dementia, died at about 5:30 a.m. Tuesday at her Hollywood Boulevard home, said her son, Carl Gettleman of Santa Monica.

“She was loved throughout the world in six continents, and if they loved sitcoms in Antarctica she would have been loved on seven continents,” her son said. “She was one of the most talented comedic actresses who ever lived.”

The Golden Girls, featuring four female retirees sharing a house in Miami, grew out of NBC programming chief Brandon Tartikoff’s belief that television was ignoring its older viewers.

Three of its stars had already appeared in previous series: Bea Arthur in Maude, Betty White in The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Rue McClanahan in Mama’s Family. The last character to be cast was Sophia Petrillo, the feisty 80-something mother of Arthur’s character.

When she auditioned, Getty was appearing on stage in Hollywood as the carping Jewish mother in Harvey Fierstein’s play “Torch Song Trilogy.” In her early 60s, she flunked her Golden Girls test twice because it was believed she didn’t look old enough to play 80.

“I could understand that,” she told an interviewer a year after the show debuted. “I walk fast, I move fast, I talk fast.”

She came prepared for the third audition, however, wearing dowdy clothes and telling an NBC makeup artist, “To you this is just a job. To me it’s my entire career down the toilet unless you make me look 80.” The artist did, Getty got the job and won two Emmys.

It culminated a long struggle for success during which Getty worked low-paying office jobs to help support her family while she tried to make it as a stage actress.

“I knew I could be seduced by success in another field, so I’d say, ‘Don’t promote me, please,’” she recalled.

She also appeared in small parts in a handful of films and TV movies during that time, including Tootsie, Deadly Force and Victims for Victims: The Theresa Saldana Story.

After her success in The Golden Girls, other roles came her way. She played Cher’s mother in Mask, Sylvester Stallone’s in Stop or My Mom Will Shoot and Barry Manilow’s in the TV film Copacabana. Other credits included Mannequin and Stuart Little (as the voice of Grandma Estelle).

“The Golden Girls,” which ran from 1985 to 1992, was an immediate hit, and Sophia, who began as a minor character, soon evolved into a major one.

Audiences particularly loved the verbal zingers Getty would hurl at the other three. When McClanahan’s libidinous character Blanche once complained that her life was an open book, Sophia shot back, “Your life’s an open blouse.”

Getty had gained a knack for one-liners in her late teens when she did standup comedy at a Catskills hotel. Female comedians were rare in those days, however, and she bombed.

Undeterred, she continued to pursue a career in entertainment, and while her parents were encouraging, her father also insisted that she learn office skills so she would have something to fall back on.

Born Estelle Scher to Polish immigrants in New York, Getty fell in love with theater when she saw a vaudeville show at age 4.

She married New York businessman Arthur Gettleman (the source of her stage name) in 1947, and they had two sons, Carl and Barry. The marriage prevailed despite her long absences on the road and in The Golden Girls.

Getty was evasive about her height, acknowledging only that she was “under 5 feet and under 100 pounds.”

In addition to her son Carl, Getty is survived by son Barry Gettleman, of Miami; a brother, David Scher of London; and a sister, Rosilyn Howard of Las Vegas.

Credit: Associated Press

Batman star Christian Bale was arrested Tuesday over allegations of assaulting his mother and sister, police and British media said.

British media had reported that Bale’s mother and sister complained they were assaulted by the 34-year-old actor at the Dorchester Hotel in London on Sunday night, a day before the European premiere of his latest film, The Dark Knight.

The women made the allegation at a local police station in southern England on Monday, Britain’s Press Association news agency said.

Asked whether Bale had been arrested, a police spokesman did not refer to him by name but said: “A 34-year-old man attended a central London police station this morning by appointment and was arrested in connection with an allegation of assault.” He said the man was still in custody but gave no further details.

The spokesman spoke on condition of anonymity because force policy did not authorize him to be identified. British police do not name suspects before they are formally charged.

U.S.-based representatives for Bale didn’t immediately return messages seeking comment. Repeated phone calls to Bale’s London representative went unanswered.

The Sun newspaper said police didn’t question the actor Monday because they didn’t want to interfere with the premiere of the movie.

Wales-born Bale first made a splash as the child star of Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun in 1987. His screen credits also include American Psycho, The Machinist, and Batman Begins.

In The Dark Knight, Bale reprises the role of wealthy playboy Bruce Wayne and his crime-fighting alter-ego Batman, a brooding vigilante superhero still scarred by the murder of his parents.

The film, which stars the late Heath Ledger as Batman’s nemesis The Joker, took in a record $158.4 million at the box office in its opening weekend in the U.S. last week.

UPDATE: Batman star Christian Bale has denied assaulting his mother and sister after he was released from police custody on Tuesday.

Bale, 34, is alleged to have attacked his mother Jenny, 61, and sister Sharon, 40, at London’s Dorchester Hotel on Sunday night.

In a statement issued shortly after Bale’s release, a spokesperson for the star says: “Christian Bale attended a London police station today, on a voluntary basis, in order to assist with an allegation that had been made against him to the police by his mother and sister.

“Mr. Bale, who denies the allegation, co-operated throughout, gave his account in full of the events in question and has left the station without any charge being made against him by the police. At this time, there will be no further comment by Mr. Bale.”

The actor’s arrest came just hours after he attended the European premiere of his new Batman movie The Dark Knight in London’s Leicester Square on Monday, alongside stars Maggie Gyllenhaal and Sir Michael Caine.

According to reports, authorities did not attempt to arrest the star until after the high-profile event because they were certain Bale would not flee the country to resist arrest, adding that the lack of severity in the case did not warrant an immediate response.

The actor has reportedly been ordered by police to make a court appearance in September.

Credit: Associated Press

The counterculture hero’s jokes also targeted things such as misplaced shame, religious hypocrisy and linguistic quirks why, he once asked, do we drive on a parkway and park on a driveway?

Carlin, who had a history of heart trouble, went into St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica on Sunday afternoon complaining of chest pain and died later that evening, said his publicist, Jeff Abraham. He had performed as recently as last weekend at the Orleans Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas.

“He was a genius and I will miss him dearly,” Jack Burns, who was the other half of a comedy duo with Carlin in the early 1960s, told The Associated Press.

The actor Ben Stiller called Carlin “a hugely influential force in stand-up comedy. He had an amazing mind, and his humor was brave, and always challenging us to look at ourselves and question our belief systems, while being incredibly entertaining. He was one of the greats.”

Carlin constantly breached the accepted boundaries of comedy and language, particularly with his routine on the “Seven Words” all of which are taboo on broadcast TV to this day.

When he uttered all seven at a show in Milwaukee in 1972, he was arrested on charges of disturbing the peace, freed on $150 bail and exonerated when a Wisconsin judge dismissed the case, saying it was indecent but citing free speech and the lack of any disturbance.

When the words were later played on a New York radio station, they resulted in a 1978 Supreme Court ruling upholding the government’s authority to sanction stations for broadcasting offensive language during hours when children might be listening.

“So my name is a footnote in American legal history, which I’m perversely kind of proud of,” he told The Associated Press earlier this year.

Despite his reputation as unapologetically irreverent, Carlin was a television staple through the decades, serving as host of the Saturday Night Live debut in 1975 noting on his Web site that he was “loaded on cocaine all week long” and appearing some 130 times on The Tonight Show.

He produced 23 comedy albums, 14 HBO specials, three books, a few TV shows and appeared in several movies, from his own comedy specials to Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure in 1989 a testament to his range from cerebral satire and cultural commentary to downright silliness (sometimes hitting all points in one stroke).

“Why do they lock gas station bathrooms?” he once mused. “Are they afraid someone will clean them?”

In one of his most famous routines, Carlin railed against euphemisms he said have become so widespread that no one can simply “die.”

“‘Older’ sounds a little better than ‘old,’ doesn’t it?,” he said. “Sounds like it might even last a little longer. … I’m getting old. And it’s OK. Because thanks to our fear of death in this country I won’t have to die I’ll ‘pass away.’ Or I’ll ‘expire,’ like a magazine subscription. If it happens in the hospital they’ll call it a ‘terminal episode.’ The insurance company will refer to it as ‘negative patient care outcome.’ And if it’s the result of malpractice they’ll say it was a ‘therapeutic misadventure.’”

Carlin won four Grammy Awards for best spoken comedy album and was nominated for five Emmys. On Tuesday, it was announced that Carlin was being awarded the 11th annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, which will be presented Nov. 10 in Washington and broadcast on PBS.

“Nobody was funnier than George Carlin,” said Judd Apatow, director of recent hit comedies such as Knocked Up and The 40-Year-Old Virgin. “I spent half my childhood in my room listening to his records experiencing pure joy. And he was as kind as he was funny.”

Carlin started his career on the traditional nightclub circuit in a coat and tie, pairing with Burns to spoof TV game shows, news and movies. Perhaps in spite of the outlaw soul, “George was fairly conservative when I met him,” said Burns, describing himself as the more left-leaning of the two. It was a degree of separation that would reverse when they came upon Lenny Bruce, the original shock comic, in the early ’60s.

“We were working in Chicago, and we went to see Lenny, and we were both blown away,” Burns said, recalling the moment as the beginning of the end for their collaboration if not their close friendship. “It was an epiphany for George. The comedy we were doing at the time wasn’t exactly groundbreaking, and George knew then that he wanted to go in a different direction.”

That direction would make Carlin as much a social commentator and philosopher as comedian, a position he would relish through the years.

“The whole problem with this idea of obscenity and indecency, and all of these things bad language and whatever it’s all caused by one basic thing, and that is: religious superstition,” Carlin told the AP in a 2004 interview. “There’s an idea that the human body is somehow evil and bad and there are parts of it that are especially evil and bad, and we should be ashamed. Fear, guilt and shame are built into the attitude toward sex and the body. … It’s reflected in these prohibitions and these taboos that we have.”

Carlin was born on May 12, 1937, and grew up in the Morningside Heights section of Manhattan, raised by a single mother. After dropping out of school in the ninth grade, he joined the Air Force in 1954. He received three court-martials and numerous disciplinary punishments, according to his official Web site.

While in the Air Force he started working as an off-base disc jockey at a radio station in Shreveport, La., and after receiving a general discharge in 1957, took an announcing job at WEZE in Boston.

“Fired after three months for driving mobile news van to New York to buy pot,” his Web site says.

From there he went on to a job on the night shift as a deejay at a radio station in Fort Worth, Texas. Carlin also worked variety of temporary jobs, including carnival organist and marketing director for a peanut brittle.

In 1960, he left with $300 and Burns, a Texas radio buddy, for Hollywood to pursue a nightclub career as comedy team Burns & Carlin. His first break came just months later when the duo appeared on Jack Paar’s Tonight Show.

Carlin said he hoped to emulate his childhood hero, Danny Kaye, the kindly, rubber-faced comedian who ruled over the decade Carlin grew up in the 1950s with a clever but gentle humor reflective of the times.

It didn’t work for him, and the pair broke up by 1962.

“I was doing superficial comedy entertaining people who didn’t really care: Businessmen, people in nightclubs, conservative people. And I had been doing that for the better part of 10 years when it finally dawned on me that I was in the wrong place doing the wrong things for the wrong people,” Carlin reflected recently as he prepared for his 14th HBO special, It’s Bad For Ya.

Eventually Carlin ditched the buttoned-up look for his trademark beard, ponytail and all-black attire.

But even with his decidedly adult-comedy bent, Carlin never lost his childlike sense of mischief, even voicing kid-friendly projects like episodes of the TV show “Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends” and the spacey Volkswagen bus Fillmore in the 2006 Pixar hit Cars.

Carlin’s first wife, Brenda, died in 1997. He is survived by wife Sally Wade; daughter Kelly Carlin McCall; son-in-law Bob McCall; brother Patrick Carlin; and sister-in-law Marlene Carlin.

Editor’s Note: George Carlin was a personal favorite of mine and I would like to wish my deepest and most heartfelt sympathies to his family and friends. He will be missed. Rest in peace Mr. Carlin.

Credit: Associated Press

Charisse was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on Monday after suffering an apparent heart attack, said her publicist, Gene Schwam.

She appeared in dramatic films, but her fame came from the Technicolor musicals of the 1940s and 1950s.

Classically trained, she could dance anything, from a pas de deux in 1946’s Ziegfeld Follies to the lowdown Mickey Spillane satire of 1953’s The Band Wagon (with Astaire).

She also forged a popular song-and-dance partnership on television and in nightclub appearances with her husband, singer Tony Martin.

Her height was 5 feet, 6 inches, but in high heels and full-length stockings, she seemed serenely tall, and she moved with extraordinary grace. Her flawless beauty and jet-black hair contributed to an aura of perfection that Astaire described in his 1959 memoir, Steps in Time, as “beautiful dynamite.”

“Her beauty was breathtaking,” Debbie Reynolds, who starred with Charisse in the 1952 classic Singin’ in the Rain, said in a statement. “The world will miss her dancing.”

Charisse arrived at MGM as the studio was establishing itself as the king of musicals. Three producers — Arthur Freed, Joe Pasternak and Jack Cummings — headed units that drew from the greatest collection of musical talent. Dancers, singers, directors, choreographers, composers, conductors and a symphony-size orchestra were under contract and available. The contract list also included the screen’s two greatest male dancers: Astaire and Kelly.

Astaire, who danced with her in The Band Wagon and Silk Stockings, said of Charisse in a 1983 interview: “She wasn’t a tap dancer, she’s just beautiful, trained, very strong in whatever we did. When we were dancing, we didn’t know what time it was.”

She first gained notice as a member of the famed Ballet Russe, and got her start in Hollywood when star David Lichine was hired by Columbia Pictures for a ballet sequence in a 1943 Don Ameche-Janet Blair musical, Something to Shout About.

Although that film failed to live up to its title, its ballet sequence attracted wide notice, and Charisse (then billed as Lily Norwood) began receiving movie offers.

“I had just done that number with David as a favor to him,” she said in “The Two of Us,” her 1976 double autobiography with Martin. “Honestly, the idea of working movies had never once entered my head. I was a dancer, not an actress. I had no delusions about myself. I couldn’t act — I had never acted. So how could I be a movie star?”

She overcame her doubts and signed a seven-year contract at MGM. She also got a new name, the exotic “Cyd” instead of her lifelong nickname Sid to go with her first husband’s last name.

Singin’ in the Rain marked a breakthrough.

When Freed was dissatisfied with another dancer who had been cast, Charisse inherited the role and danced with Kelly in the “Broadway Melody” number that climaxed the movie. She stunned critics and audiences with her 25-foot Chinese silk scarf that floated in the air with the aid of a wind machine.

Charisse also danced with Kelly in Brigadoon, It’s Always Fair Weather and Invitation to the Dance. She missed what might have been her greatest opportunity: to appear with Kelly in the 1951 Academy Award winner, An American in Paris. She was pregnant, and Leslie Caron was cast in the role.

In 1996, Charisse recalled her reaction on entering the movies: “Ballet is a closed world and very rigid; MGM was a fairyland. You’d walk down the lot, seeing all these fabulous movies being made with the greatest talent in the world sitting there. It was a dream to walk through that lot.”

Her first assignment was a “Ziegfeld Follies” sequence in which she was one of the female dancers “flitting around Astaire as he danced.”

Like most young MGM contract players, she was schooled in drama and voice, and diction lessons eliminated her Texas accent. The singing lessons didn’t take, however, and the songs in her musicals were dubbed.

She graduated to featured dancer in sequences for such films as Till the Clouds Roll By, Fiesta, On an Island with You and Words and Music. She also appeared in such dramatic films as East Side, West Side, Tension and Mark of the Renegade.

Silk Stockings in 1957 marked the end of her dancing career in films, as well as the twilight of the movie musical. With the film business suffering from the onslaught of television, MGM dismantled its great collection of talent. Musicals were too expensive, and foreign audiences had soured on them.

Charisse continued with dramatic films, several of them made in Europe. She and Martin took their musical act to Las Vegas and elsewhere. In 1992 she finally made her Broadway debut, taking over the starring role as the unhappy ballerina in the musicalized Grand Hotel. The musical had premiered in 1989 with Liliane Montevecchi in the role.

“I’ve done about everything in show business except to play on Broadway,” Charisse said in a 1992 Associated Press interview. “I always hoped that I would one day. It’s the World Series of show business. If anybody tells you they’re not intimidated, they’re lying.”

In 1974, Charisse returned to MGM for a TV drama. Gazing over the half-filled commissary at lunchtime, she mused: “You never realize that good things are going to be over sometime. It all seemed so natural then: Clark Gable and Robert Taylor lunching at one table. Lana Turner would be lunching at a table in the corner. Ava Gardner, too.

“I grew up at this studio, and it didn’t seem unusual to see all those stars. Nowadays, you’d never find so many names in one commissary. In fact, there aren’t that many stars.”

Her name was Tula Ellice Finklea when she was born in Amarillo, Texas, on March 8, 1922. From her earliest years she was called Sid, because her older brother couldn’t say “sister.” She was a sickly girl who started dancing lessons to build up her strength after a bout with polio.

“I was so frail they were afraid to touch me,” she recalled in that 1996 interview.

At 14 she auditioned for the head of the famed Ballet Russe, and became part of the corps de ballet and toured the U.S. and Europe. To appear with the nearly all-Russian company, she was first billed as Celia Siderova, than as Maria Istromena.

At one point during the European tour, she met up again with Nico Charisse, a handsome young dancer she had studied with for a time in Los Angeles. They married in Paris in 1939.

The Ballet Russe disbanded after the war broke out, and the newlyweds returned to Hollywood. In 1942, a son, Nicky, was born.

In 1948, the year after she and Nico divorced, Charisse married Martin. Her second son, Tony Jr., was born in 1950.

Credit: Associated Press

Snipes’ lawyers had spent much of the day in court offering dozens of letters from family members, friends even fellow actors Woody Harrelson and Denzel Washington attesting to the good character of the Blade star and asking for leniency. They argued he should get only probation because his three convictions were all misdemeanors and the actor had no previous criminal record.

But U.S. District Judge William Terrell Hodges said Snipes exhibited a “history of contempt over a period of time” for U.S. tax laws, and granted prosecutors the three year sentence they requested one year for each of Snipes’ convictions of willfully failing to file a tax return.

“In my mind these are serious crimes, albeit misdemeanors,” Hodges said.

Snipes apologized while reading from a written statement for his “costly mistakes,” but never mentioned the word taxes.

“I am an idealistic, naive, passionate, truth-seeking, spiritually motivated artist, unschooled in the science of law and finance,” Snipes said.

Snipes said his wealth and celebrity attracted “wolves and jackals like flies are attracted to meat.” He called himself “well-intentioned, but miseducated.”

Snipes was the highest-profile criminal tax target in years, and prosecutors called for a heavy sentence to deter others from trying to obstruct the IRS. The government alleged Snipes made at least $13.8 million for the years in question and owed $2.7 million in back taxes.

Snipes was acquitted in February of five additional charges, including felony tax fraud and conspiracy. Snipes’ co-defendants, Douglas P. Rosile and Eddie Ray Kahn, were convicted on both those counts. Kahn, who refused to defend himself in court, was sentenced to 10 years, while Rosile received 54 months. Both will serve three years of supervised release. Snipes will serve one year of supervised release.

Snipes and Rosile remain free and will be notified when they are to surrender to authorities.

Kahn was the founder of American Rights Litigators, and a successor group, Guiding Light of God Ministries, that purported to help members legally avoid paying taxes. Rosile, a former accountant who lost his licenses in Ohio and Florida, prepared Snipes’ paperwork.

Snipes maintained in a years-long battle with the IRS he did not have to pay taxes, using fringe arguments common to “tax protesters” who say the government has no legal right to collect. After joining Kahn’s group, the government said Snipes instructed his employees to stop paying their own taxes and sought $11 million in 1996 and 1997 taxes he legally paid.

Prosecutors sought to justify the maximum sentence by raising those and other details from the IRS investigation, as well as a tax loss even for years in which Snipes was acquitted of failing to file a return. Such “relevant conduct” is allowed by law for a judge’s consideration at sentencing.

Criminal tax prosecutions are relatively rare usually the cases are handled in civil court, where the government has a lower burden of proof. Prosecutors said Snipes’ case was important to send a message to would-be tax protesters not to test the government.

Credit: Associated Press