Michael Stein Never Says, There Are Not Enough Hours in a Day; A Look at a True Renaissance Man

Even though you may have never heard of his name or seen his work, Michael Stein continues to forge forward with his aspirations, succeeding every step of the way. The aspiring writer, director, producer, actor, stand up comedian, self made millionaire businessman, health fanatic and personal growth enthusiast has been very busy lately. His feature film "Love Hollywood Style" starring Faye Dunaway, Andy Dick, Rap star Coolio and Stein himself, has just won for best directing at the SFV International Film Festival. Stein wrote, directed, produced and stars in the film, which chronicles four short stories based on fantasy filled, dysfunctional love stories in Hollywood. Stein says, "It's a homage to the cult comedy classics of the 1970s i.e. 'Kentucky Fried Movie' and Woody Allen's 'Everything You Want To Know About Sex But Afraid To Ask' with undertones of a Kafka novel."

All I really wanted to do was act.
When asked what drives him, he jokes, "All I really wanted to do was act." An out of work struggling film maker and actor for years, Stein came close to making a studio film but none of the deals worked out.

In 1999 Stein wrote, directed and produced an award winning dramatic short film "Rituals And Resolutions", which was acquired by HBO. That film opened doors to studios and film companies into negotiations for Stein to direct one of his feature length scripts but none of the deals came to fruition so he decided to take matters into his own hands. "I just got tired of everyone saying I couldn't make a feature film with name actors outside the studio process. I got to the point where I didn't even care if the film got into film festivals, just as long as I could get it made and my friends, family and I could watch it."

So, he quit his job as a commercial film assistant and started his own business in order to make enough money to make his own feature film. He decided to market the pop up tents that he used to dread setting up on the film sets of the commercial shoots he would work on as an assistant. He started out with his life savings, approximately $500 and within one year his company, acecanopy.com had generated enough enough money to make his movie. Two years after that, the business made him a multi millionaire. He says, "I used to have this limiting belief that being a successful businessman in anything other than the film industry would make me less of an artist, now I believe, it has helped me to become more creative."

Once again the doors of opportunity from film companies are knocking only this time he has choices. Stein stays very busy. Along with running his outdoor supply company, he has plans for his next feature film, is currently writing a book on independent filmmaking, performs stand-up comedy on a regular basis and is organizing a fund raiser with other comedians in five major cities in the U.S. to raise money and food for the homeless.

When asked where he finds the time to do all these things while married with a child, he replies, "a person that says they do not have time for something that they want in life, is usually someone that has too much time on their hands."

US billionaire visits space station

A US billionaire has become the fifth tourist in space, arriving at the International Space Station early on Tuesday.

The Soyuz capsule carrying Charles Simonyi, who paid $25m for his trip into orbit, along with two Russian cosmonauts docked with the ISS two days after lifting off from a Russian launchpad in the Central Asian steppe.


Applause rang out at the Russian mission control outside Moscow as the capsule locked on to one of the station's ports.

The new arrivals floated through an airlock and hugged the three crew members who have been manning the station for the past six months.


Simonyi, Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov joined another cosmonaut, Mikhail Tyurin, and Nasa astronauts Michael Lopez-Alegria and Sunita Williams, to hear greetings from friends and relatives at mission control over a crackly satellite link-up.

Simonyi became a billionaire after helping develop Microsoft's Word and Excel software.

He said it was "really an honour to be here on this outpost".

He had already filled three or four pages of a notebook "recording every moment of this flight", and said he would post his impressions on his blog.

Simonyi, 58, was born in Hungary and emigrated to the US where he joined Microsoft when it was a start-up.

He helped develop some of the company's flagship programmes and now runs his own firm.

Martha Stewart, the American lifestyle guru to whom Simonyi has been romantically linked, packed him an aluminium hamper containing quail roasted in wine, duck breast with capers and rice pudding.

Russian space officials said Simonyi planned to share the meal with his colleagues on Thursday.

He is expected to head back to earth on April 20.

Dead HK billionaire leaves all to feng shui master

The sole beneficiary of Hong Kong tycoon Nina Wang's multi-billion dollar fortune is her feng shui master, a legal notice published on Friday showed, paving the way for a likely legal battle with her family.

"In her will dated 16 Oct 2006, the late Nina Wang bequeathed all her estate to Mr. Chan Chun-chuen", her lawyer said in a notice published in several local newspapers on Friday.

Little is known about Chan, whom the local media has reported as Wang's feng shui master or fortune teller and who once studied medicine in Canada.

Nicknamed "little sweetie" for her braided pigtails, mini-skirts and giggly persona, Wang, 69, died this month from cancer. She was Asia's richest woman.

Her life was touched by tragedy in 1990 when her husband Teddy Wang was abducted and never seen alive again.

Later she stirred controversy by waging a legal war against her father-in-law, Wang Din-shin to secure her husband's billions even though he had not yet been confirmed dead.

Wang won the eight-year legal battle in 2005, securing full control of the estate and of Hong Kong's largest private property developer, Chinachem group, in a probate saga that captivated the city of seven million with tales of illicit affairs.

A source earlier told Reuters that Chan was the sole beneficiary and that all of Wang's estate, including that of her husband "gets paid on in sequence" to him.

The decision by Wang to leave her vast wealth in the hands of a single outsider, while shunning her family, is a potential bombshell and is now almost certain to spark a protracted legal battle with her family.

Wang's family has already lodged an application in court to claim its right to the inheritance, the South China Morning Post reported on Friday.

Media reports had suggested Wang, who had no children, had drafted a will in 2002 pledging much of her wealth to charity.

A press conference will be held by Wang's lawyer on Friday that could clarify Wang's relationship to Chan, and give clues as to why she left her entire fortune to him.

Wang, who was ranked the 154th richest person in the world by Forbes magazine last year, was known for her eccentricities, including her self-professed stinginess — saying she only spent a modest HK$3,000 (US$380) a month on shopping and necessities, sometimes flashing her bargain buys to the media.

A lavish funeral was held for Wang on Wednesday that was attended by a string of tycoons and Hong Kong's political elite.

Billionaire Could Bankroll U.S. to Win

VALENCIA, Spain, April 14 -- In this gloomy city where the sun hasn't shone in a week, the 32nd America's Cup starts Monday. Around the harbor, shore teams are putting final touches on slippery race yachts as sailors confront the jitters. The pressure finally is on. In three weeks, seven of the 11 Cup challengers will be eliminated.

Many crewmen have trained two years or more for this make-or-break month. Then there's Larry Ellison, billionaire owner of the lone U.S.-flagged challenger, BMW Oracle. Ellison, 62, arrived Friday the 13th from wherever it is that billionaires do their thing and set up shop aboard his personal ocean liner, Rising Sun, anchored offshore.

Ellison hasn't been on his Cup boat since last June, when he dropped in for one of the preliminary "Acts" staged in the run-up to the big event. In the 10 months since, 11 teams have trained hard, some practically nonstop, to hone their skills and select the best sailor for each of the 17 jobs aboard.

Ellison bankrolls the No. 2-rated challenger team. On Monday, he'll step aboard BMW Oracle and fill a role he hasn't had time to bother with since last summer. And just what might that role be?

"He drives a fair bit," said veteran Cup campaigner Peter Isler, BMW Oracle's navigator. "It's a little different, having a key crew member come in so late, but as far as we're concerned, it's great. It's his campaign, why shouldn't he?"

On paper, BMW Oracle's skipper-helmsman is New Zealander Chris Dickson, a seasoned campaigner who headed two Kiwi Cup efforts and one from Japan before signing on with Ellison for the 2003 regatta. Isler says Dickson calls the shots and any decision to hand over the helm is cleared through him.

But Isler expects the owner to have the wheel quite a bit in upcoming weeks, "maybe even all the time in some races." Isler isn't worried. "He's been sailing a lot," the navigator said of his boss. "He's been match-race training with the guys in Swedish Match 40s [a smaller class of boat] in California. He's staying sharp, and Chris talks to him quite a bit, so he's definitely in the loop.

"He's a sharp guy, he asks good questions. It's fun to have him on the boat."

Whether it stays fun remains to be seen. In the America's Cup, where dollars by the million fly out the window every day, the only kind of fun that holds up long-term is the winning kind. There is no second place, as Queen Victoria allegedly was told by an aide back in 1851, when the yacht America stole the silver ewer away from England.

Can a billionaire businessman prance in and hold his own against the best professional big-boat skippers in the world? The evidence is inconclusive. Ted Turner drove his Courageous to a successful Cup defense back in 1977, before the era of professional sailors. Baron Marcel Bich got lost in the fog at the helm of France around the same time.

Kansas oilman Bill Koch was ridiculed all the way to the winner's circle when he steered America{+3} in 1992, sharing time at the helm with Olympic gold medalist Buddy Melges. Koch, who by all accounts was close to clueless on the boat, insisted his design team would build a racer so fast, even he could win with it. They did, and he did.

But that was then. No one in the 2007 Cup appears to have a boat significantly quicker than any other in the top half of the challenger fleet. After 15 years of development, high-tech International America's Cup Class 80-footers have been optimized to the point they are nearly equal in performance. Koch's first-generation design, by contrast, was a rocket compared with everything else.

Now comes Ellison, with tens of millions of his dollars invested in BMW Oracle and the hopes of American yachtsmen and sailors from his home harbor, San Francisco, riding with him. Can he win?

"He's done some match-racing on the pro circuit and he beat some boats," Isler said with a smile. "He's coming into a practiced, well-trained team. He's a smart guy. You might not see him at the wheel in the prestart when we race [top-ranked] Emirates Team New Zealand or [No. 3] Luna Rossa, but against China or Germany, it wouldn't surprise me."

Ellison won't be the only celebrity on the racecourse Monday. New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark will ride on the Kiwi boat as the nonparticipating 18th crewmember. Skipper Dean Barker, asked how he would address the PM, said he wasn't sure, but he promised to take pains not to douse her. "She won't be happy to get wet," he said.

Meantime, actress Demi Moore is scheduled to lend her charm to Sunday night's prerace party given by Luna Rossa boss Patrizio Bertelli, who runs the Milan-based fashion house Prada with wife Miuccia Prada.

Missing from most festivities for the first time in three years will be Swiss billionaire Ernesto Bertarelli and his Alinghi team. The Cup defenders, who won the trophy in 2003 in New Zealand, participated in all 13 preliminary events leading up to the Louis Vuitton Cup challenge series, but now are banned from the action.

Historically, Cup defenders were barred from all challenger preliminaries, but the rules were changed this time around and many Cup followers now wonder if the door is shutting too late on Alinghi. Using their old, 2003 Cup-winning boat, the Swiss dominated the preliminary "Acts," as the informal races leading up to the Cup were called. Now they have 2 1/2 months to monitor challengers from afar while developing their two new Cup boats in private.

As a result, the hurdle of winning the upcoming challenger series looks daunting, but it seems not half as difficult as winning the Cup itself against Alinghi in June.

"Everyone believes the defender will be very strong," Luna Rossa skipper Francesco de Angelis said on Saturday, "but if the challengers do a good job, they can take the Cup. It's up to their ability to grow through competition.

"It's difficult, but it can be done. Otherwise, none of us would be here."

Boston Billionaire Sumner M. Redstone has pledged $105 million to Burns Recovery and Cancer Research

Sumner M. Redstone, Executive Chairman of both Viacom Corporation and CBS Corporation, pledged $105 million toward research and patient care advancements in cancer and burns recovery on Wednesday.

This amount will be disbursed over a period of five years and is equally divided among three non-profit healthcare centers: FasterCures/The Center for Accelerating Medical Solutions, Washington DC; the Cedars-Sinai Prostate Cancer Center, Los Angeles, CA; and the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, MA.

Mr. Redstone himself has suffered from third-degree burns and fought prostrate cancer. While making the contribution, he said: "Advancements in research and medical science are creating a better world and a higher quality of life for all of us. Like many, I have personally benefited from these advancements and have been an active contributor for many years to help speed their development. But I also know that there is so much more to be done and with the right resources in the right hands, we can make even more rapid progress and literally change the world.”

At FasterCures, the $35 million gift will be used toward research targeted at finding innovative ways of accelerating clinical trial enrollments, increasing the use of information technology to study and treat diseases, identifying and implementing best practices for research, among other things.

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center plans to use the money to support a six-year National Prostate Cancer Study and innovative cancer drug development and clinical trial programs. The current lab research will be expanded and extensive studies will be carried out to understand the biology of prostrate cancer and development of drugs and treatments for the same.

The Sumner M. Redstone Burn and Trauma Service will be created at The Massachusetts General Hospital with Mr. Redstone's generous contribution. This new unit will significantly enhance the hospital's ability to treat burn and trauma patients. Further, some of the money will also be used to relocate and expand the existing Redstone Burn Center and re-configure the MGH Emergency Department.

This is so far the biggest donation by the Sumner Redstone Charitable Foundation and Mr. Redstone said that he would continue to support further developments in the field of medicine in future.

'A one-in-a-million experience'

A local man will make an appearance in the "hot seat" on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire."
Brendan Murphy, of Acme, has always enjoyed trivia. In fact, he said that both he and his father are unstoppable at games such as Trivial Pursuit. So when watching the game show "Who Wants to be a Millionaire," Murphy found himself playing along; he always thought he did well answering the questions.

When open auditions were held in Pittsburgh in August, Murphy decided to make the trip to test his expertise.

Murphy received two written tests, each consisting of 35 questions in the same format of the television show -- one question and four multiple choice answers; he had 10 minutes to complete the questions on each test.





One test was full of general trivia questions. The other test was full of movie questions because of an upcoming show that had a movie theme to it.

"I passed both," Murphy said.

He added that he then talked with a producer, who asked Murphy about his family and interests to see what kind of personality he had for the camera.

After the producer took a head shot of Murphy, he informed Murphy he was in the contestant pool, but that the pool only lasts for a year. Murphy also was told there was no guarantee he would be called for the show.

"I didn't know what to expect after that," Murphy said.

From that audition in August and out of abput 3,000 people, Murphy received a phone call from the producers two days before Thanksgiving telling him that he was selected to appear on the show.

Murphy was excited and even a bit shocked. His wife had called him about an hour earlier and told him she had a dream about the show and him.

"She said she had a dream that 'Millionaire' called me," Murphy said. "That was pretty wild."

Murphy had less than two weeks to provide his own transportation to New York City for the Dec. 6 tapings, which were the final episodes to be taped for the year. He landed in the city late on Dec. 5 and had little time to sleep before arriving at the studio at 6 a.m.

Another strike against Murphy was that he studied movie trivia more than general trivia. In the audition, he missed only one question on general trivia and missed no questions on the movie trivia, which meant he qualified for two different episodes. He was under the impression he would appear on the movie-themed show.

When Murphy was informed he was supposed to appear on the general trivia edition, he had the option of returning to Pennsylvania and waiting to be picked again. It didn't take long for him to make his decision.

"I opted for general trivia," Murphy said.

Although contestants arrive early in the morning for the taping, Murphy said the cameras didn't start rolling and the game didn't begin until noon.

The contestants spent three hours talking to FCC lawyers and producers to go over rules, such as not using profanities and not looking at the audience because that could be a way to cheat on questions.

"They even spent half an hour going over the proper way of getting in and out of the chair, because it could easily tip over," he said.

The chair is known as the "hot seat."

Producers even went over how to overcome stage fright, but Murphy, a 1995 Uniontown Area High School graduate, has had stage experience as a drama major. He had no stage fright, but that didn't mean he was numb to the experience.

"It became very intense once everything started rolling," Murphy said.

While Murphy cannot say how well he did on the show, he said he had the pleasure of meeting the host, Meredith Vieira.

"She was very personable," Murphy said. "She came right up to you and shook your hand and hung out with everyone."

Murphy's episode is to air on NBC affiliate WPXI at 1 p.m. Wednesday.

While Murphy, a transportation security officer at Arnold Palmer Airport in Latrobe, has to work the day the show airs, his wife and mother-in-law are taking the day off to watch. All of his co-workers will also try to watch and see how Murphy does.

"I highly recommend auditioning," Murphy said.

He added that he was happy to be one of the 240 people who made it to the taping out of the 50,000 who auditioned nationwide.

"It's a one-in-a-million experience."

Campus apartments offer students luxury

New Mexico State University Housing and Residential Life is preparing for the fall 2007 opening of the new student apartments located east of the Corbett Center Student Union.

Chamisa Village Apartments will open in time for the fall semester, and will provide an alternative to off-campus housing for students who are sophomores or upperclassman.

Julie Weber, director of housing and residential life, said the apartments were built in an effort to keep upperclassmen living on campus.

In order to keep upperclassmen on campus, "we have to have the type of housing that appeals to them," Weber said.

The new apartments, which were designed by architect Gary Williams of Williams Design Group, keep with the courtyard concept used in other dormitories, such as Monagle and Garcia, but they are more modern. This plan allows for both a sense of privacy and community, she said.

Weber said the new apartments "will be good for (students) and good for the institution."

Chamisa Village is near Alumni Avenue, which Weber said will be torn down this summer.

The complex features three three-story buildings, with two- and four-bedroom apartments. The two-bedroom apartments have one bathroom and the four-bedroom apartments have two bathrooms. All of the bedrooms are meant for one person. Each apartment also has a kitchen and a dining room, and each building has study rooms and laundry facilities.

Each apartment is furnished with the basic pieces of furniture a residence needs. In addition to appliances, including a microwave, the kitchen will come with barstools for a dining area around the counter. Living rooms come furnished with a couch, an entertainment center and a leather chair and ottoman. Bedrooms feature dresser drawers, a desk, chair, movable file cabinet, shelves, built-in closet and a full-size bed.

Weber said full-size beds were the most common request from students, and they are frequently used at other universities. However, at NMSU, students will not have to "inch around" them because the rooms are adequately sized to fit them.

"I thought the beds were exciting because the thing I hated most about living in the dorms was the tiny beds," said Charlene Young, 21, a junior who used to live in Monagle Hall. "Overall, it looks like it's going to be a really nice place to live."

The proposed rates for students to live at Chamisa Village will be $2,400 per student for a two-bedroom apartment and $2,100 for a four-bedroom apartment, each semester. There are 333 bedrooms in the complex, 114 of which have already been reserved, and students can sign up for them alone or with a group.

Weber said the apartments cost $13.2 million to build. The money came from a bond measure, and housing will have to pay back the debt.

Former Sotheby's Chairman Says He Is Not Guilty Of Fixing Auction House Commission Rates

Alfred Taubman is a legend in retailing. For 40 years, he's been one of America's most successful developers of shopping centers.

But most people know him as the man who in 1983 bought Sotheby's, the crown jewel of international auction houses, and landed at the center of a scandal that rocked the art world.

As chairman of Sotheby's, Taubman was accused of illegally conspiring with his rivals at Christie's to fix auction house commission rates to drive up profits. But he says he is innocent and was the fall-guy.

Now, Taubman has decided to tell his story in a new book, "Threshold Resistance: The Extraordinary Career of a Luxury Retailing Pioneer." It's the story of how he became a billionaire — and how he ended up in jail.

It's a story that began in Pontiac, Mich. The son of German Jewish immigrants, Taubman watched his parents lose everything in the Depression. He had to help support the family and it marked him.

"I started working when I was 9," he told CBS News correspondent Anthony Mason. "I really wanted to make some money."

Since then, he's made a fortune. Forbes magazine now estimates his worth at $2 billion. Taubman's genius was seeing that as the middle class migrated to the suburbs in the 1950s and '60s, those families would need places to shop.

"Demographically, I looked at the numbers, and as far as I was concerned we couldn't miss. And we didn't," he said.

Taubman picked upscale areas and opened lavish shopping centers. He was the first to offer fountains and feature prestigious anchor stores like Neiman Marcus. The Mall at Short Hills in New Jersey is one of the most profitable shopping centers in the country.

Taubman is famous for his attention to detail. He's very proud of the terrazzo tiles at Short Hills.

"The only point that the customer actually touches the shopping center is the floor," he said. "They've got traction as they're walking. Very important. Some of our competitors put in carpet. Carpet's the worst thing you can have because it creates friction."

In 1983, when Taubman was invited — as a white knight — to buy the struggling Sotheby's, the venerable British auction house, many in the snobby art world scoffed.

"We were just merchants ... shopping mall guys," he said.

But Taubman would revolutionize the auction business. He completely redesigned Sotheby's New York headquarters — adding luxury boxes to the auction floor for clients' privacy, and the mall mogul insisted on escalators for easier access.

"I wanted to create an open feeling where all the goods were available to everyone," he said.

Taubman, who had recently married the glamorous former Miss Israel Judy Mazur, became the toast of New York society as he returned Sotheby's to glory. It's reclaim of greatness culminated with the sale of the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis estate in 1996, presided over by the dynamic CEO, Diana "Dede" Brooks, who Taubman had appointed his number two. But then the federal authorities brought the hammer down and subpoenaed financial records from Sotheby's and Christie's.

Brooks confessed she'd been involved in an elaborate illegal scheme with her counterpart at Christie's, Christopher Davidge, to fix prices. Then she cut a deal that would keep her from doing prison time by agreeing to testify against her boss.

"She lied many times," Taubman said. "If she discussed it with me I would have thrown her out of my office in five minutes."

According to Taubman, Brooks was just protecting herself from going to jail. Author Christopher Mason investigated the auction house scandal in his book, "The Art of the Steal." He found evidence including a notation in Taubman's appointment book, showing a meeting with his counterpart at Christie's, Sir Anthony Tennant, which was marked confidential.

"Makes it look very suspicious," Mason said.

Taubman acknowledged a dozen meetings with his Christie's rival but insists they never colluded.

"We were careful never to discuss anything that was illegal. And we knew the law and I knew it well," he said.

Tennant, who was also indicted, could not be extradited from England, and didn't testify at the trial. But he confirmed Taubman's account to Christopher Mason.

"'Whatever we do, we mustn't discuss prices,'" Mason said. "Tennant said that was the first thing that Taubman mentioned to him."

Apart from the notation in Taubman's appointment book, author Mason concluded that "There's nothing on paper. There's no physical proof."

But after a 16-day trial, the jury believed Brooks and found Taubman guilty.

"I was sitting in the second row," Mason said. "And he turned around to his family who was sitting in the first row. And I heard him say, I'm sorry."

The 78-year-old billionaire, who'd suffered several minor strokes, was sentenced to a year and a day at the Federal Medical Center in Rochester, Minn. He checked into prison a day early to avoid the media, but said he was frightened about what he would face there.

Prisoner #50444-054 would pass the time by reading and taking his three meals a day.

"They spend $2.52 for three meals at that hospital prison," he said. "That's per day, $2.52. This fellow that ran the food at the prison was a genius. There was never a can or a jar that didn't have a date that was prior to our eating it."

In May 2003, after 9 months, Taubman was freed. "I had lost a chunk of my life, my good name and around 27 pounds," he writes. But he had done his time.

"And I'm out and I'm not bitter," he said. "I believe in the system. It's still the greatest system in the world. There's nothing close to it. But it didn't work for me."

Taubman has since sold off his controlling stake in Sotheby's, but he still owns 5 percent of the company. But the auction house was never what he was most afraid of losing. He worried that he would lose some of his old friends.

"I worried about it," he said. "And I suspected some of 'em might have believed I was guilty. But they really didn't."

Taubman needn't have worried. This past week in New York, those friends threw a party for him. Henry Kissinger, Donald Trump and hundreds of others came to celebrate the launch of his book — and his remarkable life. Taubman, the retailing pioneer, has put prison behind him and turned the page.

Stars toy with luxury yacht and submarine

ROME: For the discerning A-lister, the mega-yacht is not enough. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are in talks about commissioning a vessel complete with a glass-fronted submarine that can be launched from its hull.
The couple, stars of the Hollywood blockbuster Mr & Mrs Smith, are mulling over buying a 280ft vessel with eight decks and seven lifts. It can carry eight limousines, eight launches and the submarine. If the couple and their children tire of the water, three helicopters and a seaplane are on hand to allow them to indulge their passion for flying.
"It won't be the longest in the world but even so it's on another planet compared with what else is around," said Mario La Via, the yacht's Italian designer. "You could call it a luxurious mobile residence with 86,000sqft (8000sqm of livable space."

The yacht boasts in its standard version two 300sqm apartments that include a bedroom, two living rooms and his and hers "wellness centres" with a sauna and spa bath, and two bathrooms. Two guest apartments are half the size.

Pitt, 43, and Jolie, 31 -- who last month boosted the size of their family to four when they adopted a three-year-old Vietnamese boy -- could sail almost anywhere.

The submarine, which can go to a depth of 300m, can seat six people and has a wraparound glass front section for better viewing of marine life. It leaves the yacht under the stern from a dock inside the hull and can travel by itself for six days.

The yacht travels at 20 knots. It has five pools, nine dining rooms, a gym and 21-seat cinema. Two of the three helicopter pads fold away below the deck. If they are caught in rough seas, the couple need not feel seasick. Their master bedroom, library and cinema all come equipped with computerised gyroscope technology that shifts them automatically to compensate for bad weather up to a force-eight gale.

Security includes heat-detecting cameras that can spot objects above and under water.

Italian newspapers last week reported that Pitt and Jolie had bought the yacht. But Serafino Gatti, of the Privilege Yard that will build it at the town of Civitavecchia, north of Rome, said: "We've got negotiations under way with Pitt and Jolie and with other potential clients. Nothing is settled yet."