Billy Ray Cyrus glowers over an L.A. Times report that paparazzi are gunning for a first shot of 15-year-old daughter Miley Cyrus getting kissed – for an expected payday between $30,000 and $150,000. “They’re a little late on that,” he says.

Billy Ray and Miley and the rest of the “Hannah Montana” team have about a month left of shooting on the big-screen version of the Disney Channel hit in Nashville. Tabloid photogs have been on the scene in Tennessee as they have in Los Angeles.  “Me and my little girl Noah, who’s eight years old, were out catching crawdads in the creek this past weekend, something we’ve done all our lives.

There I am in my Hawaiian swimming trunks holding a crawdad, and lo and behold, some woman jumps out from behind a tree and takes a picture,” reports Billy Ray.  “What a freak show.”

Hounding aside, things are great, says Billy Ray.  “The movie has all the things the kids love about the series, but the drama for a full-blown theatrical feature is there. Everything is bigger.  It’s bringing out the best in everybody, and Miley is going to knock people out.  She’s really putting in a heck of a performance on this movie.”

Billy Ray is doing his “Hannah” shooting while juggling work on his next album, concert tour dates – and his new role as host of NBC’s “Nashville Star,” which gets its seasonal premiere Monday (6/9).  At the same time, his new single and video of Sheryl Crow’s “Real Gone” are getting heavy airplay.

“It’s a pretty crazy time.  I don’t think we could have planned it this way.  I love doing the show.  I think any of the 12 finalists could make it,” he tells us.

He and Miley seem to have pretty much ridden out the Vanity Fair photo scandal.  “No matter what field you’re in, you’re going to get knocked down,” he comments.  “The question of character comes into play about will you get back up…”

Any regrets?  “Oh, man.  No, I don’t have any regrets,” he says.  “I’m living life with the hammer down and thanking God for my blessings.”

SOME KIND OF MAGIC: Idina Menzel laughs when asked about prospects to bring “Wicked” – the much-adored musical that won her 2004 Tony honors for playing the witch Elphaba — to film.  “They know that I would love to do it.  They probably will do it, but it’s still being performed all over the world.  By the time they do the film, I’ll get to be the grandmother.  Or I’ll get plastic surgery to look younger and with the green makeup it’ll work.”

Much closer on the horizon, film-wise:  “’Enchanted’ did really well and there’s supposed to be a sequel,” says Menzel, who costarred in last year’s fun Disney hit with Patrick Dempsey and Amy Adams.  “It would be cool to be a part of that.”

For the next few months, however, music is her top priority – as in the concert trek the gloriously gifted songstress is currently conducting in support of her “I Stand” album.

THE VIDEOLAND VIEW: “The Bill Engvall Show” regular Nancy Travis says she’ll be getting a little away from just being a Mom and wife when the TBS sitcom returns June 12. “We brought (“Lost” actress) Cynthia Watros on and we play friends who grew up together,” says Travis. “At least I’ll have a sounding board.” Though that relationship will pose its own problems. “My daughter (played by Jennifer Lawrence) feels like she could be a friend with my best friend and I regret that I don’t have that same relationship with her.” And she adds, “There’s a conflict with Bill. He’s very threatened by my friend because she’s still unmarried and unattached. We do an episode where we have a girls’ night out and go salsa dancing, so we’ll be pushing the envelope a little bit. Cynthia is a nice foil for me.”

STAYING ON TRACK: Superhot jazz saxophonist/singer Mindi Abair says she’s intent on keeping the home fires burning while she’s out touring for her new “Stars” CD. “I got married a couple of years ago and I’m on the road so much — but you still want to be with the ones you love,” says Abair.  She notes that keeping the balance between personal and professional life for artists and performers is something “I think all of us struggle with.”  Fortunately, says Abair of husband Jason Steele, “I can put him to work. He’s a musician and composer who can fit in the band and bring the house down. He comes in and plays for a couple of songs.” She adds, “And I bring my dad out. He plays keyboard and sax, so if the show is hitting its low point you can always bring your husband or dad out. For me, it’s great. I get to have them on stage with me, so it’s really special.”

Abair says the title tune of her CD “Stars” was inspired by her desire to keep her marriage fresh. “It’s a back and forth between a couple that says ‘Hey, stay a little longer before you go, wish away the morning light because the stars are out tonight.’ It reflected the tone and optimism of the record. And I love stars, so it was the perfect album title.”

Sounds like Oscar-winning actress Charlize Theron certainly hasn’t let her megastar status go to her head. “She drove to New Mexico because she had her, like, 50-year-old dog with her and couldn’t fly,” reports Jennifer Lawrence, who plays the troubled teen version of Theron’s character in “Babel” screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga’s upcoming directorial debut “The Burning Plain.” “She didn’t have any assistant drive, she drove down herself. She stayed in just a normal hotel room, no suite or anything which made me feel like a diva cause I’m staying in ‘the apartment.’ She waits in line, she eats with the crew… She is the most real and down to earth person I’ve ever met. I just love her so much. And she is funny, just hilarious. She has a mouth on her that could make a grip blush. There isn’t a sentence that comes out of her mouth that doesn’t have the ‘F’ word in it.”

Lawrence — who’s back shooting the second season of TBS’ sitcom “The Bill Engvall Show” returning June 12, on which she plays the oldest child — admits it was a little intimidating having to do her thing in front of Theron at first. “She had to play me as an older person, so it was like no pressure or anything right? You’re just setting the lead for Charlize Theron to follow you. So she was there on the set watching and studying me.” She adds of Theron’s transition, “I don’t even know how to describe how incredible it is. The way she did every movement, every facial expression I didn’t even know I did… she like did it perfectly. I’ve never seen anything like it. I was just in awe.”

THE INDIE EYE: “CSI” regular Marg Helgenberger reports we get to see a different side of her in the upcoming indie film, “Columbus Day” with Val Kilmer and Wilmer Valderrama. “It’s a great part quite different than Catherine Willows,” says Helgenberger, referring to the crime scene analyst she’s played for years on “CSI.” She plays Kilmer’s ex-wife in the film and says, “It’s always fun to have something to play other than competent and strong. I mean, I certainly love all those qualities, but it was refreshing to play somebody whose life was simpler. She wasn’t a simple person, but just a really good person trying to make ends meet.”

Helgenberger says “Columbus Day” is a heist film that all takes place in one day, “but there are all these intimate relationships throughout the whole movie that bring Val’s character around full circle. He pulls off the heist in the beginning of the film. Then through all these various phone calls he makes to people he cares about while trying to sell whatever he’s got in the briefcase, he realizes the importance of the people in his life and where his priorities lie.”

KNOCKOUT: Jason Lewis reports he did “a lot of boxing training” to get into proper pugilistic form for the upcoming “The Pardon” film in which Jaime King plays Toni Jo Heny, the only woman to die in the electric chair in Louisiana.  However, he found that his fighting technique “didn’t apply” when he got before the cameras.  He recalls being told by the cinematographer, “’That was a great punch.  I can’t see it.’  Real fighting is quick and tight, and movie fighting is big and slow.”  The period film has the “Sex and the City” hunk playing “a guy who’s basically a drifter and a petty criminal, who’s gotten involved in some bad s— club fighting in barns.  She’s a hooker.  They fall in love and she ends up trying to help him and gets in trouble with the law.  The press fell for her because she was such a knockout, and the idea of executing a woman was so stunning at that time.”

The team worked in Shreveport, with the actors toiling in wool outfits and other less-than-comfortable period clothes in sweltering heat.  Notes Lewis, “One of the drivers I got friendly with was a cool older dude who’d grown up around that area.  He remembered the whole thing when it happened.  ‘They moved the electric chair place to place,’” he said.  “It was a really heavy thing.”

GHOST SHIPS: Look for Jennifer Love Hewitt’s “Ghost Whisperer” to encounter otherworldly sorts aboard the famously haunted cruise ship the Queen Mary when her supernaturally popular series sails into its fourth season next fall.  Writer-producer Mark Perry, who’s penning the episode, knows his cruise ships – especially the subject of his current PBS documentary, “SS United States: Lady in Waiting.”

“Most people don’t know about the SS United States,” admits Perry, a long-time aficionado of the grand cruise vessels of bygone times.  In the SS United States is a saga of New York — and America — of the early 1950s, “a time when ‘Made in America’ really meant something.  She was the fastest in her class ever built in this country, an ambassador wherever she went.”  While many ships of the era were scrapped, “Miraculously, the SS United States has survived, though gutted,” he says.  The vessel’s now a ghost ship, sitting in harbor in Philadelphia, owned by Norwegian Cruise Line, which has tentative plans to renovate it.  Failing that, Perry says, the SS United States Conservancy organization hopes to bring it back to New York Harbor, resplendent in its full red, white and blue glory, as a museum/hotel/convention center.  “It would be a wonderful complement to the Statue of Liberty,” he says. “Lady in Waiting,” which is also coming out on DVD, includes never before seen archival footage and interviews with such former passengers as Walter Cronkite, LeRoy Neiman, and maritime historian William H. Miller.