Tiffany, you really should reconsider your life choices if you are still single after 30." Meyerson thinks, as many Hollywood women do, that a movie is almost like chicken soup for the marital soul: "I believe that seeing an independent woman of a certain age with any kind of success is healing for some men," Meyerson says. At 37, Meyerson was married with two kids, but had been living with another woman for some time. She broke up with that woman last year, and she and Rush were together in June and are now living together again. Meyerson has been getting the moviegoing female-supportive message her whole life: She was told as a girl to have nice calves and to get her hair cut. She is a sophisticated, successful career woman, but some of the suggestions she received when she was a kid were still relevant: For a while, her mother tried to get her to wear her hair in an old-lady bun. Now, as a 37-year-old working mother, she has found a way to make it all work. "Men don't have to change. Women have to change," Meyerson says. "That's really what it boils down to. I don't think it takes a therapist to figure out that this is what's going on. There is a certain amount of denial. Some men are going to lie to themselves and think it's going to be different. I have found a lot of guys who said, `I can learn how to be a better dad' and `I will learn to share housework.' " So far, no other "bad boys" at the theater have put their hands on her. But she's seen others: "The women were being catcalled at the Oscars," she says. But she was at the Oscars too, of course, and her reaction was, "These are your fans." To be a hero, be a man. "I think it's really healthy when there's an age difference, and it's a healthy relationship," Meyerson says. "People make fun of those kinds of relationships, but I think they're healthy. You can hear that in Rush's music. It's more like the man's taking the lead. It's the woman that's supportive of him. They're both there for each other. I think it makes for a healthy relationship." Meyerson doesn't care how many hours it takes to cook, clean, load the dish washer or shop. She does care that people look at her for being smart, and that sometimes she sees looks of fear on the faces of people who think she may know something they don't. When someone tells her she doesn't look like a movie star, she shrugs. "But I am a movie star," she says. "I am in 'Nutty Professor 2.'" Nathaniel's column appears Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and on the weekend edition of the Business section. His column appears on page C1 of the Sunday Business section. E-mail: nathaniel.lopez@latimes.com Photos: A-listers at the Oscars Photos: A-listers at the Oscars Oscar shows run long, but the stars don't Hollywood Gift for Spike Lee will draw a crowd at the box office BY LAURA GALE-KENT MARCH 3 2001 JOSH COOPER, Times Film Critic Even if you didn't want to go to the Oscars this year, someone was bound to ask what you were going to wear. The question was always bound to sound strange: Why would you possibly want to wear anything someone else chose for you? But then someone at a screening in December handed out promotional tickets to "The Sixth Sense" for sale to ticket holders. A few people took advantage of the opportunity, and we were all given to understand that, at least this once, the ticket buyer would be able to attend the ceremony and watch the Oscars from a skybox, watching the ceremony on TV screens. The next morning's L.A. Times contained an item about the promotional ticket. The item quoted one woman whose ticket had been purchased, who was now looking forward to the ceremony, and whose date didn't know she was coming. "I'm going to give my brother-in-law something to talk about," she said. (Not every woman was so lucky; a few tickets were sold in London.) And when you think about it, it's not so strange: What if the Academy Awards had given out free seats to any person who showed up in a red carpet pictures from now until June? Isn't that a great gift to give to a reader? It's enough to make you wonder about the people you know who show up in screenwriter Neil Simon's "Plaza Suite" to the tune of "They're Coming to Get You, Barbara," and how many of those people have seen the movie. The most likely thing you will see with this gift is the biggest Oscar controversy of the year: The best-picture debacle. There's one thing nobody can ever seem to do when they have to announce the winner of the "Best Picture" category: Get it right. It's as if the two people who determine the winners have already picked out their own favorites before the winner is announced. (The last president of the Academy was a good reason for that; I forget her name.) But will that have to happen again? Right now, the race for best picture looks to be a three-way tie between "Gladiator," "A Beautiful Mind" and the best picture from this year's Cannes Film Festival, "Romeo+Juliet." (If you remember, "Gladiator" won for best picture back in 1995.) One thing's for sure: We won't be seeing either "Gladiator" or "Romeo+Juliet" on the Oscars telecast. The telecast is the annual awards event hosted by Hollywood's biggest tinsel-and-movie-star circus troupe: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. To be fair, some of the other movies that made the Best Picture list are not the most important movies of 2001. "Chicago," "Cast Away," "Erin Brockovich," "Moulin Rouge!" and "Shrek" are all worthy choices. But if you're going to give out free seats, shouldn't it at least be a quality that was released during the year? "Romeo+Juliet" and "The Shipping News" were both released back in 2000, but one of them didn't make the cut. I understand that, this year, nobody can put the right movies together until the very last minute, when the nominations are made. But if we're going to have any free tickets given out, shouldn't there be some way of putting the right movies together? It's time for the Academy to stop letting the studios pick and choose which movies they want to be considered. I can't blame the Academy members for wanting to get out of going to the ceremony in February. It's a very long month, especially with the Oscars. It's a very cold month, especially if you live in California. It's a month when you have to listen to the same speeches about film ever single day for six weeks straight. On the plus side, if you get tired of the Oscars, television shows, the Oscar show and other awards, you've got January or February, and a vacation to go on. But if you're a movie critic, I suppose you do have to suffer the humiliation of having your reviews appear in the newspapers after the Oscars telecast. (It's worth suffering through just to see my name in the paper a few times before I get fired in May.) It's also a very hectic time for us critics, as we try to review so many movies so quickly. It's almost like being a member of a club that does very little to reward you for being a member. But what is our club, you may ask? I had a great time with "Lady and the Tramp" and am still trying to like "The Whole Nine Yards." "My Best Friend's Wedding" was a blast, even if the Best Picture award was never what it was cracked up to be. And I'm hoping that it's not too late to write something nice about "Monsters, Inc." I haven't seen that movie, but I have heard that some audience members walk out of the theater