People

By NADYA LABI

O.K., NOW TRIANGULATE

Let's just hope JIM CARREY thinks that's Pamela Anderson cozying up to ED BURNS at the premiere of No Looking Back. The rubber-faced funnyman and LAUREN HOLLY, now as blond as the Baywatch icon, were thought to be off-again (at least that's what their divorce papers say), but the duo, photographed during happier times at right, were reportedly spotted together at a birthday bash in Beverly Hills on a recent Saturday. The next Wednesday, Holly was back in the arms of the Other Man--the writer-director whose charms are widely believed to have wooed her away from Carrey--if only to promote the opening of the movie that started the whole mess. Burns, Holly and Carrey have denied all linkages. To clarify matters, the Daily News reported that Holly said of Carrey, "We're really good friends," and of Burns, "We'll be buds forever."

COOKED!

In Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy, a handshake is never just the meeting of two palms. So when British Foreign Secretary ROBIN COOK breached an understanding that he would not meet Palestinians at a disputed Jewish settlement and even pressed the flesh of one of their legislators, Benjamin Netanyahu responded with a few choice gestures. He canceled dinner, a press conference and, touche, the usual handshake. Cook, under the misapprehension that diplomacy means saying what you think, shot back, "It's something of a mercy to be spared a further full meal."

ALICE IN NIGHTMARELAND

CLAIRE DANES doesn't come of age the easy way. At least twice already she's died onscreen before reaching adulthood, and in her upcoming film Brokedown Palace, directed by Jonathan Kaplan, she suffers her share of tribulations. Danes plays Alice, a wild-hearted high school grad who lies to her parents and heads off to Bangkok with her pal (Kate Beckinsale) in tow. "She wants to see where she stands on the other side of the world," explains Danes, who just wrapped up filming in Manila. Alas, the outlook isn't good for Alice: she meets the kind of enigmatic stranger best avoided and, by a not-so-mysterious set of circumstances, winds up in a seedy Thai jail charged with smuggling heroin. An expatriate American lawyer (Bill Pullman) is her lone advocate. "I get thrown into a soi, this cage in the ground for bad prisoners," says Danes. "And I'm beaten over the head with guard sticks and things." First death, now torture: What's next for the angst-loving Danes? Yale.

WRIT SMALL

If you can't say anything nice...Bad-mouth RICHARD NIXON never did subscribe to that. In archival material released last week, the ex-President gripes some more, about Jackie Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson's "barbaric" guests and, well, just about everything. [The agent] "could have just as easily sat in the front seat," he whines. "I, of course, was totally uncomfortable." He loved to fire off memos, once writing "Those who boycotted the Joint Session of Congress should be taken off the White House guest list, even if they had been our friends." Off a list, not with their heads?