Lily Collins, Kristen Bell, Logan Lerman, Nat Wolff, Liana Liberato, Rusty Joiner and Patrick Schwarzenegger have joined the cast of Josh Boone’s directorial debut “Writers,” which will also feature a cameo by author Stephen King as himself.

Judy Cairo of Informant Media is producing the indie pic, which starts production next week in North Carolina.

Greg Kinnear stars as a famous novelist obsessed with his ex-wife, who will be played by Jennifer Connelly. Collins co-stars as their collegiate daughter who’s pursued by a fellow writing student (Lerman). Wolff will play Collins’ young brother, who’s in love with Liberato’s character. Bell will play Kinnear’s friend with benefits who tries to help him get over his ex-wife.

The dramedy, penned by Boone, interweaves the stories of the family members and their love interests over the course of one tumultuous year.

Informant’s Michael A. Simpson and Eric Brenner will exec produce with Myles Nestel and Lisa Wilson of The Solution Entertainment Group, which is also handling international sales. CAA is handling U.S. rights for the film, which is produced in association with MICA Entertainment.

Collins next stars as Snow White in Relativity Media’s “Mirror Mirror.” Lerman will soon be seen in Summit’s coming-of-age drama “The Perks of Being a Wallflower.” Wolff, who starred in the popular Nickelodeon series “The Naked Brothers Band,” co-stars in Bruce Beresford’s “Peace, Love, & Misunderstanding.” Liberato will soon be seen opposite Aaron Eckhart in Informant’s upcoming action-thriller “The Expatriate.” Bell, who currently stars on Showtime’s “House of Lies,” next appears in Relativity’s omnibus comedy “Movie 43.”

CAA reps Collins, Bell, Lerman, Liberato and Wolff, who’s managed by Untitled Entertainment. Lerman is managed by Lisa Lerman Management, while Bell is managed by Brookside Artist Management. King is repped by Paradigm.

Variety.com

Kristen Bell has been cast in Some Girls, director Jennifer Getzinger’s adaptation of Neil LaBute’s play of the same name. Bell joins Adam Brody (Damsels in Distress) in the film, in which Brody plays a man who attempts to make amends with several ex-girlfriends on the eve of his wedding.

Bell plays Bobbi, a smart, articulate woman he bailed on years prior without a word, leaving her without respect or love for him.

After making her name as the star of the cult television series Veronica Mars, Bell starred opposite Jason Segel in the 2008 comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Currently starring opposite Don Cheadle on the Showtime series House of Lies, Bell has lined up not one but two projects for the big screen. She is also set to provide the speaking and singing voice as the lead in Disney’s new animated feature Frozen. Directed by Chris Buck (Surf’s Up), the film is being produced by John Lasseter and Peter Del Vecho.

Bell is repped by CAA and Brookside Artist Management.

HollywoodReporter.com

Kristen Bell was at last summer’s Television Critics Association party for Showtime as she was just starting to film “House of Lies.” I asked her a few questions then, but now that I’ve seen the show I know how naughty she gets to be. On the TCA panel for the show’s premiere in January, I asked her some more informed questions, and included the two from last summer below as well.

Crave Online: How are you enjoying the naughty talk on the show?
Kristen Bell: Let’s just say I’m enjoying it. I’m f***ing enjoying the hell out of it. Sorry. No, it’s more provocative than anything I’ve ever done. And sometimes I have a potty mouth, and it’s just nice to not have those limitations.

Crave Online: Is the pace of “House of Lies” even faster than “Veronica Mars”?
Kristen Bell: I would say yes. Keeping up with the three of them and the dialogue that they write, yeah, I would say it’s a little bit faster.

Crave Online: Were you looking for another TV show and is cable very different from your network experiences?
Kristen Bell: I think so. I think that they’re not under the same restraints as network. They can go a little further with their subject matter, with what they show, with how provocative they are. So yeah, I think it is a little bit more interesting and I had my eye, I was looking for something to come back to TV.

It’s like a feeling like I’ve been away from home for too long and I love doing movies, but I look at TV like high school and movies like camp. You create these great relationships in movies in movies and then they sort of dissipate and you go on your way. I like knowing the crew that I work with, I like coming to the same job every day so it appeals to my emotional stability a lot more.

I think whatever you do that works, if you have good writers they pick up on it right away and they continue to write that for you.

Crave Online: Has that happened?
Kristen Bell: I think so. I don’t know, I’m not in the writer’s room but I hope that they’ve seen, “Oh, that works for her and that doesn’t.” I love where my character is going. I love it. It’s not like anything I’ve ever had before.

CraveOnline.com

After standing up for the underdog as the titular teenage private eye in Veronica Mars, Kristen Bell continues the good fight as a vocal LGBT ally. Currently starring as a smart and sassy management consultant on Showtime’s House of Lies — and as a news reporter in the big-screen whale tale Big Miracle — the 31-year-old Burlesque beauty and Gossip Girl narrator opens up for the first time about how marriage inequality has stalled her plans to wed fiancé Dax Shepard.

The Advocate: When did your relationship with the LGBT community begin?
Kristen Bell: I’ve always done musical theater, but I wasn’t necessarily aware of gay people while growing up in Michigan. I knew I was attracted to a certain male personality, but it was an unwritten love because no one in my high school was out of the closet. That’s why attending NYU was such a wonderful, joyous musical theater experience for me: About 70% of my friends during college were gay.

How did your upbringing inform your views on LGBT issues?
I didn’t know anyone who was openly gay, so it wasn’t addressed. I wasn’t taught to treat gays with respect; I was taught to treat everyone with respect, so I never grew up with a prejudice against any race or sexual orientation, and that’s the gift I was given. When I got to New York, I was like, “Wow, gay people are awesome!” It was a sort of celebratory acknowledgement of the acceptance my parents talked about.

You’ve supported Friendfactor, a social media website that connects straight allies with LGBT causes. You even wore an Old Navy gay pride T-shirt to the May 2011 launch event in New York.
Fuck, yeah. You bet your balls, I did. I hosted that event with Chelsea Clinton because I thought it was absurd that New York hadn’t passed a marriage equality bill yet. In about 10 years, knock on wood, I think we’re going to be embarrassed as a nation about our behavior on this issue. It’s going to be exactly like what happened in 1970, when people were like, “Whoa, 1960 sucked. We should’ve let everyone ride the bus.”

Friendfactor founder Brian Elliot mentioned in an interview that you dedicated your own Friendfactor Friend-setter page to one of your best gay friends.
I dedicated it to my friend Greg, who I went to college with. He’s been one of my best friends since 1998, and I love and adore him. After I moved to New York, a lot of lovely men and women that I knew started to come out of the closet, because they felt comfortable being in an atmosphere that was finally accepting of them. It breaks my heart when I think about what some of my gay friends have gone through. I’ve heard them say things like, “But I’m wrong, I’m a disappointment,” and none of it’s true, of course. There’s so much bullshit that idiots preach. No matter what your beliefs are, nobody is bad or wrong because of the way that they were born. Why anyone would tear anyone else down, especially for reasons that are so intimate, is beyond me. It almost doesn’t infuriate me as much as it confuses me.

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I have updated our photo gallery with 1,038 HQ and MQ images of Kristen Bell from all of the events that she has attended so far this year!

Kristen Bell was on the talk show “Chelsea Lately” this week – watch her interview below!

Kristen Bell isn’t going anywhere as Showtime’s ‘House of Lies’ has recently been announced as being renewed for the second season.

The show, also starring Don Cheadle, has only been on for about four episodes but is already one of the network’s highest-rated programs, states UsMagazine.com. ‘Shameless’ and ‘Californication’ have reportedly also been renewed for more seasons.

The network has commented on being pleased with all the shows and the growing audiences they are gaining.

HollywoodNews.com

In her latest movie, Big Miracle, Kristen Bell helps save the whales. And in her current TV show, House of Lies, the actress swims with sharks. Meanwhile, there is a video going around the Internet of her freaking out over a sloth. What’s the deal with Bell and animals? Vulture phoned the actress to get her insight into mammals, including her thoughts on codpieces and toe fetishes.

So that video going around of you freaking out over a sloth …
Dax [Shepard, her boyfriend] brought a sloth to me for a few hours as a birthday present. I’ve always loved sloths. It was one of the best days of my life almost to the point where I couldn’t handle it — it was that exciting. I lost my mind.

Are sloths indeed lazy?
It depends on how you look at it. They can’t be lazy, because they’re never not lazy. Their metabolism is so slow. They live in the trees. And they have to shimmy down a tree, which of course takes hours. They poop, like, once a week. And they have to rub their bum on the ground to get their digestive system running.

What’s the most interesting thing you learned about whales making Big Miracle?
[Pause.] What I learned …

For instance, I’ve heard that female whales get around — they aren’t monogamous.
Whales rape. They do. I don’t know if that’s the only way sex happens in their species, but I do know it takes two or three males to corner a female in order to impregnate her, which I personally consider rape [laughs]. You want the species to survive, so there’s cognitive dissonance there.

Your dad was a news director. What did you learn from him in playing a reporter in this movie?
I wish, in retrospect, that I had asked him how this event [based on a real 1988 Alaskan whale rescue] affected him. And I’m embarrassed to say that I didn’t. I grew up going to the station with him and being able to play with the TelePrompTers, knowing the behind the scenes of news directing. And it’s very similar to acting. He had a lot of hesitancy because he knew the rejection that was possible. He had been the one forced to reject people.

In addition to the sloth video, you’re apparently also newsworthy this week for the erroneous headline “Kristen Bell Enjoyed Sucking Toe,” in reference to a House of Lies scene.
I was asked how uncomfortable it was getting my toes sucked. And I said, “It wasn’t as uncomfortable as I anticipated.”

How does one prepare for that type of scene?
Well, obviously a pedi is mandatory. It’s much like any preparation of intimacy on-camera: You have to do everything you can think of. In order to make him comfortable, I brought a bowl and a sponge and a wash cloth and washed everything right in front of him. Because I would be thinking, Is this girl gonna have toe jam? What’s going inside that shoe?

Do people check out your feet now?
I don’t know that people look at my feet. I have seen comments on Twitter or otherwise about my foot or feet in general. I don’t realize it was as much of a fetish. Feet are pretty gnarly. It’s rare that you come across a nice set of toes.

Quentin Tarantino has a well-documented foot fetish. Maybe you can parlay this into a film role.
Does he love feet? He embraces it? Oh my gosh. Wow.

House of Lies also had you dancing in your underwear on-camera. Was that worse?
The only thing more vulnerable than dancing on-camera is dancing in your underwear. Your moves are immortalized. Especially because it was supposed to be erotic. Not my forte. I can do cute till the end of the day, but sexy is a whole different thing to embrace. I’m not Christina Hendricks. And I’m not even dancing to music — they laid that in after. You couldn’t imagine how awkward that was: no music, I’m in my underwear, and there’s 40 stinky crew members in the room. But I kind of just had to go for it.

How much do you know about your character’s background ahead of this show?
I was really only given what I needed for each episode. Jeannie was not a huge role in the pilot. I had been told, “Oh, she’s gonna have this great story line.” Truth be told, that’s what everyone tells you when you start a show. But I like the show. Even if I was just there to support Don Cheadle’s character, I was fine with it. But you do learn a hell of a lot about Jeannie in the upcoming episodes.

The show will continue to tap into her moral ambiguity?
Yes, you learn why she can be so inviting and cutthroat. You learn why she’s kind of obsessed with Marty [Cheadle’s character] but wants his job. She has a past that she’s ashamed of, and she cannot come to terms with things in her life until she works those issues out. And I have sympathy for that.

Looking ahead, will you be visiting your old TV character, the chilly robotic caterer Uda Bengt, in a Party Down film?
I think they’re working on it. I don’t know that I’ll be a part of it because I wasn’t one of the main characters. But I still am very close to all those guys, and I know that they want it to happen.

It’s not a Party without Uda!
That’s what I said!

I noticed that you’re playing Supergirl in an upcoming comedy called Movie 43. As a comics-nerd crush object, is that fulfilling any childhood fantasy for you?
I think my reason for loving superheroes is having Comic-Con fans because Veronica Mars was such a cult hit. It’s exciting to me to have such an original group of people like what you do. There’s nothing mainstream about the Comic-Con fans; they are just more interesting. I like a little bit of weird and a lot of originality and a lot of heart. And that is a definition of a geek.

On a more serious note, you were very active in the last campaign for Barack Obama. Do you have plans to be as involved during this campaign?
I’m a Democrat. I know that. If I’m there, it’s to support the Democratic party. I will be there.

Is that to say you’re currently hoping the president has a second term?
[Giggles.] Over the clown race? Yeah. Yeah. I’m hoping it’s Obama.

Who is the alpha clown in the clown race?
Oh God, you’re gonna get me into so much trouble. Here’s what I do know: I don’t share the same views as a lot of the GOP candidates. I genuinely don’t want to offend anyone. My goal is for more equality for everyone. And I’ll get shit from my publicist if I run my mouth.

NYMag.com