It turns out Paris Hilton is a regular friggin’ Mother Teresa in the making.
The hotel heiress has settled her sex-tape legal scrap with kinky costar Rick Salomon and has decided that her share of the proceeds is going to charity. It’s all part of Hilton’s “effort to turn this situation into something positive,” per a statement from her reps.
According to the New York Daily News, Hilton stands to earn about $400,000 plus a percentage of the sales from One Night in Paris, a 45-minute tribute to the platinum princess, who’s shown having sex with Salomon and engaging in other more PG-rated activities.
The money, earmarked for “worthy charities,” would clear up any legal battles between the two. On Friday, Hilton dropped a violation of privacy suit against one alleged distributor, Kahatani Ltd. of Panama. And Salomon has dropped a lawsuit accusing the Simple Life star and her family of slander.
A grainy version of Hilton’s boots-knocking adventures first hit the Internet last fall. Salomon has maintained that the torrid tape was originally stolen by his former roommate, Don Thrasher.
Since then, Salomon has taken control of the amateur skin flick, releasing a full-length, pay-per-view download and more recently an extended version, distributed in stores via Red Light District Video.
Hilton, meanwhile, is trying to turn her visibility-boosting romp into a legit show-biz career. She’s currently starring in the second season of Fox’s riches-to-rags reality series, The Simple Life; she recently wrapped shooting on the upcoming teen horror flick House of Wax and is reported to have signed on for National Lampoon’s Pledge This!; and she has also been tapped as the new face of Guess? clothing.
Survivor alum Jenna Lewis should only be so lucky. The reality-TV star, who competed in the inaugural season and again in the recent all-stars version, released a statement Monday saying she was “fighting mad” that private footage from her honeymoon has hit the Internet.
Lewis, an aspiring entertainer, says the sex tape shot with hubby Travis Wolfe after their May wedding was meant for personal use only. No word on how the video made it to realitytail.com, but, according to a press release, Lewis is close to granting an exclusive tell-all interview to address the “sex-tape scandal.”
Not everyone is as eager to point out their salacious performances to the press. Cameron Diaz’s publicist, Brad Cafarelli, said his client refused to comment on her 1992 S&M video, currently making the Web rounds, citing “ongoing criminal and civil proceedings…regarding this matter.”
Other accidental skin-flick stars taking a more pragmatic approach include Baywatch babes Gena Lee Nolin and Pamela Anderson. Nolin’s rep said his client was concentrating on raising her son and wasn’t “really bothered by the sex tape much.”
Meanwhile, celeb sex-tape pioneer Anderson and former hubby Tommy Lee won a $1.5 million verdict two years ago against the adult Website that hawked the couple’s camcordered account of their honeymoon, now considered a classic of the genre.