By Tom Bourton BBC News Online

BBC News Online's Tom Bourton listens out for any snippets of gossip involving Welsh celebrities around the globe.

Hopkins has been bringing home the bacon

Sir Anthony Hopkins and Catherine Zeta Jones have been listed as the two most well-paid actors in the 2002 Sunday Times Pay List.

Hopkins, who took home �13.5m for playing Hannibal Lecter in Red Dragon, has earned an impressive �21.5m over the last year.

He came in 35th place on the chart, ahead of Swansea's Zeta Jones, who banked around �20m this year.

It sounds as though she needs to keep tabs on it though - Heat magazine has said CZJ's husband Michael Douglas has spent $1,500 worth of underwear for her during a spending spree.

Apparently, Douglas told the sales assistant: "They're for my eyes only"!

Meanwhile, an innocent comment by Tom Jones in a BBC interview could see him learning Welsh.

Tom could soon be learning Welsh

Jones, 62, told BBC Wales News Online he felt guilty that he could not speak to Catherine Zeta Jones in his nation's mother tongue.

Now the Welsh Language Board has offered free lessons to the Pontypridd-born star.

"We've already been in touch with Tom to see if we can help him realise his dream of learning Welsh," a spokesman said.

However, Jones has been complaining recently of a lack of spontaneity from his audience members.

Apparently, he is fed up with girls bringing their knickers along in plastic bags to throw at him, rather than whipping them off in a fit of passion.

Tarnished reputations

One rising star who is looking to jet off to America in the near future is Rachel Isaac, whose family live in Maesteg, south Wales.

Isaac has been starring as flirty Trudy in the second series of BBC sitcom The Office, and is about to take a stage role in the Greek tragedy Medea with the Abbey Theatre Company.

The play is set for a Broadway run after a six-week tour of the States.

On the big screen, Christian Bale - fresh from fighting dragons in Reign of Fire - has moved on to his next movie, called Equilibrium.

Charlotte Church is reportedly leaving home

Due out in the States in December, the Chud website had 20 pictures from the sci-fi flick on show (see link on the right).

There is also a review of the movie, and any write-up which begins with the words "you have to see this film" cannot be all bad.

After being thrown out of a nightclub, Noel Sullivan, formerly from Hear'Say, has been dying to repair his tarnished reputation with a week on Cardiff's Red Dragon FM.

But there has been another blow to the image of Noel's fellow Cardiffian Charlotte Church, who performed at the closing ceremony of the International Festival of Musical Theatre in Llandaff Cathedral on Sunday evening.

Last week, Now magazine ran pictures of her smoking, alongside the inspired headline - "Vice of an angel".

Now the Welsh Mirror reports she is moving in with her aspiring DJ boyfriend, who was recently accused of trying to sell secrets of their relationship to the national newspapers.

According to the paper, she is moving into a terraced house in Cardiff's docklands, where her 18-year-old boyfriend lives with his father.