Sideshow: Lawless, Greenpeace warrior

Lucy Lawless, 43, was arrested Monday after making a mighty display of her Xena: Warrior Princess prowess when she and six fellow Greenpeace activists stormed onto an oil-drilling ship and occupied it for four days to prevent it from leaving a New Zealand dock.

Cops removed the Spartacus star and her fellow environmental gladiators from atop a 174-foot drilling tower where they had been perched since early Friday. The ship was stopped from its planned run over the weekend to drill five exploratory wells in the Arctic.

Lawless says she is trying to raise awareness about Arctic oil drilling. "I've got three kids. My sole biological reason for being on this planet is to ensure that they can flourish, and they can't do that in a filthy, degraded environment," she tells the Associated Press. "We need to stand up while we still can."

Lawless & Co. have been charged with burglary and are due in court on Thursday.

Sunday's broadcast of the Billy Crystal-hosted Academy Awards on ABC drew 39.3 mil viewers, according to preliminary Nielsen ratings. That's a sad 4 percent increase from last year. The 2011 show, cohosted by James Franco and Anne Hathaway, was watched by 37.9 million viewers.

Natalie Portman &

Benjamin Millepied . . .

. . . are married? The engaged couple, who in June welcomed a son, Aleph, were photographed wearing wedding bands at the Oscars. Did they wed in secret?

The Vanity Fair Oscar party Sunday was spiced up quite a bit by two beauties who couldn't keep their hands off each other - and in front of family members to boot.

Bradley Cooper, who came with his mum, Gloria, and his raffish new mustache, made frequent amorous contact with Zoe Saldana's lips, which were chaperoned by Zoe's sis, Mariel. Zoe showed "affection for her new beau by rubbing his back and hugging him over the course of the night," reports the New York Daily News.

TMZ says producers are working hard to release Whitney Houston's last picture, Sparkle, before it is leaked on the Web.

The eagerly anticipated pic, a remake of the 1976 Irene Cara film, is due in August. It's inspiring megabuzz. "Whitney did an amazing job," her costar Derek Luke tells MTV News, "so I can't wait for people to see it and there's no great way to go out, but what a performance she had."

Uma Thurman, 41, is pregnant with her third baby - her first with her current beau, financier Arpad Busson. Her rep confirmed it to People mag on Monday after a furious flurry of fevered fancies, fantasies, and excogitations forced her camp to respond.

It would be the third child for Uma, who has two children with ex-hub Ethan Hawke: Maya Thurman Hawke, 13, and son Levon Green Hawke, 10. The Kill Bill star (yes, she's making a second sequel!) carefully hid her growing belly in recent appearances.

Unnamed Insider tells Life & Style Weekly the "usually skinny" U-Thurm "has the cutest little [baby] bump and a glow about her." Hard to tell, since Uma glows always.

Sean Young (Blade Runner) is furious after security guards strong-armed her at the post-Oscar bash Sunday. "I was just standing by the little line" outside the Governors Ball, Sean told People Monday. "Wasn't bothering anybody." Sean says she was falsely accused of trying to crash the do. A guard "grabbed my arm and he started pulling me," she says. "I turned around and I was pulling my arm away - and I struck him." She was taken to a nearby police station and booked.

"They need to make a public apology on behalf of their security guard," Sean says.

Jennifer Aniston has a new puppy named Sophie. The name is important. "We were [at the shelter] for three hours," she tells Jay Leno. "I was almost walking out with three puppies. . . . That's why we named her Sophie, because it was [like] Sophie's Choice. I was crying - it was so hard." The Holocaust film Sophie's Choice stars Meryl Streep as a mother who is forced by a doctor at Auschwitz to choose which of her two children will be executed and which will live with her in the camp.

Ryan Seacrest says he was as shocked as anyone by Sacha Baron Cohen's Oscar-night stunt. Dressed as a Saddam Husseinian dictator and flanked by hottie female soldiers, Cohen held an urn, which, he said, contained "my dear friend and tennis partner, Kim Jong-il." He spilled the contents on Ryan after saying he (Cohen) was wearing a suit by designer John Galliano, complemented by socks from Kmart. Galliano was convicted in France last year for anti-Semitic speech.

  Bee Gees singer Robin Gibb, 62, who is being treated for colon and liver cancer, is back in the hospital after a "setback," says London's Daily Mail. . . . Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, will judge a contest among six shoe design students at De Montfort University in Leicester, England. The winning design will be worn by Her Royal Cuteness herself.

Rupert Murdoch's media empire, News International, has settled a lawsuit filed by singer Charlotte Church, who said Murdoch's now-defunct News of the World tabloid published 33 stories about her using information hacked off her family's phones. The company will pay Church $951,000. Church says the ordeal "has sickened and disgusted me."