Kim Basinger joins ‘Fifty Shades Darker’

CEBU, Philippines - E! News has confirmed that 62-year-old actress Kim Basinger has closed a deal to join the cast of the highly anticipated “Fifty Shades of Grey sequel,” “Fifty Shades Darker.”

As all of the fans can already guess, Basinger will take on the part of Elena Lincoln, Christian Grey’s business partner and, more importantly, former love interest who first introduced him into the world of S&M.

This won’t be the first time Basinger takes on a big screen erotica. She first came on the scene back in 1986 with “9 1/2 Weeks,” where she played an art gallery assistant who gets thrown into a whirlwind full of leather and bondage with a Wall Street trader, played by Mickey Rourke.

“Fifty Shades Darker,” which is slated to begin production in mid-February, is scheduled for release on February 2017.

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Leo meets the Pope

Leonardo DiCaprio enjoyed a private 15-minute meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican Thursday.

The actor arrived at 11:15 a.m. and was accompanied by his father, George DiCaprio, and the global fundraising chair for the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, Milutin Gatsby.

“Your Holiness, thank you for granting me this private audience with you,” DiCaprio said in Italian as he arrived in the Apostolic Palace and kissed the pope’s ring. The two discussed the star’s charitable foundation and how they can work together on climate change.

“Leo has been inspired about the pope’s green message,” a source tells E! News. “Milutin Gatsby set it all up.”

Speaking in English, DiCaprio offered the pontiff a book of works by the 15th-century Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch and showed him the reproduction of the artist’s “Garden of Earthly Delights” that hung over his crib as an infant. The triptych depicts Adam and Eve in the first panel, a landscape in the center panel, and a vision of hell in the third panel.

“As a child I didn’t quite understand what it all meant, but through my child’s eyes it represented a planet, the utopia we had been given, the overpopulation, excesses,” the actor said, “and the third panel we see a blackened sky that represents so much to me of what’s going on in the environment.”

The Oscar nominee gave him a check from the environmental philanthropy he started in 1998 to use for a charity “close to your heart.” Francis, in turn, gave the actor a leather-bound copy of “Laudato Si,” published in 2015, plus a copy of one of his earlier works, “Evangelii Gaudium,” published in 2013.

Last year, DiCaprio, 41, was honored for his philanthropic efforts at the Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he donated $15 million to environmental projects. He also announced partnerships with environmental groups focused on conservation and sustainability.

DiCaprio isn’t the first Hollywood star to meet the pope, of course. A year ago, Angelina Jolie travelled to the Vatican to meet him after the screening of her film “Unbroken.” And in September, while visiting the U.S., the pope attended the World Meeting of Families event, where he met singer Andrea Bocelli, comic Jim Gaffigan, musician Aretha Franklin and actor Mark Wahlberg. (FREEMAN)