George Zimmerman has signed a deal to take part in a celebrity boxing match—and hopes his opponent is an African-American hip-hop star, says TMZ.com. Zimmerman, who recently auctioned a painting he made on eBay for $100,000, hopes to capitalize on the attention he gained last year after being acquitted of second-degree murder in the shooting death of unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. Zimmerman said he would donate some of the proceeds of the event—to be held in a secret location and streamed online—to an animal rescue charity. He’s said to be training for the event, and to be negotiating with rapper DMX for a three-round bout. DMX vowed to “beat the living f---’’ out of Zimmerman.
The British actor Benedict Cumberbatch, who played a slave owner in the movie 12 Years a Slave, says he took the role as a form of penance for ancestors who were real slave owners in Barbados. In the 18th century, Cumberbatch’s seventh-great-grandfather was the owner of the Cleland sugar plantation in Barbados, a property that became home to 250 slaves who lived in appalling conditions of brutality, says the Daily Mail (U.K.). The slaves were ruthlessly used to build up the Cumberbatch family fortune—the proceeds of which allegedly helped Benedict attend an elite, $54,000-a-year boarding school in Britain. Cumberbatch says he took the role of a slave owner in 12 Years a Slave as a “sort of apology.”
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