Nine Inch Nails lynchpin Trent Reznor is an unlikely inclusion in Time magazine’s annual list of the 25 most influential Americans. “Reznor’s music is filthy, brutish stuff, oozing with aberrant sex, suicidal melancholy and violent misanthropy,” claims the accompanying article, “but to the depressed, his songs proffer pop’s perpetual message of hope.” Other entertainment figures in the list are producer Kenneth ‘Babyface’ Edmonds, X-Files creator Chris Carter, movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, actress and talk show host Rosie O’Donnell, and comic strip hero Dilbert.

Ice Cube is facing legal action from US radio personality Carolyn Bennett-Speed, who claims the rapper sampled part of her speech at a broadcast industry convention, and used it without permission in his “objectionable” song, “Fuck ‘Em”.

Jacques Agnant, once part of Tupac Shakur’s entourage, is suing the late rapper’s estate, claiming his was libelled in the song “Against All Odds”. Agnant says the track accused him of being a police informant, and thereby put his life in danger.

The Beastie Boys are in early talks to make their feature film debut in the comedy We Can Do This, directed by Spike Jonze, the man behind their “Sabotage” video. A source close to the group describes the project as “a lot like Woody Allen’s Zelig crossed with a parody of a 70s cop show”.

Grunge pioneers Soundgarden announce they are splitting up, amid press speculation of physical fights between members on tour.

Depeche Mode’s first release in four years, Ultra, debuts in the UK albums chart at Number One, their tenth successive Top Ten entry. The record bows in at Number Five in the US.

Dustin Hoffman files a $5 million lawsuit against the publishers of Los Angeles magazine, whom he claims altered a publicity still from the film Tootsie to show him wearing a series of different dresses. Court papers alleged that the Oscar-winner was “converted into an involuntary clothing model without pay.”

Film industry unions lobby for a change in work practices, after an assistant cameraman on the set of the time travel comedy Pleasantville is killed driving home. Brent Hershman, aged 35, had worked 19 hours straight on the movie when he fell asleep at the wheel and crashed into a telephone pole. Another member of the movie crew said: “After working that many hours, you’re clearly going to be impaired. You might as well be drunk.”

Pressure group the Campaign For Tobacco-Free Kids lambasts Hollywood stars who regularly smoke on the big screen. Winona Ryder is singled out, for lighting up in four movies in the last three years. “The characters I play are not always perfect heroes,” she responds.

French painter, writer and filmmaker Roland Topor dies, aged 59. His 1964 novel The Tenant was made into a film in 1976 by Roman Polanski, and his own big screen work included Fantastic Planet, Dead Time and The Snails. As an actor, he appeared as vampire’s henchman Renfield in Werner Herzog’s 1979 film, Nosferatu.

The remains of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and LSD guru Dr Timothy Leary are among 22 sets of human ashes blasted into orbit as part of the first “space funerals”. The airtight cylinders left earth on the Pegasus rocket at 6,200 miles per hour, and are expected to circle the globe for about ten years before falling back to earth.