The long and winding divorce of Paul McCartney and Heather Mills McCartney may finally be coming to an end.

The high-profile duo began the first day of what’s expected to be a weeklong proceeding to hash out terms for their long-pending divorce settlement, a payout from McCartney to Mills McCartney that could be the largest in U.K. legal history.

The 40-year-old antimine campaigner was the first to arrive to the hearing Monday at the Family Division of London’s High Court. She wore a gray and black pinstripe skirt suit and a pink blouse, and refused to speak to reporters on her way in. The court warded off the more brazen members of the press corps with a sign warning “No Admittance—Strictly Private.” The windows of the courthouse were also blacked out.

The 65-year-old former Beatle arrived shortly after his soon-to-be ex-wife, also donning a gray pinstripe suit, bidding a quick “good morning” to the news media, though refusing to comment on the proceedings.

McCartney was accompanied by his attorney Fiona Shackleton, who famously represented Prince Charles in his divorce from Princess Diana; Mills McCartney was solo.

The onetime model announced she would be representing herself in the case after firing her legal team (who, coincidentally, had repped Diana in her aforementioned split) last November. The termination came after several PR-misfire interviews on both British and U.S. television in which she railed against the alleged indifference of McCartney to her constant stream of death threats and thoughts of suicide, saying he failed both her and their daughter.

During this week’s face-off, Mills McCartney would be able to cross-examine her ex in front of the court, should he take to the stand—just one of the perks of representing herself.

However, as the entire session is taking place in closed court, it’s unlikely exact terms of any would-be settlement will ever be made public. The only way for the payout to become public knowledge would be if either McCartney or Mills McCartney blab to the press themselves (unlikely in the advent of confidentiality clauses), or if one of them contests the judgment in a court of appeals, in which case all proceedings would be made open to the public.

Any financial settlement itself will be rendered by High Court Judge Hugh Bennett, who will likely hold off on making a final judgment Friday and instead issue his ruling in a written statement.

Both sides have kept mum on any monetary offers in the two years since they separated, save for Mills McCartney’s adamant denial of reports that she’s holding out for more money. She’s expected to rake in a minimum of $50 million in the deal—not bad for just four years of marriage. The couple shares custody of four-year-old daughter Beatrice.

More generous estimates have claimed Mills McCartney may even see a payout of upwards of $100 million.

Although payout seems like massive bank, it would barely dent McCartney’s estimated fortune of $1.6 billion.

In May 2006, the former twosome announced they were amicably ending their four-year marriage. It didn’t take long, however, before all semblance of amicability fell by the wayside, replaced by exceeding amounts of acrimony that played out in the headlines. The negative campaigning came to a head last October, when Mills McCartney revealed on Britain’s GMTV that she had received “worse press than a pedophile or a murderer” and had at one point contemplated thoughts of suicide.

Her media manager resigned in the wake of the ill-advised press tour, and Mills McCartney was forced to fire her legal team, claiming she had gone into debt and could no longer afford to shell out for the attorneys.

Since the split, neither party has formally stepped out with a new partner, though McCartney has been linked with a string of women, most recently the actress Rosanna Arquette. (Both McCartney and Arquette said they are just friends.)

Meanwhile, McCartney’s morning court date explains his absence from Sunday’s Los Angeles-held Grammy Awards. The 50th anniversary ceremony featured a major tribute to the Fab Four, courtesy of performances from Love, the Cirque de Soleil show based on the Beatles’ canon, and Across the Universe, the Julie Taymor film set to reworked Beatles tunes.

In his stead, fellow former Beatle Ringo Starr pardoned his bandmate’s absence and accepted the Grammy for Best Compilation Soundtrack for Love on behalf of McCartney, himself and the two late Beatles, George Harrison and John Lennon.

Roy Scheider, the jagged-nosed actor who brought complexity to tough-guy roles in such films as “The French Connection,” “Jaws” and “All That Jazz,” and was also known for political activism off the set, died Sunday afternoon at a hospital in Little Rock, Ark. He was believed to be 75, and had been battling a form of blood cancer for three years.

Scheider, who lived in Sag Harbor, N.Y., died at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences hospital, which specializes in the treatment of multiple myeloma, a form of cancer that affects blood cells. He died of complications from the disease, said Leslie Taylor, a university spokeswoman.

Taylor said Scheider had been receiving treatments at the hospital’s Myeloma Institute for Research and Therapy in recent years. On its website, the institute says that it has kept patients alive for six to seven years after diagnosis, about twice the national average.

In a career spanning four decades, Scheider appeared in more than 60 films, as well as in numerous roles on stage and television. But his most acclaimed roles came in a span of eight years in the 1970s, beginning with “The French Connection” in 1971.

He probably will be best remembered for his role as Martin Brody, the water-shy police chief in “Jaws” (1975) who uttered the immortal line: “You’re gonna need a bigger boat,” after seeing the size of the shark. He once lamented that the role “will be on my tombstone.”

His favorite role, he said, was playing choreographer Joe Gideon, a thinly disguised stand-in for Broadway choreographer Bob Fosse, in “All That Jazz” (1979) — a role for which the former boxer had to learn to dance. “That will always be my favorite film,” he told the San Jose Mercury News in 1999. “But I never worked harder in my life. I felt I had to prove myself to the dance company. I didn’t want to misrepresent them. . . . I was in relatively good shape. But at the end of the day, I’d return to the Holiday Inn with my Tiger Balm.”

That role earned Scheider some of his best reviews. Pauline Kael would later write in the New Yorker that Scheider “made you feel you were watching Fosse himself. It wasn’t an impersonation; it was as if Fosse had taken over his body, from the inside. That’s the only role in which Scheider had an exciting presence, and it wasn’t his; we seemed to be looking right through him to Fosse.”

And then-Times critic Charles Champlin wrote that Scheider “is a wonderment, a dancing dynamo whose portrayal of this life-splurging, death-obsessed man poses the Academy voters another mind-boggling decision.”

It was not a decision that came down in his favor — Scheider never won an Oscar. He was nominated as best actor for “All That Jazz,” but lost to Dustin Hoffman in “Kramer vs. Kramer.” His only other nomination was for best supporting actor in “The French Connection,” the movie that launched him as a star.

Scheider played Det. Eddie Russo, the abrasive, street-smart partner of “Popeye” Doyle, played by Gene Hackman. The two New York narcotics cops were on the trail of an international drug gang that has been shipping heroin from Marseille, France, to New York. In later years, Scheider delighted in telling the story of how he got the part by sheer luck while auditioning for a stage role in New York. The stage part called for an actor who was at least 6 feet tall.

“Every time I started reading, the director sitting out there in the dark in the theater would interrupt and ask me how tall I was,” Scheider recalled in a 2001 interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer. “I told him I was 5-foot-10, but he asked me to stand back-to-back with another actor. I lost it, and flung the script into the darkness. It so happened the casting director for ‘The French Connection’ was sitting in on the auditions and watching. He told me later he knew he had found Popeye’s partner.”

Scheider was reportedly born Nov. 10, 1932, in Orange, N.J., although in some interviews he indicated he was born in 1935. He grew up in the New Jersey suburbs outside New York City. He was, by his own account, a sickly, pudgy child, and spent a good deal of time bedridden. Among his greatest delights as a child, he once said, was going to the Saturday matinees at the movie theater in Irvington, N.J., eating popcorn and watching movies.

From the age of 8, he said, he worked weekends pumping gas at his father’s service station, a job he loathed. “It’s true that I had more pocket money than my friends, but I also had more responsibilities,” he said in a 1975 interview with The Times. “I was driving cars around that place when I was 11. But what I really wanted to do was go swimming with the other kids.”

His health improved in his late teens, and when he was about 17 he began boxing at the local YMCA. Under the tutelage of a retired welterweight, Scheider entered the Golden Gloves competition in Elizabeth, N.J. He won one fight and lost the next. In the process, he got his nose broken, creating the slightly off-kilter profile that lent him authenticity in his later tough-guy roles.

After a stint in the Air Force, Scheider began acting at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., and by the time he graduated, he knew he wanted to be an actor. He spent the next seven or eight years doing classical theater.

His film debut was in Del Tenney’s “Curse of the Living Corpse” (1964). He won attention for his role in “Klute” in 1971, followed months later by “The French Connection.” Among other notable films, he appeared in “Marathon Man” (1976), “Sorcerer” (1977), “Jaws 2″ (1978), “Still of the Night” (1982), “2010″ (1984) and “The Russia House” (1990).

For decades, Scheider had been active politically, participating in protests against the Vietnam and Iraq wars and for environmental issues on Long Island. In 2003, he was among a group of protesters who laid down on a Long Island highway in a symbolic reference to the casualties of war.

In December 2004, while seeing a doctor for a routine examination, he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. Ten months later, speaking about the experience on “The Today Show,” he said he considered himself lucky. “Every single day, it’s a miracle,” he said.

Scheider’s first marriage, which ended in divorce, was to film editor Cynthia Scheider. He is survived by his second wife, documentary filmmaker Brenda King, and three children, Maximillia Scheider, Molly Scheider and Christian Verrier Scheider.

mitchell.landsberg

Sick of squinting at the computer? Given up on books? Lost faith in humankind because of reality TV? Fear not — your favorite shows are coming back, some as soon as this spring.

The Writers Guild of America is set to vote on the terms of an agreement with the major Hollywood studios and producers tomorrow, marking the end of their nearly three-month-long strike. But industry insiders said it’s all a formality. Come Wednesday, they’ll be scribbling, tapping, and scripting away.

“Everyone’s going back to work — TV networks are looking at their schedules, seeing how soon can they get shows back on, seeing if they’ll bring back shows in the summer,” said Ben Grossman, Los Angeles bureau chief for Broadcasting & Cable. “Now that they know that writers can officially begin writing again on Wednesday, they can finally put their flag in the ground and begin figuring things out.”

Most importantly, they will figure out when and if new episodes of some of TV’s most beloved shows will return. Here’s what to expect:

First, as early as Wednesday: late night talk shows that didn’t strike a side deal with their writers.

Second, potentially by April: half-hour sitcoms including “The Office” and “How I Met Your Mother.”

Third, possibly by late spring: hit series with a huge following, a la “Gossip Girl.”

Fourth, in hibernation until next fall or winter: dramas including “Heroes” and “24.”

And then there are the shows that may not ever see the glow of the screen again because of the strike: freshman series including “Chuck” and “Pushing Daises” and the critically acclaimed but ratings-sagging “Friday Night Lights.”

Below, ABCNEWS.com’s guide to what’s coming back when — and what may not survive the strike at all.

Upper East Siders, rejoice: “Gossip Girl” could be back as early as this spring. “The show is probably the CW’s top priority,” NPR TV critic David Bianculli said of the freshman drama about New York City prep school partiers. “Whatever they can get back on, they will, because they do not want to lose the young viewers who really enjoy that show.” According to Georg Szalai, New York bureau chief for The Hollywood Reporter, it’s in the CW’s interest to satisfy fans’ rabid demand for more Blair/Serena drama. “We might see some new episodes as early as this spring,” he said. “It could be either before May or even June/July. It would be unusual, but it could happen.”

but only if the singer’s mom, Lynne gives the go-ahead first, it has been revealed.

Britney’s mom is currently looking after Sean Preston, two, and one-year-old Jayden James, while Federline  attends New York Fashion Week with the likes of P Diddy.

A source said: “K-Fed and Lynne get on really well. He hopes Lynne can bring Britney round to see sense so that she can have some face time with her kids.

“He knows however dazed and confused Brit gets, she’ll always love those two kids with all her heart.”

Meawhile, the Toxic singer’s dad has been given the power to sack the star’s manager.

A Los Angeles court granted Jamie Spears’ request to fire Britney’s business manager Howard Grossman during a hearing on Thursday, in which he requested additional powers over his troubled daughters affairs.

Jamie Spears took control of Britney’s money and assets after his daughter was committed into a psychiatric ward at the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles last week.

Britney’s parents reportedly dislike Grossman because of his close-relationship with the star’s self-proclaimed manager Sam Lutfi, who they claim drugged their daughter.

Documents released Friday show Grossman was served with the legal documents on Thursday afternoon.

In the papers Los Angeles Superior Court commissioner Reva Goetz ordered Howard Grossman to ‘turn over all documents, records and assets relating to Britney Spears.’

The order came after Goetz held an emergency closed-door hearing brought by Jamie Spears and lawyer Andrew Wallet, who is part of Britney’s conservatorship.

Under the powers of the conservatorship order, Jamie Spears is able to restrict the visitors Britney receives and has the right to approve contracts.

Spears parents hope the measures approved by the court will allow them to calm the craziness that has surrounded the pop star.

Britney discharged herself from the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles on Wednesday February 6 after doctors ruled she did not pose a danger to herself or to others.

After leaving she was pursued by crowds of paparazzi and television helicopters on a wild chase around Los Angeles before meeting up with her British pap boyfriend Adnan Galib.

The decision by doctors to let Britney leave the mental health facility infuriated the star’s parents.

In a statement they said: “As parents of an adult child in the throws of a mental health crisis, we were extremely disappointed this morning to learn that over the recommendation of her treating psychiatrist, our daughter Britney was released from the hospital that could best care for her and keep her safe.

“We are deeply concerned about our daughter’s safety and vulnerability and we believe her life is presently at risk.”

“There are conservatorship orders in place created to protect our daughter that are being blatantly disregarded.

“We ask only that the court’s orders be enforced so that a tragedy may be averted.”

The country star said her boobs - which she’s nicknamed ‘Shock’ and ‘Awe’ - have made life easier for her. And she confessed to having work done on her assets to keep people happy.

She said: “They do seem like public property in a way.

“They served me well - I don’t know if I’m supporting them or if they’re supporting me.”

Dolly, 62, tells American women’s magazine Ladies’ Home Journal: “I’ve always had nice ones.

“But of course I’ve had them jacked up a bit.

“And they’re part of the persona. It always takes a bit of pressure off me.”