A cranky Kevin Costner and a resilient Uma Thurman: 5 juicy stories from Maureen Dowd’s ‘Notorious’ interviews

Maureen Dowd has been profiling the rich, famous and powerful for the New York Times since the 1980s. As she writes in her new collection, “Notorious,” “I’ve always been fascinated by how powerful people wield power, how charismatic people create charisma, how talented people nurture or squander their talent.” She has a knack for asking questions that go right up to the edge of intrusion but instead yield thoughtful, intimate insights.

Notorious” features conversations with everyone from Uma Thurman to Elon Musk, Paul Newman to Mel Brooks. We picked five of the juiciest tidbits and anecdotes.

“They say life is just a series of snapshots,” Dowd writes. “This book certainly is. It’s pioneering, talented, brilliant people at a certain moment in their lives — and those moments can be illuminating.”