March 2, 2006
Agoura Gal Meets Oscar Glitz
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Somewhere between a young Joan Rivers and "Desperate Housewives" actress Eva Longoria, you'll find Adrianna Costa.
On March 5, the Agoura-raised entertainment correspondent will be covering the Academy Awards live for the first time. However, she won't be in a gown hobnobbing with celebrities on the red carpet.
Costa, 24, has worked her way up from a Palm Springs CBS affiliate to CNN Headline News' "Robin & Company" in Atlanta, and this weekend she will be back in the Southland covering Oscar night from the network's Hollywood bureau. She'll get to visit the red carpet, but only in advance to film teasers -- a bit of a tease for Costa herself.
As long as she can remember, Costa has been obsessed with celebrity culture. "It was so fascinating to me. I watched every show you could possibly watch and I read every teen magazine you could possibly read," she said.
Costa knew from a young age that she wanted to be well-known, but her mother's efforts to get her into acting never took. "Acting for me was just never my niche. I'm really good at talking, really good at schmoozing," she said.
In high school she dreamed of becoming an entertainment reporter. After studying broadcast journalism at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Costa worked as an entertainment correspondent for CBS News in Palm Springs, "Access Hollywood," E! and MSNBC.
While she says she doesn't get star-struck during interviews, Costa confessed she'll occasionally be "talent-struck."
"One of the coolest interviews for me was Rob Zombie," she said. "Meeting a Lindsey Lohan or Paris Hilton is not that exciting."
And when it comes Jewish celebs, she'll often use her MOT status to snag a red-carpet interview. "I'll throw out comments about my Jewish mother sometimes," said Costa, who was bat mitzvahed at Etz Chaim in Thousand Oaks.
Even though Costa won't be in the middle of the Oscar action, her hope riffs on the conclusion of the Passover seder: Next year on the red carpet.
"I'm sure I'll be doing it," she said.
