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Rocking for the Rain Forest...

The over-50 set energized the crowd at the benefit for the Rainforest Foundation at Carnegie Hall on Tuesday.

While Tom Jones, who sang his 1964 hit It's Not Unusual', was a surprise hit of the evening, everyone also seemed to be talking about how great Tina Turner looked.

Watching Ms. Turner strut around the stage in a black leather cat suit with a revealing halter top, it was difficult to imagine her in her next screen role, playing the Mayor of New York in "Last Action Hero," the Arnold Schwarzenegger film due out in June.

What was difficult for Ms. Turner, however, was remembering that she had already filmed her cameo. "That wasn't me," she said, when asked about the role at a dinner party after the concert at Tavern on the Green. Memory was served only after she conferred with an associate at her table. "I was in and out of there," she explained. "It was very quick."

Ms. Turner was then quickly out of there again, escorted by a bodyguard.

Sir Ian McKellen, another over-50 performer at the event, ambled about the party without such protection. The actor, who read a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins in the first half of the evening and shook a tambourine during the finale, was in town shooting the film version of "Six Degrees of Separation."

"I'm playing the South African called Geoffrey, whom the couple are trying to sell a painting to," he said, mistakenly calling the movie " Three Degrees of Separation."

Perhaps the world is getting that small. Like Ms. Turner, Sir Ian has a small role in "Last Action Hero."

"I play Death," the actor said, "a slightly better part than the Mayor of New York."

(c) New York Times by Degen Pener