Tattle: Charlie Sheen arrest & charges fuel a burst of shaky-marriage reports

IT'S NICE TO SEE that

Charlie Sheen

has grown up.

The once-troubled actor spent the better part of Christmas Day in a Colorado jail cell and it doesn't seem to have been due to either drugs or hookers.

Unfortunately, Charlie was in the klink because he was booked for investigation of second-degree assault and menacing, both felonies, along with criminal mischief, a misdemeanor.

The person he allegedly assaulted and menaced was his wife, Brooke Mueller, who called 9-1-1 from their house in Aspen.

According to TMZ.com, Brooke later tried to recant her accusation and claimed she was drunk when she made the call.

Results show she was. She tested at .13.

Later said she was pressured into saying she wanted to recant.

Then she stopped cooperating with police.

Then she said Charlie threatened her with a knife.

RadarOnline.com said the pair would be heading to divorce court as the marriage hadn't been going well before the incident.

Aspen attorney Richard Cummins said late Friday that he was representing Sheen in the case.

"I think at the end of the day it will be much ado about nothing," Cummins told the Associated Press. "I don't think there's any criminality about what went on."

Sheen's publicist, Stan Rosenfield, added, "It would benefit everyone not to jump to any conclusion."

(If people didn't jump to conclusions what would become of the Internet?)

But in this case, how can one jump to conclusions? The story changes every few minutes.

RadarOnline.com reported yesterday that Brooke had gotten a restraining order against Charlie.

Charlie's manager, Marc Burg, meanwhile, spoke to RadarOnline and pooh-poohed its divorce story.

"I have spoken to all parties concerned. There are no plans for divorce," Burg said. "They are both deeply upset about what happened and are trying to work things out amicably. They both want to get away from all the sensationalism surrounding what happened and quietly resolve things."

Quietly resolve things? Funny.

* In other domestic disturbances, Jon Gosselin's NYC apartment was ransacked by someone who slashed furniture, stole his TV and left a note pinned to his dresser with a butcher knife while he visited his children for Christmas, his lawyer said yesterday.

Jon was "devastated" by the destruction he found when he returned Saturday, attorney Mark Jay Heller said in a statement.

Heller wouldn't disclose who signed the note or what it said, adding that police were examining it. Police declined comment.

If only police could figure out who might not like Jon Gosselin. Then if they brought five a day in for questioning, they might be able to crack this case in . . . a 1,000 years.

* Proving once again that there's no class in first class, police say Ivana Trump was escorted off a plane in Florida after she became belligerent when children were running and screaming in the aisles.

Authorities say the first ex-wife of Donald Trump cussed at the kids Saturday, and when flight attendants on the New York-bound plane tried to calm her, she became even more aggravated.

Ivana filed for divorce from her fourth husband earlier this month so maybe she's still a little cranky.

You'd think someone who lived with The Donald would be used to screaming.

Cruz in control

Penelope Cruz is starring in two films this holiday season, Rob Marshall's "Nine" and Pedro Almodovar's "Broken Embraces." In our more serious reportorial guise, we met with Cruz in September at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Cruz came to the world's attention in 1999 in Almodovar's "All About My Mother" and has also worked with the director in "Live Flesh" and "Volver."

She said, "I met Pedro when I was 17 or 18, too young for a script he was writing. But he said he would write something else for me."

In "Broken Embraces," a flashback-filled, suspense drama about love and filmmaking, Cruz said Almodovar would often play the male lead during rehearsals, which put a different type of pressure on her performance in an art-imitates-life type of way.

"He has an eagle eye," she said of her best friend. You cannot lie to him - on or off the set - and he can't lie to me either."

When working with Almodovar, Cruz said, she just wants him to be happy. "He's given me huge amounts of trust," she said.

With all the amazing work she's done for Almodovar, Cruz won her Oscar for her role in the 2008 Woody Allen film, "Vicky Cristina Barcelona."

She said although both directors look for "what is real to them, they are both so different.

"Woody doesn't rehearse and Pedro likes to rehearse for three months," she said.

And Allen, she added, "gives you a huge amount of freedom."

* When we spoke with Hugh Grant in New York two weeks ago for "Did You Hear About the Morgans?" he also talked about his work with Allen in 2000's "Small Time Crooks."

"It's quite difficult to resist" speaking like him when you work with him, Grant said. "It's sort of in the lines when you read them and he's on the set so it's very, very difficult to resist it."

Working with Allen, Grant said, was "utterly fascinating, because I literally revere him. I don't have many gods but he's one of them."

Grant said Allen's films play much better in Europe than they do in America and "In France he's pretty much a saint."

"He's a great lesson in how to make your films travel and that's to keep them as specifically indigenous as you possibly can. As soon as you try to make something international you're dead."

* Happy New Year!

Daily News wire services contributed to this report.

E-mail gensleh@phillynews.com