Ice Queen Myth, Melted

We kinda hoped Marcia Cross would be the icy, perfectionist control freak she plays on "Desperate Housewives" -- fun, in a Joan Crawford kind of way. But no, turns out the striking redhead comes across all sane and smart.

Get this: She's a Hollywood star with a master's degree in psychology. "I'm very passionate about it," she told our colleague Marissa Newhall. "My main interest in life is people." The Juilliard grad, 45, left her gig on "Melrose Place" in 1997 to pursue her master's from Antioch University at Los Angeles. She interned at a California counseling center, but kept acting and landed the role of Bree Van De Kamp -- which made her a household name.

Thanks to the writers' strike, Cross had time to appear on Capitol Hill yesterday lobbying for a bill that would end "drive-through" mastectomies, giving patients more time to recover in the hospital. "I feel like it's such a small thing to come to Washington and put a face to this," she said.

Good-Time Charlie: No Birthday Blues

There was a nice retro feel at the 80th birthday party Tuesday for veteran flack Charlie Brotman. All kinds of cool back-in-the-day friends/former clients were there at Les Halles -- Dexter Manley, Mark Russell, D.C.'s erstwhile disco kingpin Michael O'Harro. Also: lots of journalists.

We asked Brotman -- a longtime announcer for inaugural parades and Senators games, and the guy who made Sugar Ray Leonard a household name -- how the PR biz has changed in D.C.

"It used to be about friends working together, doing each other favors. I would tell you, 'Hey, can we talk?' and you'd say, 'Well, Charlie, what are you selling?' " he said. "But it's so corporate these days."

Things used to be so cozy, in fact, that the founder of Brotman Winter Fried Communications said he has a pass that lets him walk into The Washington Post at any time. Really? He rummaged through his wallet but couldn't find it immediately. (To our friends in public relations: The answer to your next question is, No, you can't.)

LOVE, ETC.

Wed: Marty Royle, 29, lead singer of D.C.'s own next-big-thing rock band Washington Social Club, to Taylor Thompson, 31, on Jan. 12 at Western Presbyterian Church in the District. She's press secretary for Bono's D.C. policy shop DATA -- and also WSC's manager. At the Tabard Inn reception, the groom serenaded his bride with a song he wrote for the occasion ("easier than making a speech," he said). The two met through friends in 2002 and reconnected when Royle moved back to D.C. a year ago; he proposed with his grandmother's ring at the zoo in September. On Tuesday, Thompson told her rock-star boss about taking her rock-star husband's name. Said Bono: "Taylor Royle? Too many R's to be a band name. Sounds more like high fashion. You should start a clothing line."

THIS JUST IN . . .

Lil Wayne was arrested and briefly jailed yesterday after Border Patrol agents in Arizona found drugs on his tour bus. The rapper (real name Dwayne Michael Carter Jr., a.k.a. "Weezy") was stopped at a checkpoint near Yuma, where a drug-sniffing dog found marijuana, cocaine, ecstasy and drug paraphernalia. No formal charges yet; next court date is Friday.

Carla Bruni is "not yet" married to Nicolas Sarkozy but will tie the knot with the French president soon, she told Liberation newspaper. The Italian model called reports that they secretly wed last week a "hurricane of madness" and said she would not travel with Sarkozy on his official visit to India at week's end -- which ended rumors they would announce their marriage during a visit to the Taj Mahal.