January 28, 2002
Dancin' till dawn
By LOUIS B. HOBSON
HOLLYWOOD -- Ben Chaplin likes his salsa on tacos not on the dance floor.

After they had wrapped their new thriller Murder By Numbers, Chaplin and Sandra Bullock went out for a night on the town.

"Sandra took me to Moomba in L.A. She tried to get me out on the floor to do some salsa dancing. She's a great dancer and insisted she could teach me but she couldn't drag me out there. I can't do any of those Latin dances."

Finally the music switched to disco.

"When it comes to good old fashioned disco, I can give Sandra a run for her money," recalls Chaplin, who hails from England.

He and Bullock were dancing up a storm until another Brit cut in.

"George Michael, who we hadn't noticed was in the club came dancing over to us," recalls Chaplin. "Suddenly, Sandy and George were bogeying and it was like the 1980s revisited. I was no match for George, so I became a wallflower again."

In director Barbet Schroeder's Murder By Numbers, Bullock and Chaplin play FBI agents investigating two high school seniors who are determined to get away with a series of murders.

Friday, Chaplin stars opposite Nicole Kidman in the romantic thriller Birthday Girl.