BY MARILYN BECK and STACY JENEL SMITH

"People think when your show is over, your career is over, but I've just been making a transition," says George Lopez -- who's making a rather spectacular one after five years of his self-titled series. Lopez's Dec. 26-31 concert stand at Los Angeles' recently opened 7,100-seat Nokia Theatre sold so well that a sixth show on Dec. 30 was added. He's up for best comedy album Grammy honors for his "America's Mexican." And his "Henry Poole Is Here" indie feature has been accepted into the Sundance Festival.

Moviegoers will see Lopez as never before -- in a serious role. "I play a priest, a father in the Catholic Church. He's calm and patient, very different for me. It was a wonderful opportunity," reports the star.

In the flick, "Luke Wilson's character thinks he's dying and moves back to his old neighborhood. Adriana Barraza of 'Babel' plays the woman next door, who sees an image of Christ in the stucco of his house and brings my character over to see it. She wants me to validate it as a miracle, and he wants me to discredit it. But I can't -- other things happen," says Lopez.

He'll host (it's his second year) the 49th Bob Hope Chrysler Classic pro-am golf tourney Jan. 14-20 in Rancho Mirage. He'll be on hand at the Sundance Festival soon afterward, and certainly at the Jan. 31 Grammys, as well. "This is my second nomination, and I would love to win," he admits. "Growing up, I didn't connect with getting all the pronouns and verbs right. I kind of wrote outside the lines. To win the highest award you can get for a recording of something you've written, after having people think my writing was worthless, well, no achievement outside of my family could mean more to me," he says.

Lopez and his wife, Ann, will enjoy a quiet Christmas at home, and then he'll jump into his latest work stint. He points out with Lopez-style accuracy that the new theater "is now the go-to venue in downtown Los Angeles, part of the whole resurgence there. Once it stopped smelling like pee downtown, you knew good things were happening."

HE WANTS TO TALK: Kevin Nealon has already found his niche in comedy, but the actor tells us, "I suspect that one day, I will have my own show that I will be hosting." Nealon has a busy year ahead of him, with a part in Adam Sandler's "You Don't Mess With the Zohan," the fourth season of "Weeds," stand-up comedy gigs, and a new book being released in June. Nevertheless, he wouldn't mind expanding his repertoire. "I like talk shows, but not on the grand scale that a lot of people do them with a band and such. I always like that one-on-one type, like with Charlie Rose."

Nealon has gotten good practice as a TV emcee by hosting TBS' "Funniest Commercials of the Year: 2007." The one-hour special, airing Dec. 26, is the network's annual celebration of the cleverest and most humorous commercials from the United States and around the world. "You know what? I don't typically like commercials -- I really don't," admits Nealon. "But I love good commercials. During the Super Bowl, I love to sit down and watch those, like a lot of people do. They're like little short films. You don't have to invest a lot of time in them," he notes. "Plus, when you're watching a show where they have sifted through the bad commercials, you know all the ones they show are going to be good."

NEW ORLEANS, THE FINAL FRONTIER: New Orleans seems to have become a running theme in Nichelle Nichols' world. The "Heroes" regular, who plays Nana Dawson in the NBC hit -- a woman who refuses to leave post-Katrina New Orleans -- plays a madam in the Big Easy in the upcoming indie film "Lady Magdalene."

"I'm not only starring in it, but I'm a co-producer," says Nichols, known for her ground-breaking role as Lt. Uhuru on the original "Star Trek." "I play a madam in a New Orleans brothel who moves after Hurricane Katrina to Nevada, the only place brothels are legal. But it's not about the brothel and the madam. It's about possible terrorists using the brothel as a conduit, and the discovery of it, and I wind up helping to capture the bad guy. It's very interesting."

A 'CONSERVATIVE CHRISTMAS': Jessalyn Gilsig of "Nip/Tuck," "Heroes," "Friday Night Lights" and this month's "The Flood" miniseries on the ION channel notes, "I think, like a lot of people, as a family, we'll be having a fairly conservative Christmas at home this year. People are tightening their belts a little bit with the uncertainty in the business. For me, since most of my career is in television, I felt the strike almost overnight. Everything just stopped -- all the shows I've been lucky enough to recur on. But we're very blessed. My heart really goes out to people who are living paycheck to paycheck."

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With reports by Stephanie DuBois and Emily Fortune Feimster.

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Photos of George Lopez by Kevin Winter/Getty Images, Kevin Nealon and "Weeds" co-star Mary-Kate Olsen by Michael Buckner/Getty Images (because you can never have too many gratuitous Olsen twins shots), Nichelle Nichols courtesy of NBC and Jessalyn Gilsig by Stephen Shugerman/Getty Images.