There were no flying roundhouse kicks, but "Matrix" star Keanu Reeves did turn on his charm Tuesday in an L.A. court as he defended himself against a paparazzo.

Taking the stand to deny he'd intentionally knocked over snapper Alison Silva with his 1996 Porsche, Reeves grinned at jurors and seemed to channel his slacker character in "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure."

When asked to estimate the height of the car he was driving the March 2007 night he allegedly injured Silva, Reeves threw up his hands and quipped, "I haven't been calibrated."

The "Speed" star said he slowly moved his Porsche forward to nudge Silva out of the way. But Reeves argued, "to my recollection, I didn't hit him. I (saw) his legs cross and he (started) to kind of stumble."

Keanu, who testified for an hour, asserted that it's "common sense" to get out of the way when someone starts a car.

The 28-year-old paparazzo said he had spotted Reeves in West Hollywood and followed him to Palos Verdes, The New York Daily News' Nancy Dillon reports. Silva said he considered hiding in a construction site's Porta-Potty until Reeves looked over his shoulder and saw him.

"In the (paparazzi) biz, he is considered a shark . . . hard to get . . . if he sees you, he'll try to hide himself," Silva told jurors.

Even Reeves laughed when Silva said his hope was that he'd catch the elusive star with a new girlfriend.

"I was nervous," Silva admitted about the moment Reeves exited the medical facility and it was time for him to start snapping. He said he fumbled with equipment that wasn't working properly and didn't think he was blocking Reeves when the Porsche began to move forward.

"The bumper of the car hit my right knee," Silva, originally from Brazil, told the panel. "I don't remember myself stumbling with my own feet. . . . I went backward on my hand."

Silva's lawyer said in his opening statement that the photographer already has $40,000 in medical bills from the accident and needs $50,000 more for bone-graft surgery to fix his broken wrist.

Reeves' lawyer said a doctor will testify that Silva's wrist injury could be from his youth, when he was an avid soccer player. The trial is expected to run through Friday.

Reeves conceded the shutterbug hadn't tried to follow him into the Palos Verdes medical facility, where he was visiting a family member. He quipped that the pap "didn't shoot any flaming arrows, either."

WITH CHARITY, MIKE MYERS FINDS AWESOME POWERS

Put Austin Powers' crooked teeth on him, or Dr. Evil's skin head, and Mike Myers is a laugh riot. But without his disguises, he admitted Monday night at The Box, "I'm actually very shy.

"I'm an intermittent extrovert," the comic said at a benefit for Only Make Believe, a charity which, appropriately, gives children in 40 New York hospitals a wardrobe and props to distract them from their illnesses.

"I am of English heritage, and I was unprepared for anything in life involving emotions," he explained, reading from prepared remarks.

Still, Myers said that when he went to see some young patients put on a show at the Rusk Medical Center, "I went in . . . very cynical. I came out crying like a baby."

The show even touched Box impresario Simon Hammerstein. "He so bought into the reality of the show that I saw him pick up (decorative) stars and put them in his pockets," said Myers. "The last time I saw him do that, it was at 4 a.m. in one of the back spaces of The Box. With members of the adult-film industry."

Mind you, none of these heartfelt sentiments slowed down the usual debauchery at The Box, and luckily so. The event raised $175,000.

Myers added, "I have acquired the rights to that kids' show, and am making it into a $150 million picture. None of the original cast. All of their original ideas, though. Thus proving I am English."

SIDE DISH

Black Entertainment Television head Debra Lee had even the most buttoned-up mogul acting all street Tuesday at the Center for Communication roast in her honor. Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman rapped, "Kickin' it old school with a gangsta lean with my peeps is still fresh, mos' def!" Lee herself toasted Barack Obama, quipping: "I hope Obama marks the end of white presidents in America. Because you know what they say . . . once you go black, you never go back!" . . .

Too bad for the Democrats that British billionaire Richard Branson can't vote (or donate) here. "Americans need the world to view them differently," the Virgin Group CEO tells us. "It's an embarrassment to be an American traveling the world. Barack Obama can put that right." . . .

Amy Lumet, the extra-buxom daughter of director Sidney, is still loyal to John McCain, with whom she became close in the '90s while working in his Senate office. Despite tabloid reporters loitering outside her California home to ask her about the candidate, Lumet proudly displays a McCain poster in her window. . . .

They call themselves the Williams Sisters, but our New York Daily News colleague Dave Candler admits that he and his bandmates are all blokes, last time they checked anyway. On Sunday, they play Arlene's Grocery in Manhattan, and, believe us, they rock as hard as Venus and Serena serve.

With Sean Evans and Shallon Lester. Edited by Lance D. Debler.

(Got a hot tip? Send confidential e-mail to rushmolloy@nydailynews.com)

"HISTORY IS nothing but a pack of tricks that we play upon the dead," said Voltaire.

THE LUSCIOUS Welsh beauty Catherine Zeta-Jones and Australia's juiciest slab of meat, Hugh Jackman, are readying themselves to play an eyebrow-raising "trick" upon several dead figures of history.

We do mean the fabled, ambitious Queen of Egypt, Cleopatra, and her dissolute Roman conquest and second husband, Mark Antony.

Zeta-Jones has been asked to play Cleo in a "rock n' roll" version of the queen's story. Jackman would be Antony, undone by his passion and his love of a good time.

History and movie fans know that Cleopatra's first husband, Julius Caesar, met an untimely end inside Rome's Senate, stabbed by good friends who feared his growing power as dictator. They thought this was a noble deed, but Rome went on to de-construct the Republic anyway and suffer maniacs like Octavian, Nero and Caligula. (They just couldn't read the cow entrails properly, I guess!)

There have been three famous onscreen Cleos. Claudette Colbert, the sexiest and most modern, in Cecil B. DeMille's 1934 epic, Vivien Leigh, an exquisite minx in the 1945 screen version of George Bernard Shaw's "Caesar and Cleopatra" and but of course, Elizabeth Taylor in the infamous 1963 production that took three years to complete, and all but ruined 20th Century Fox. The Joe Mankiewicz movie was not the financial bomb of legend -- in fact it was a huge hit. But it simply cost so much that in 1963 there was no way the studio could recoup. (Miss Taylor, who had a piece of the profits pie, made about $7 million, and also won herself a fifth and sixth husband -- Richard Burton. She saw it as a win-win situation.)

The Zeta-Jones/Jackman film will be enlivened with music written by the indie rock band Guided By Voices. Steven Soderbergh, who put Catherine through her paces in "Traffic" is to direct.

Sounds rather wacky to me, but Catherine hasn't been in a musical since her Oscar-winning turn in "Chicago" and Jackman has displayed his singing/dancing chops only on Broadway, in "The Boy From Oz." So, why not?

Also, Catherine's hubby, Michael Douglas, is supposed to begin filming "Liberace" soon. Given that both Cleo and Libby had a flair for fashion overstatement, maybe Mr. and Mrs. Douglas can share costumes? It's the movies -- you can suspend disbelief!

THE NEW James Bond thriller, "Quantum of Solace," opens today in London and premieres in the United States on Nov. 14. If it even comes near the gross on "Casino Royale" it will be a smash. (But of course, the producers want "Quantum" to double and triple that; in show biz you've got to keep topping yourself. There's no, "Whew, I've made it, I can relax!")

And what of Daniel Craig, the rugged blond actor who everybody said was too rugged and too blond to be a believable 007? Well, of course, he was/is terrific. Many critics venture to say he is more convincing than Sean Connery, the original stud with a license to kill.

And it seems the readers of In Touch magazine agree. The editors polled their readers, asking who was the hottest Bond -- Craig got an enthusiastic 57 percent nod, Pierce Brosnan was way down at 23 percent and the icon himself, Sean, a piddling 20 percent.

I have to wonder if these results are the result of familiarity, publicity and the young demographic of In Touch readers? Also, the magazine left out the divine Roger Moore, who made seven Bond movies!

Not to mention Timothy Dalton, and the unfairly trashed George Lazenby, who played Bond in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service." Then Sean Connery came back, thicker and slower, but still appealing enough to make his final Bond movies very successful.

SPEAKING OF Sean Connery, I bet you think his big movie splash was 1962's "Dr. No"? Wrong. Maybe you remember "Another Time, Another Place," with Lana Turner in 1958? Nope. Nobody saw that one.

Sean Connery actually caught Hollywood's eye in a 1959 Disney film, "Darby O'Gill and the Little People." It was a fantasy musical concoction with special effect leprechauns and all sorts of fun stuff for children of all ages. Connery sang! Yes, he belted out "My Pretty Irish Girl" and butched it up a lot because his outfit was on the fey side. (Well, he did get his start on the musical stage in "South Pacific.")

Now we hear Disney is working up a "Darby" re-make. No casting as yet, but I bet a script is winging its way to Disney hunk Zac Efron, who has emerged from the latest "High School Musical" installment as a bone fide box office giant. He is already in pre-production on a remake of "Footloose." The Mouse Studio is going to squeeze everything they can from Zac, while he still looks good dancing in a gymnasium. (For his exertions, young Efron's salary is said to be in the mid-seven figures.)

Hmmm ... "Footloose." Zac is very pretty, and all things exist to be re-made and re-invented for fresh eyes and modern times. But ... that role belongs to Kevin Bacon. Nobody will ever be as appealing, sexy or sympathetic as Kevin in the movie that made him a star in 1984.

ENDQUOTE: In the November Vanity Fair, with actress Amy Adams -- a la Rita Hayworth -- on the cover, singer Tom Jones answers the Proust Questionnaire on VF's back page. I must say this was one of the oddest. Perhaps Tom just didn't want get serious.

Tom's greatest fear? "Prison." The greatest love of his life? "My ability to sing." (Not too close to the family, I guess.) His most treasured possession? "My voice." His greatest regret? "Don't have one." (Always good to channel Piaf.)

Tom says his current state of mind is "Naughty." His favorite names? "Dom and Perignon."

Not everybody's a deep thinker.

(E-mail Liz Smith at MES3838@aol.com, or write to her c/o Tribune Media Services, 2225 Kenmore Ave., Suite 114, Buffalo, NY 14207.)