TO THE INFOMERCIAL HIGHWAY!

What will become of her? SHANNEN DOHERTY, 22, TV's most poisonous faux adolescent, isn't going to be part of the Beverly Hills 90210 family next season. Producers of the hit teen show have reportedly refused to renew the insatiable party girl's contract. How could they? 90210 producer Aaron Spelling is offering only a "no comment" on the alleged dismissal of Mrs. Ashley Hamilton. But we can assume her tabloidy misbehavior, on set and off, was no longer worth its weight in publicity.

CONQUISTADOR

Spanish actor ANTONIO BANDERAS may struggle with English, but he seems well versed in the language of fame, and today that's spoken in the dialect of anti-fame: "I don't want to be a star," he says. "Stars always play themselves. I want to play characters." But avoiding celebrity will soon be difficult for the star of the art-house hit Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and the man whose Mastroianni-circa-1960 sexiness bedazzled Madonna in Truth or Dare. Banderas will begin shooting Interview with the Vampire with Tom Cruise, and he appears as Tom Hanks' lover in Philadelphia. Early next year he falls into the arms of Winona Ryder in the epic The House of the Spirits. As Banderas shuns fame, his House character shuns money. "Today there is no one like him," says the liquid-eyed Iberian. "There are no countries anymore, just banks."

NOT A BLUE CHRISTMAS

With Harry Connick Jr. and two-thirds of Wilson Phillips serving up wholesome collections of holiday song this year, you won't need those old Bing Crosby Christmas records. Even rapper LUTHER CAMPBELL--of 2 Live Crew and obscenity fame--is in Der Bingle mode, offering Christmas at Luke's House, a Yuletide R.-and-B. album. Campbell swears the disk is "clean because Christmas is a family time, a holy time."

SEEN & HEARD

A certain Massachusetts Senator may need to be reminded that while his first name is Ted, his last name isn't Danson. Wearing a Barney costume, TED KENNEDY entertained guests at his annual Christmas party with the sort of ribaldry befitting a Friars Club gathering. When his wife Victoria, playing straight man, mentioned screws floating in space during the Hubble telescope repair mission, Senator Kennedy riposted, "Floating screw...that's what people used to call me." One Barney-related line: "They don't call me Tyrannosaurus sex for nothing!"

America had stopped expecting a book from ANITA HILL, the law professor who captivated the country during a single weekend in the fall of 1991. But Hill, who rejected numerous publishing offers after testifying at the Clarence Thomas hearings, has now signed a deal to write both an autobiography and a book on sexual harassment. Hill decided to turn author after receiving thousands of letters from people urging her to share her views.

LARRY FISHBURNE has obviously developed a penchant for playing less-than-lucid '60s rock stars. The actor who brought us the unceasingly irascible Ike Turner in What's Love Got to Do with It will star in a film chronicling the life of guitar god Jimi Hendrix. The film is tentatively titled 'Scuse Me While I Kiss the Sky.