NEWS LITE : CELINE QUITS TOUR TO TEND TO HUSBAND.

Her heart will go on, but the show won't for Celine Dion.

The 31-year-old pop singer says she has decided to put her career on hold so she can spend time with her husband, whose cancer has been in remission for seven months.

``I told myself, life is sending you a message,'' Dion tells TV Guide. ``The message was it is time that you are there for each other, that you get back to reality, be with your family and friends. . . . Show business is not your life.''

Rene Angelil discovered a lump ``bigger than an egg'' on his throat in the middle of a concert tour last spring. Dion said she offered to cancel a concert planned for that night but Angelil urged her diva persona to go on.

``I was there for him, and I felt great about it,'' Dion said. ``Rene had never really opened up his heart to me. He had talked to me as a manager, as an artist, as a lover, but never as a man who feels not so strong as a man. That made me feel very special.''

Angelil has managed Dion since she was a teen-ager. They were married in 1994.

Dion will tape a one-hour concert for CBS Nov. 24. After that, she will appear in two more concerts before taking the next two years off.

DeNiro decides to quit `Gangs'

Robert De Niro has bowed out of the Martin Scorsese film ``Gangs of New York,'' citing personal reasons. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the Oscar-winning actor (``The Godfather: Part II'' and ``Raging Bull'') doesn't want to leave the States for the shoot. The flick, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio, is set to begin shooting in Rome in April.

Barbra-Rosie: Needing `People'

Barbra Streisand and Rosie O'Donnell are singing together at last, but don't expect a duet album any time soon.

Streisand, promoting her new album, ``A Love Like Ours,'' was scheduled to appear on O'Donnell's talk show, and O'Donnell suggested they sing together, the N.Y. Daily News reported.

Streisand declined, but O'Donnell insisted, and the two performed ``People'' from Streisand's house.

Depp, Polanski don't see eye to eye

Roman Polanski may have directed some of the greatest films of all time (``Rosemary's Baby,'' ``Chinatown''), but Hollywood free spirit Johnny Depp is far from impressed. The star of Polanski's ``The Ninth Gate'' says he's relieved the movie has finally wrapped, complaining it ``was not an easy film to make'' and that Polanski is ``out there.''

Asked if the director gave him line readings, a practice designed to measure whether an actor can capture a character's essence, Depp says, ``Luckily he didn't do that with me because I'm not sure what would have happened. I'd probably still be in jail.''

Speaking of the slammer, Polanski all but admits in the December Esquire that he committed the statutory rape of a 13-year-old that forced him to flee the United States in 1979. ``There's a different justice for people who are public figures than for those who are not,'' he says. ``There was no plot against me. There was no set-up. It was all my fault. I think my wrongdoing was far greater than Bill Clinton's.''

Disease robs Dudley Moore of music

The Parkinson's-like illness that has attacked Dudley Moore's ability to speak, eat and walk has robbed the 64-year-old actor and pianist of what he holds most dear: his music.

In an interview with the N.Y. Daily News, Moore described the degeneration he has suffered since contracting the brain disease, progressive supranuclear palsy, or PSP. The problems began about five years ago, when Moore started spontaneously falling backward, and the disease was diagnosed in May.

Moore, known for the ``Arthur'' movies and his longtime comedy work with Peter Cook, issued a brief announcement of his illness in September and described its personal toll in Monday's edition of the News.

``It's agonizing,'' he said. ``I just can't play the sounds that I hear in my head. It's something I've given up. I think it's fair to say I have envisioned a life without music. No music at all. It's a great emptiness.''

Moore's financial problems have forced him to sell his California home and stay with friends in New Jersey who are helping to care for him. He will attend a charity event in Philadelphia this week to launch the Dudley Moore Research Fund, created to find a cure for PSP.

News Lite is compiled by Karen Duffy from Daily News staff and wire reports

CAPTION(S):

4 photos

Photo: (1) Celine Dion will take two years off to be with her husband, Rene Angelil, whose throat cancer is in remission.

(2) Porcelain protest

Tom Suica bolted a line of toilets to the roof of his house to protest a bank's decision to build a parking lot next to his Monaca, Pa., home.

(3) Depp

(4) Moore