How hot is Claire Forlani? Hot enough that she can get herself axed from one of 1998’s first big thrillers and still get her name on a list of the year’s hottest faces.

Seems the sultry Forlani and Deep Rising director Stephen Sommers didn’t see eye to eye, so he set the European-born beauty adrift. She quickly charted a new course, however, starting with the role of a young woman manipulated into marriage by Christian Slater and Jared Leto in the spring release “Basil”.

This fall, the twentysomething actress turns up in “Meet Joe Black”, the highly anticipated remake of Death Takes a Holiday. Brad Pitt stars as Death, who ends up falling for Anthony Hopkins’ daughter, played by you-know-who.

Shortly after Forlani recovers from her brush with Death, she’ll share the spotlight with Rob Morrow in Elements, in which she plays the unfaithful Nina, who is wracked with guilt about an affair with her husband’s best friend after her husband dies.

Need further proof that the half-British, half-Italian Forlani–who moved to the U.S. in 1993–has arrived? How about the fact she’s been linked to some of Hollywood’s hottest leading men, including Pitt (both maintain they’re “just friends”) and John Cusack. –Jeffrey Epstein

BEN AFFLECK

Last year, he was stuck in the shadow of other up-and-comers, like lifelong bud Matt Damon.

No more: 1998 is the Year of Affleck. If you saw “Chasing Amy”–in which he “coaxed” Joey Lauren Adams out of gaydom–you know why.

For one thing, the “Good Will Hunting” cowriter is darned cute. (Can you say heartthrob?) He can act up a storm. And this summer, he sucks up the screen big time in the much anticipated blockbuster “Armageddon”, in which he stars withBruce Willis as an average-Joe oil worker sent into space to blow up a meteor hurtling toward Earth.

He’s also running with Amy director Kevin Smith again. (They started together with “Mallrats”.) He appears in Smith’s latest, “Dogma”, with Linda Fiorentino. — Ken Neville