Teri Hatcher: The Hunger

So, I tease, she won't finish her meal with a quick sprint to the ladies' room? "Oh, stop, that's not even funny," she scolds. "People have that disease [bulimia] and I'm really sensitive to it." With that, Hatcher starts to mock-leap out of her seat, saying. "I'll be right back." Sitting back down, she admits, "Now I'm sorry I even mentioned a tabloid show name. I don't want to give them any extra publicity. I also think those tabloids are [just] picture-oriented--they gel hold of a picture and write a story around it. I could lean over on the set of 'Lois & Clark' and kiss Dean goodnight, someone could sell it, and then there's a tabloid headline: 'Hatcher and Cain Having Affair.' Or the reverse: somebody snaps a picture of us standing there not looking at each other with our arms folded, waiting around for a shot to be set up, and suddenly, we're having a big fight. They like to build you up, then tear you down.

"Seriously," she continues, "it's really nice right now between Dean and me. He's off doing his first real movie with Drew Barrymore. He called me two nights ago, and we talked for 45 minutes. Drew has been around a lot and I think she can offer a lot of acting experience to him. It was wonderful hearing him tell me how this or that had happened on the set and I found myself going, 'I'm not so bad, am I? You thought I was nutso but I'm not really, am I?' It makes me feel really good that he's come to appreciate me more than maybe he did initially, that now he really thinks I'm cool and a great actress. I don't think that he always thought that."

Before hitting it big with Dean Cain in "Lois & Clark," Hatcher had appeared on The Love Boat" (as a singing mermaid) as well as on "MacGyver" and "Capitol." Those TV turns led to roles in such flicks as The Big Picture, Straight Talk, Tango & Cash, the abysmal Andrew Dice Clay movie Brain Smasher...A Love Story and Soapdish. On hiatus from "Lois & Clark," she went the bad-girl route in Heaven's Prisoners opposite Alec Baldwin. So, movie stardom, it appears, is a goal, no? "I'd probably be a little nutty if I hadn't been fortunate enough to get to do a movie every year for the past three," she admits. "But if I hadn't gotten 'Lois & Clark,' who knows whether any producer would have ever given me a job again? Now, sure, I watch people in movies and go, 'I can be this good. I could be in this movie.' I'll be available [full time] for movies in a few years, and hopefully my looks will last long enough. But, right now, this is where I am, and I'm really happy with that."

How exactly did she land the role of the wanton Claudette in director Phil Joanou's Heaven's Prisoners? "I slept with him, which is how I get all my parts," she says. "No, just kidding! I stressed out about going up for that, because I work 14 hours a day on the series and it's hard to truly prepare like I like to for such a drastically different role. Anyway, the first thing I said when I went in to read for [Joanou] was, 'I see this role as Blanche Dubois meets Lena Olin in Romeo Is Bleeding,' and he said, 'That's not how I see it at all.' It went downhill from there."

She shakes her head at the memory, then continues, "My husband was waiting for me in the car and we went to a little Italian restaurant. All the way. I kept telling him. 'I just sucked. I'm the worst actress in the world. How could I blow that?' Alan Greisman, who coproduced Soapdish, was there at the restaurant too, and when he came over to say hi, I told him, 'I've just had the worst audition of my life for Heaven's Prisoners.' He said. 'That's my movie.' I said, 'Phil hates me,' but he arranged anyway for another meeting. So, I went back in and met with Alec [Baldwin] and we got along well. I don't know why all Alec's movies don't make millions of dollars. He is so underrated, up there with the very best. And. although I didn't think the movie was going to be a hit. I had such a wonderful journey as an actress that I didn't care."

Hatcher's notices were nothing to sneeze at, but surely it wouldn't hurt to have a box-office hit on her record. Isn't she after big movie stardom? "The only thing 'movie star' means to me is getting first crack at the few great scripts that come along every year," she says. "I admire Jennifer Jason Leigh for not choosing to be a big movie star--she's having the kind of career I would think of myself as wanting.

"When I have fantasies about working with great people, it's usually with women. For instance, if Jodie Foster ever knew me, she would find me similar to her in business and creative commitment, passion and drive. There are a lot of women I'd like to be in business with, particularly Goldie Hawn, who I'd love to have produce a romantic comedy starring me. My God, if you print that, they'll think I really am arrogant and horrible."

Some people do think Hatcher pushes the star envelope on certain occasions. I run down a few of the things said to make for a bumpy ride on a Hatcher set. "I'm driven, really professional and not the kind of person who will just let things go," she declares.

"On the show, I do go, 'No, it's not supposed to be like that,' rather than just take the resigned attitude. 'It'll be easier if we just do it this way and nobody will notice." The shows means something to me. I'm really proud of my work on it. Some-times I step back and think, 20 years from now. 'Lois & Clark' will be part of American history like 'Gilligan's Island,' or 'The A-Team' or 'Charlie's Angels.'"

OK, I say, how about addressing the persistent rumors that Hatcher is about to divorce actor Jon Tenney, her husband of two years? She shakes her head no, "We're well-matched. How can anyone say that this business isn't hard on relationships, though? Jon was seven months on Broadway doing eight shows a week while I lived and worked here in L.A. I'd work all week then fly the red-eye just for the day because it was the only way we'd get to see each other."

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