Yasmine Bleeth: She Can Cut It

You'll never believe what Yasmine Bleeth said on the set of her first big studio film set.

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When it came to shooting her first big studio picture,_ BASEketball_, a broad comedy from director David Zucker about a sport that's a hybrid of basketball and baseball, Yasmine Bleeth says that her biggest challenge came on the very first day.

"I had to get the words 'throbbing cock' to come out of my mouth," recalls the actress, who plays an upright but foxy charity worker who is lusted after by both of the film's leading men ("South Park" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone). "It's part of this monologue I have where I'm supposed to be serious and they're both standing in front of me naked. It took me about 12 takes to get it." So were they completely naked? "Well, except for some tape," Bleeth giggles. "Trey said he didn't want me to fall in love too quickly."

The worlds of bare skin and balmy innuendo are nothing new to Bleeth, a former child model and soap vixen who became internationally renowned for her exemplary mouth-to-mouth technique on Baywatch. But what sets her apart from your average Jantzen jiggler is a disarming wit (even Bill Maher has gone on the record about how savvy she is). She has never, for example, taken her repas "the Baywatch babe with the real breasts" too seriously. "It's not a bad thing to be famous for," she reasons. Having recently departed Baywatch, Bleeth now has the indie film It Came From the Sky on the way in addition to BASEketball, and she seems fairly grounded in her take on Hollywood. So, can she tell us whether the phenomenal success of South Park has turned her BASEketball costars Parker and Stone into egomaniacal monsters too big to even fit into their own logowear? "Absolutely," Bleeth deadpans. "When they first met me everything was, 'Oh, we bow 'Everything she gets, we want double. If she's getting her nails done, we want our nails done."

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Dennis Hensley