What kind of scripts do you get today?

Just a broad spectrum. It's really interesting. I have the same manager, Juliet Green, that I had for 10 years. She knows me really well and she's really good -- between her and my agent they know I have a passion for sci-fi, and they know that I love comedy. There has never been one genre. I love them all.

You wrote that television acting made you discover you had an intuitive knack for comedy.

I think I'm pretty funny! I have gotten good work as a comedic actress. I was in [John Waters'] "Cry-Baby." And "Married With Children." And "Roseanne." I've traded lines with Roseanne and Laurie Metcalf; those two women to me are two of the funniest women around. I recently won a best actress in a comedy role at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in 2001. The film is coming out next January from Miramax, and it's called "Chump Change." I think it's going to be out in January on DVD. I'm hoping with all the publicity from "Underneath It All," the Weinstein brothers will be tempted to put it in the theaters.

Are you the star?

Yes. Tim Burroughs is the male star. He wrote it, directed it, and he's starring in it. I think that it's a lovely little movie.

In general, is there a difference between being interviewed by a woman or a man?

Absolutely. Not just with reporters, but with normal life. There are huge differences between men and women. Excuse me, there's someone at the door. [She leaves and comes back.] Hello, sorry about that. It's Juliet Green; I was just talking about her. [A woman's voice in the background.] She's howling. We do that every once in a while.

Do you travel by yourself or do you have an entourage?

Juliet follows me wherever I go. I never travel by myself. And we create new names in every city, as you found out.

Do you need bodyguards?

Do I need bodyguards? They usually have security at the book signing. No. I don't travel with bodyguards like P. Diddy or something.

Did you bond with Patty Hearst?

Patty Hearst played my mother in "Cry-Baby." I had a lot of respect for her. I have a lot of respect for her. She is a survivor. She's been through a lot of intense stuff in her life. She still has a sense of humor. [Pause.] But I didn't ask her about robbing banks, and she didn't ask me about porn.

What's your next movie?

I don't know. Hopefully it will be a fabulous one. I miss filming. I miss being on-screen. I spent most of last year writing this book.

Your book is very good. And you wrote it in two months?

No. I wrote the first draft in two months. I started last July. It was about 500 pages long, and it was like throwing up -- that's the only way to put it. It was all over the place. I turned it in. I then had all these notes from my editor. So I had to learn what the editing process was because I had no idea. You get this stack. "You can't use that kind of a pencil and you have to use that kind of a pencil, and don't write over what the editor wrote." I was like, "What are all these notes? And what the hell does this mean?" It was really crazy. But I wrote the whole thing on my Mac. My second draft took me a lot longer. I really followed John Waters' advice -- my friend who also directed me in "Cry-Baby" and "Serial Mom." At the very beginning I called him and said, "I'm thinking of writing this book myself. Am I crazy?" He said, "Well, Traci, you know you're crazy, but that's beside the point."

"What should I do?" I asked. He said, "Honey, you know this story better than anybody else. You should go for it. You can do this."

I didn't look forward to reading your book at first. I expected self-pity and blame. Then I started reading it and I couldn't put it down. It has a real hard-boiled narration. You're like some James M. Cain nonfiction character who I kept rooting for to get out of the porn business.

The first draft was 500 pages and the last one was 281. I don't think there is anything in my galleys that are not in my book, which I hear is unusual. It was pretty much word for word.

I had imagined that your book was going to have explicit "behind-the-scenes" porno stuff --

It's not a porn book.

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