Still saucy, Cybill Shepherd laughs more

CARY -- Editor's note: Before Cybill Shepherd was injured as she readied to star in "Hello, Dolly!" she sat down at Lucky 32 and had a meal and a chat. We share the result here, and we wish Ms. Shepherd a speedy recovery.

Scanning the restaurant in search of a suitable table, Cybill Shepherd pauses in front of a black and white photograph on a wall. It shows two people kissing.

"Wow," she says, "that looks like me and Bobby [DeNiro] from 'Taxi Driver.' Except we never did that."

Giggling a bit, she continues through the room before finally selecting a booth, where she sits and removes her shades and green scarf. Shepherd is 60 now, 40 years since her performance as Jacy Farrow in "The Last Picture Show" got her out of modeling and into acting. She's more grand dame than bombshell nowadays, but she still looks great.

She's as saucy as ever, too, as she settles in over a spread of classic down-home cookin': shrimp and grits, pork barbecue, fried green tomatoes.

"Fried green tomatoes for a Memphis girl," she says with a contented sigh, taking a bite. "I'm in hog heaven."

Shepherd is in the Triangle to star in North Carolina Theatre's production of "Hello, Dolly!," which opens Saturday. It is, she says, one of her "dream projects."

"At a certain point, you reach the age where you know the end is out there somewhere," she says. "And you ask yourself, 'What do I really want to do?' and get a dream list going. I wanted to do a musical comedy onstage, and 'Hello, Dolly!' is one of the great musicals of all time. It's funny and sexy, this story about a woman reinventing herself. I've kinda had to do that a number of times. I don't know if I really did manage to do it, but I love to use that expression."

There's a daunting aspect to it because the part of Dolly Gallagher Levi is one of the most iconic roles in theater - a signature part for Carol Channing and Ethel Merman, among others. But it's a challenge she's looking forward to.

"I remember getting the call to do this while working with my vocal coach," she says. "We were working on tracks and arrangements for my new one-woman show. But 'Hello Dolly' in Raleigh, I thought it sounded fabulous. How many times will I get a chance to do this? You never know. Maybe I'll do it again.

"It's a story of coming back to life, before the parade passes by," she continues. "I think of my grandma, my mother's mother. She was larger than life, had friends all over the world, laughed a lot. Under all of that, she had a wisdom. 'C-Bo,' she'd say - she'd call me C-Bo - 'C-Bo, never go too far to the right or the left, stay in the middle of the road.' She had no idea that was a Zen Buddhist thing. But she had a great spirit for life. So I don't want to play the end at the beginning of 'Dolly.' You've got to see a journey."

Elvis and Peter

At this point, a waitress approaches in a posture of sheepishness.

"I don't mean to bother you," she says apologetically, "but I think you're so funny. I used to watch 'Cybill' all the time. 'Moonlighting,' too."

"Thank you," Shepherd drawls. The waitress beams.

"No," she says, "thank you. You still look fantastic, by the way."

Shepherd smiles, then turns back to the interview.

"Where were we?" she says.

Question time: Your 2000 autobiography, "Cybill Disobedience: How I Survived Beauty Pageants, Elvis, Sex, Bruce Willis, Lies, Marriage, Motherhood, Hollywood and the Irrepressible Urge to Say What I Think" - do you ever regret some of the more explicit parts of the book? Especially about Elvis?

"The truth is so much more interesting and amusing than trying to suppress it," she says.

Your old partner Peter Bogdanovich teaches at UNC School of the Arts in Winston-Salem. Will he be coming to see you in "Hello, Dolly!"?

"Oh, yes," she says. "I've got to pin him down on when. Add that to my to-do list."

Shepherd pulls out her handheld device and speaks into it, recording instructions to that effect for her personal assistant - who is sitting at a nearby table approximately 8 feet away.

"Did you get that?" she asks, leaning toward him.

"Yes," he says without turning around, "twice." She smiles.

"I studied at the Peter Bogdanovich school of filmmaking, where we did nothing but watch three films a night," she says. "It was a great education. We should all go to that. If you really care about film, he's the one. I'm like his student. Always. We're still best friends, too. He has four honorary doctorates. I don't have any. I asked if he'd give me one of his. I tried to get one from the University of Memphis, but they said they don't give those out. But they did give me an Elvis Award for Lifetime Achievement."

No forgetting

There is some vindication in lasting long enough to get things like lifetime-achievement awards. Shepherd has taken some knocks over the past 40 years, which is going to happen when one goes directly from modeling to big-screen acting. She can quote them, too, including a mixed review of "At Long Last Love" (her Bogdanovich-directed 1975 musical with Burt Reynolds) that she keeps in a blue notebook with her script to "Hello, Dolly!"

"I got mad at Joan Rivers once for saying I should be president of the [Expletive] Lucky Club," she says. "I have a better sense of humor about myself now, and I think she was right. Not that I didn't work hard. But I was in the right place at the right time with the right look. I hadn't studied acting, but I was comfortable with the camera. I'd had a number of offers before 'The Last Picture Show' - sleazy things where the scripts weren't good. Back then, I didn't believe I was anything like Jacy. Later I realized that, yeah, I was like Jacy.

"You learn to laugh at things," she concludes, "even though they really hurt at the time." 'All the charm of a hamster.' 'She should not walk or talk, much less sing.' I remember them all. It's like being slimed."