The Waiting Game

Demi Moore is about seven months’ pregnant. Make that 15, in “actress months.”

A bit of explanation: Last year, before marrying or even having met husband Bruce Willis (whom she wed in Las Vegas last November after a whirlwind romance), Moore had played pregnant in two consecutive roles--first a Cinemax cable special, then the recently released film “The Seventh Sign.”

No sooner had she shed her oversized blouses and rubber tummy appliances from the two projects than the real thing came along.

“I’m so tired of wearing baggy clothes,” grouses Moore, 25, dressed in executive-style Anne Klein formal bagginess in her Century City office, looking very much the you- can -have-it-all businesswoman/mom type. “By the time this is all over with, I’ll feel like I’ll have been pregnant for two years.”

Being pregnant with a brat of her own--on screen and off--may help her shed her image as Queen of the Brat Pack. That was one reason she chose “Seventh Sign” as her initial project in a major production deal with Tri-Star Pictures. It marked her first role as a married woman, after her sexy yuppie star turns in “About Last Night” and “St. Elmo’s Fire.”

Moore says the movie offered her “more mature subject matter, and I liked the message. The story was unique in terms of this particular genre. It wasn’t about the devil or Satan possessing someone. The only evil that’s portrayed in the film is us and what we’re doing to ourselves--and I felt it had a hopeful, uplifting ending.”

In the mix of pseudo-Biblical eschatology and plain old modern hooey that makes “Seventh Sign” an apocalyptic update of “Rosemary’s Baby,” Moore’s character gets to avert the planned destruction of all mankind.

If she could just handle her new husband--and all the publicity surrounding the union--as easily. She’s been stung lately by front-page tabloid speculation about problems in the new marriage.

The supposed trouble between her and Willis is closer to fantasy than her latest movie, she insists.

“It’s hard,” says the handsome, dark-haired, husky-voiced actress, who claims she’d never even seen Willis act before marrying him. “I like to live a really simple, quiet life, and I sort of keep my private life private. But I see us in the public eye a lot more than I ever would have imagined. We have helicopters that fly over our back yard with people leaning out the window.”