Terms of Accomplishment : Books, Films, Stage Fill MacLaine’s Days (Don’t Ask About Metaphysics)

MALIBU —  Maybe Shirley MacLaine has been razzed for her metaphysical beliefs often enough and drawn enough cutting reviews to explain her prickly, often openly disdainful attitude during a recent interview.

She gave one-word answers to some questions and banned certain topics, namely metaphysics. Whenever the phone rang, MacLaine answered, even though an assistant and her manager were on hand. One conversation dragged on for 15 minutes without so much as a “pardon me.”

While she refuses anymore to discuss the other-dimensional fascination she revealed more than a decade ago in her bestseller, “Out on a Limb,” she did say she hasn’t minded most of the ribbing--only the bad jokes and the fact that “interviews always veer off to that” subject.

The jokes, at least, come less frequently nowadays. MacLaine thinks it is partly because her attitude toward spiritual exploration has become so “mainstream.”

Fortunately, she brightened considerably when addressing subjects that do interest her. Like the one-woman show she’s performing tonight through Sunday-- to open the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts’ third season.

She also seemed genuinely enthusiastic about discussing her writing. Each of her seven books has been a bestseller. Her eighth (she won’t divulge the subject) is due this summer.

The world-traveled actress, dancer, singer and author recalled some colorful anecdotes from a still-active, distinguished 40-year, 40-plus-film career. During that time, she has amassed five Emmy awards, six Oscar nominations--winning the best actress award for “Terms of Endearment” in 1983--and legions of fans.

And theatrical magic happened when, for an instant during the interview, she assumed the character of Aurora Greenway, whom she played in “Terms of Endearment” and will reprise in “Evening Star.” She expects to start filming the sequel this spring.

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MacLaine, 60, wore a long, loose-fitting natural-fiber brown shift for the interview in her beachfront apartment, one of six in a building she owns. Her reddish-brown hair, cut in that trademark pixie, softly framed her clear green eyes, ringed by those starry black lashes.

Her living room, just a few feet from the surf, is decorated with Japanese prints, photographs of the actress with brother Warren Beatty, Liza Minnelli and other stars, and one that pictures what appears to be an Eastern guru sort.

She was happiest to talk about her singing, dancing revue, which she called “completely new.” It contains Mama Rose songs from “Gypsy” and other material from the show she performed at Anaheim’s Celebrity Theatre in 1991, her most recent Orange County appearance. “I love ‘Gypsy,’ ” she said, sipping iced tea, “but I never wanted to go to Broadway and commit to a run of the play, so I do a kind of mini-Gypsy musical. Then I do a whole, long medley about a woman’s ups-and-downs in her relationship with love, almost 70 songs. . . . A show like this evolves, you take out whole hunks and put in new whole hunks.

Age hasn’t made it much more difficult to perform the 90-minute show, she said, providing she eats properly (“sugar, that’s my downfall”) and maintains an exercise program to keep her body “aligned.”

“I just finished playing in Canada,” she said, “and I played a couple dates at Disney World in Florida. And I had the urge to go to Argentina, so I played it down there (in May), and in Brazil. It’s great to have a show like this because you can travel and do what you love to do at the same time.”

The fun comes from getting to know her audiences, she said. In South America, for instance, after mixing with folks at local eateries and reading the papers, she spoke on stage “about what was going on in Sao Paulo, or in Rio or wherever.”

“They love the familiarity that you might have with what their lives are, and I love to be a part of what’s happening when I’m there.”

The Norwegian government loved her in a big way when years ago she helped them save face.

MacLaine was about to appear in Norway at a $100-per-seat grand opening for a new, government-funded theater when its director approached her shortly before curtain. An electrical storm, he told her, combined with some unresolved technical bugs, could mean trouble.

He “came to me and my people,” she recalled, “and said, ‘Look, with the storm outside, there’s no (electrical) ground in this theater, so we can guarantee against loss of equipment, but we can’t guarantee against loss of life.’ ”

The actress still gets a great laugh out of that line, reiterating it with a hearty laugh. She decided to go on, she said, which ultimately resulted in her decision to hire a new vocal coach. For safety’s sake, she performed the “whole show without a microphone.”

MacLaine, who had never “even hardly written a letter” before publishing her first book, started to write mostly because of her extensive travels, some of which she describes in her books.

“I just decided I wanted to share a lot of the things I experienced, I guess . . . and I loved it, I love the feeling. I’m in better health when I write. There’s nothing like having your thoughts well ordered.

“I don’t consider myself a really good writer. I just am a clear thinker and I put the thoughts down with one word, simple. It’s not an extensive vocabulary, but it’s clear.”

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Born in Richmond, Va., MacLaine studied ballet as a girl. Shortly after high school, she got work in New York as a chorus girl and was picked to understudy Carol Haney, the lead in “The Pajama Game” on Broadway. One night in 1954 she went on for the injured star, got raves and a plane ticket west. Producer Hal Wallis had seen the show and offered her a movie contract.

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Since her first film, “The Trouble With Harry” (1955), she has played diverse characters ranging from a helpless waif in “The Apartment” (1960) to a smarmy hooker in “Irma La Douce” (1963). Her more recent movies include “Steel Magnolias” (1989), “Postcards From the Edge” (1990) and “Guarding Tess,” which came out last March.

She often rejects inferior scripts, she said, and is “amazed” at what does get produced. “So,” she added wryly, “is the audience.”

She has no qualms, however, about revisiting Aurora Greenway. In “Evening Star,” the willful, overbearing matriarch, now 20 years older, realizes that she has not done a good job raising the grown children of her deceased daughter, played in “Terms of Endearment” by Debra Winger.

Aurora’s grandchildren “are an unmitigated disaster, every one of them,” said MacLaine, effortlessly taking on Greenway’s perturbed air and clipped speech. “And she doesn’t understand why. Why can’t children just enjoy their lives and not be so upset with things, and why do they take dope and why is he in prison and why did she get knocked up by this person .”

Greenway goes to a psychiatrist to get some help, but ends up seducing the good doctor, 30 years her junior.

“So the therapy isn’t going to work very well,” MacLaine said, chuckling at the scenario. “It’s wonderful.”

* Shirley MacLaine will perform her one-woman show at 8 tonight, Saturday and Sunday at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, 12700 Center Court Drive, Cerritos. $35-62. (800) 300-4345. She will reprise parts of the show with Pacific Symphony on Nov. 18 and 19 at 8 p.m. and Nov. 20 at 3 p.m. at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. $22-$53. (714) 755-5799 or (714) 740-2000.