You said that before your Oscar nomination you couldn't get arrested. Have you succeeded since?
(laughs) No, but I had a problem with cops pulling me over all the time for speeding. When I was doing Hill Street Blues, the cops said how much they loved the show as they were writing me up; meanwhile my insurance went through the roof.

If you had won the Supporting Actress Oscar for Bullets Over Broadway,  where would you have kept the statue?
I cannot stand it when celebrities think they're being clever and say they keep it in the bathroom or use it as a doorstop. I'd put mine on the mantel where everybody would notice it. (laughs) I would put it in a special little alcove like a household saint.

Have you ever been edited out of a movie?
I was cut out of The Doors. I was Okie Girl, a groupie. The powers that be thought that my character made Jim Morrison look too sleazy, if you can imagine. I saw the movie -- it was so loud I had a headache for three days.

What was the worst job you had before you made it as an actress?
Selling sandwiches in office buildings in L.A. I was one of those people who pulls the cooler around and everybody glares at because you take up too much room in the elevator. We got fifteen cents if we sold a sandwich and twenty-five cents if we sold a salad, so I was always trying to push the salad.

Your costar in Bound is Gina Gershon. What's she all about?
She's really funny. I was telling an interviewer that if you have Julia Roberts in a movie you're never really afraid for her because you know she's not going to die, but because we are midlevel stars, you never know who's going to die or triumph. So I'm saying this and suddenly Gina flings open the door and goes, "Speak for yourself, Jennifer -- I am not a midlevel star!"

Your character, Violet, is a lipstick lesbian. Who do you think performs the best cunnilingus, men or women?
I would think women, because women know what they like. I have never been with a man who has performed any kind of good cunnilingus. Guys always act really bored. It's like they're...doing you a favor.

You told me you don't like to be touched.
Well, I meant that Hollywood thing, where everybody hugs and kisses everybody else -- I always stiffen. It's an assumed familiarity. It's phony.

You always seem to come off as an out-of-control ditz when you're on talk shows.
In the beginning, I felt this obligation to be entertaining. I would sacrifice my integrity for a good laugh. With talk shows, it's mostly prefabricated. There's the preinterview, where you tell the story you're going to tell on the show, and there are writers who prepare jokes for the host to throw into your story. So I like to mess things up a little bit, but it's the kind of thing that can really kill a career.

How's your drama? Can you cry on cue?
At the drop of a hat. But I have to tell you, I'm not like Demi Moore, where the tears trickle prettily down my cheeks. My whole face screws up and it's like, Oh please, get a room.

Would you rather be loved or respected?
I would rather be loved by somebody who respected me.

Sorry, you can only choose one.
Respected. Because everybody knows that love goes away.

Which would you rather do in your spare time, masturbate or shop?
Shop. Absolutely.

Are you friendly with your sister Meg?
Oh yes! I have another sister too, Becky. When the three of us get together it's really bizarre, because we have this sort of psychic link -- we all start to talk in unison, with the exact same inflections. In high school, everyone called us the Three Musketeers.

Have you ever called the Psychic Friends Network?
No, but I have my cards read every time I pass a tarot-reader booth. I would be so embarrassed to have one of those 900 numbers appear on my phone bill, because I don't know how I would explain it to my business manager. It would almost be like saying, Okay, I'm white trash.

And I hear it can be addictive. Are you hooked on anything?
Tabloids. My mother had all these maxims -- like, Classy girls never chew gum, never read comic books, never get their ears pierced, never get their hair dyed -- and one of them was, If somebody saw you reading a tabloid, that's like getting hit by a car and not having clean underwear on!

What's lame about women's cinema?
Every single "women's movie" has the obligatory vibrator scene. And women do not, in my experience, talk about vibrators. Or men's buns. The women who do talk about men's buns think they should because they've seen Diet Coke ads. I think that women believe it's the way hip, liberated women talk. They don't realize that these kinds of attitudes are thought up by men.

Why do men have nipples?
Because they're like these little nerve endings that go all the way down to their groin.

But their primary purpose is for nursing.
I think in the beginning, God can't decide if someone's going to be male or female. So he gives you everything and sometimes it isn't until the very last moment that he decides, and sometimes he doesn't make up his mind fast enough. It's like, Uh-oh, whoops! and you get a hermaphrodite.

Good answer. What do people most misunderstand about you?
They think I'm the character I play. They'll see a girl who's a sexpot in a push-up bra with an unusual voice -- and that's all they'll see. And they underestimate me. Actually, the people I've been intimate with underestimate me the most. Love warps a person's perception of you. A guy in a relationship with you sees what he wants to see, and it takes a long time for that to, you know, transmogrify.

Details, August 1996