INSIDE, CHARLIZE GLIDES ACROSS THE LOBBY in a shimmering pink tank top, diamond earrings, and that haircut, that particular tousled, spiky, messy sort of haircut that creates the illusion that you and she, very recently, have had passionate sex. Eyes, then heads, turn as she floats through the foyer.

She is not going to the resta rant. Her mind is made up on that. She is not going to sit in an uncomfortable chair amid a crowd of producers drooling over meatless, cold summer soups. Not tonight. Not after the observatory episode. She has decided to go upstairs to see how these magazines types live.

She takes the elevator to the second floor and turns into suite 210, grabs a beer from the minibar, and seats herself at the marbel desk, where hse is durrounded by an endless assortment of articles, photos, and notes, every last one about her. She begins flipping throught the papers, her eyes darting up occasionally to make contact, as if daring someone to stop her.

"This is so creepy." she says with an air od delight. rifling through the stacks, sorting through her public persona. It still amuses her, this role she has learned to play.  It happened so quickly: A manager saw her at a bank, arguing with a teller, and her loved her at once, both for being herself and for her potential to become someone else. He signed her and coached her, she shed her accent, and the next thing she knew, she was cast, receiving offers to play those classic Hollywood women, vixens and temptresses, sweet wives and dolls. And soon it was difficult for anyone to tell that CharlizeThereon was not what she seemed, that inside she was just a twently-four-year-old South African raised on a farm, whose best friend in the world is her mom. Slugging the beer, she continues digging until she finds her own publicity packages, the biography that her agency gives to writers. She has never seen this before, was not even aware it existed. But here it is, much to her surprise, and apparently to her pleasure, because she's grinning now, pointing clear gray eyes at the page. "I love this," she says, reading out loud: " 'The seductive charm of Charlize Theron.' " Another sip. "Yeah," she chuckles.  "Seductive charm - that's what I was going for."

And now she is looking for some tequila, going down Sunset to a bar. No just any bar, mind you, not some hotel fern joint, but a real bar with red wobbly stools, with slumping alcoholics and bartenders who can't stand movie stars.

It's been a long, hard day poising for photos, as wimpy as that may sound. Twelve hour posing, prinping, being futzed with. She has suffered through it because she's proud of her new movie, The Cider House Rules. But at the end of the day, she's had enough, and she nearly crawls to the bar for a drink.  For the camera, she has been playing a role, the sinewy, half-dressed starlet, the young blond bombshell, the metamorphosed version of herself. And now she's tired. She wants to relax, to be the other Chalize, the real one, the one who longs to go camping, to fell the mud between her toes. She props her elbows on the counter, hooks her heels into the stool, and barks, "Gimme a shot of Patron," which she drains in an instant, ordering another, then another, then a beer, her eyes on the counter.

A few stools down, a man is looking at her, a blond man in shabby clothes. Not recognizing her, he sees on beauty, raw, undeveloped potential.  "I'm a producer," he mumbles in a British accent, sensing a major discovery.

She turn, looks him up and down, grinning. "Really? What are you producing?"

"Well," he says. "It's a project." He pauses for a drink, then looks at here, serious.  "Are you in the industry?"

Five years ago, she might have said yes, might have swooned, looking for a part, for some spot in his film. But now things are different, and the hard thing these days isn't finding a role to play.  The hard thing is finding a way not to play roles, a way just to be herself.  And the irony is that to be normal right now, to be just another girl at this bar, she'll have to play one more role, a brief stint sitting her on this stool. 

So she turns to the man and says with a sigh, "No. I work at the ASPCA, and I had a bad day today.  We had to kill two dogs. That's why I needed a drink."