Mama Mia -- A Reluctant Mia Farrow Meets The Press But Certain Questions Are Off Limits

NEW YORK - She is unfailingly polite and lovely, her opalescent skin kept perfect from a lifetime of sun block, cheekbones arching toward the heavens.

At age 49, Farrow has been on the screen and in gossip columns for three decades but has rarely addressed her public. Now she's here to be polite and lovely, promoting "Widows' Peak," which will be shown in the Seattle International Film Festival Saturday and June 7, and will open for a regular run on June 10.

We meet not in her Central Park West home (which you know if you've seen "Hannah and Her Sisters"), but near it, in an impersonal hotel suite. A battery of publicists protects her. "She's lovely," says one. "Talk to her about Ireland," says another. "She loves Ireland."

Who doesn't love Ireland? What about Frank Sinatra?

Farrow's personal publicist, the one who listens from the bedroom while Farrow speaks in the antiseptic living area, says, "You understand the parameters of this interview? No personal questions."

No personal questions. It is arguable that the woman born Maria de Lourdes Villiers Farrow has had the most fascinating personal life of any contemporary actress. This is, after all, the woman who shot to stardom at age 18 in television's "Peyton Place"; whose first serious boyfriend was Sinatra, whom she married when she was 21 and he was 50, inspiring Ava Gardner (a previous Mrs. S) to say, "I always knew Frank would end up in bed with a little boy"; who had her first starring role in "Rosemary's Baby" directed by Roman Polanski; who, at age 24, delivered twins by Andre Previn, then married to songwriter Dory Previn, inspiring the latter's song "Beware of Young Girls"; who was Woody Allen's muse for 12 years until becoming involved in a family horror that rivaled the House of Atreus.

Can we speak about the children? "Perhaps," the personal publicist says, "you can work up to that."

Once Farrow was a waif, impossibly thin, undeniably chic. Looking back, she may be the mother of all waifs, still thin, less chic. She is also the mother of all mothers.

She has a dozen children, two more than the last time she was everywhere in the news. The day before, a TV reporter began with a question about Soon-Yi, the one you do not ask Farrow about, the one now with Allen, and a publicist pulled the plug.

So, instead, we speak of "Widows' Peak," directed by John Irvin, co-starring Joan Plowright and Natasha Richardson, set in 1920s Ireland.

"The movie was written for my mother," says Farrow, who took the role instead. Her mother is the Irish-born actress Maureen O'Sullivan, who was Jane to Johnny Weissmuller's Tarzan. "My mother had expressed the wish that she and I work together. At the time, I couldn't because I was occupied professionally and personally."

"Occupied professionally and personally." That would be with Allen, with whom she made movie after movie - 13 in all - in the days when she didn't have to look for other work. But we don't speak of this.

Instead, we speak of Ireland. "I had spent many of my summers in Ireland. All my cousins are in Ireland and my aunts are still there. I couldn't wait to get back and plug into the family," says Farrow, wearing jeans; round, gold-rimmed glasses; new black combat boots, a white T-shirt and a gold cross (not a fancy fashion crucifix, but the kind the nuns who taught her wore, the real thing with Jesus).

She has another movie in the can, "Miami," due out this fall, and is busy on a book. Her memoirs? "Yes, but that gives the wrong impression. You know, it's an odd little book," she says, noting that she has written about 200 pages so far.

Despite her eternal quest for privacy, she is doing the book to "present truly what I feel about a lot of things, for my children's sake, for my family's sake and the people in my corner."

She views it "as a spiritual journey. I've got it about half finished and I'm still not out of my teens." At this she finally smiles, laughs even. "The due date has long past," she says. And she hasn't even gotten to Frank.

Farrow didn't set out to be an actress. "I wanted to be a vet, wanted to be a farmer. I wanted to be a forest ranger or a lighthouse keeper. I couldn't decide. I wanted to be a nun, be a pediatrician," she says. "I saw myself working in Africa or Southeast Asia with children - that was the (goal) when I graduated from high school that was most serious, that was the one that might have served me very well, perhaps others, too.

"But my father (director and author of Catholic histories, John Farrow) died, and we didn't have any money, so I went to work. It was the only thing I could think to do which required no education, no skill of any kind," she says. There was "an obligation to help my mother. She had six children," Farrow recalls, this even though she was the third-oldest child.

"I thought, `Well, I'll give it a shot.' I gave myself four months. I had no idea, no confidence at all that anyone would ever employ me. Luckily, I got a job."

The uncertain profession

Farrow, who has six children still at home, has thoroughly discouraged her brood from going into acting.

"Being an actor, you can be so diminished by what you do. You can suddenly fall, suddenly be in middle age, and be relatively worthless in your own profession despite your best endeavors and your years of work," she says.

"In any other profession, it would be just when you'd be retiring and have all the respect that would be due to you. That's very hard on people, to be devalued and thrown away, or go through years of anyone not wanting to employ you."

Farrow didn't have those fears herself, not after years of professional security, though we don't speak of this specifically.

"I just thought whatever happens happens at this point. In a way, the worst has happened," she says, in a reference to Allen. Now, she says, "I think I could run a bicycle shop in Peru, a bicycle-repair shop, and I'd still be OK. Finally, I think I'd be OK doing anything."

Anything, except this. While her words give up nothing, her body language is screaming. Save for picking up a glass of juice, another of soda, Farrow has spent the entire interview sitting with her legs crossed tightly, her hands clenched between her skinny thighs.

Though she has a long list of directors with whom she'd like to work, ambition does not rage.

"Assuming there was no element of earning a living or anything like that, I don't know how often I'd work. I wonder that myself. Maybe not at all. I think once in a while, because I so enjoy being part of a team, for one, also because acting is fun. Probably doing one a year, one every two years, something like that if a good project came along."

She spends her free time, she says, writing and reading, as well as listening to classical music. It has been rumored in the gossip columns that she is seeing Oscar-winning actor Daniel Day-Lewis and a widowed Irish director.

A mother of 12

Wait.

How does a woman with 12 children have free time to bathe, let alone date? "It happens that my 3-month-old is very easy," she says. "She's really so sweet, not temperamental. For her little self, she's very well-adjusted. And my 2-year-old is a wonder. He's not so demanding."

Is she thinking of adopting more? "If somebody told me there is this child that needs a home, it's conceivable."

"Cut," the personal publicist calls from the bedroom the second the allotted time runs dry. There has been no mention of Woody, Andre or Frank. The chat over, Farrow gets up from her hands.

"It's been fun," she says, acting up a storm.