`The Contender' role was made for Joan Allen

Not many actresses get to play an athletic, atheistic, sexually active vice-presidential candidate who both challenges the sexual double standard and votes to impeach President Clinton.

The role marks quite a change for Joan Allen, last seen in the White House playing subservient Pat Nixon in Oliver Stone's "Nixon."

Five years later, she's on the verge of running the place, playing outspoken Ohio senator Laine Hanson in Rod Lurie's "The Contender," which goes into national release today.

"I like that (Laine) is in the middle of things, and she has to live by a principle she really believes in," said Allen by phone from San Francisco.

"The atheism was one of the most wonderful and provocative things about the character. I think it's bold to say that (you're a nonbeliever), almost more so than the sex thing - particularly in this year, when it seems to matter so much to people that politicians believe in God."

Allen was in the Bay Area to attend a Mill Valley Film Festival tribute to her work, including clips from her prize-winning performances in "Nixon," "Pleasantville" and "The Crucible." A veteran of Chicago's Steppenwolf theater, the 44-year-old actress made her film debut in "Compromising Positions" (1985).

Oscar-nominated previously in the supporting category for "Nixon" and "The Crucible," she could earn her first best-actress nomination for her work in "The Contender," which is moving into multiplexes just as this year's presidential election is heating up.

Lurie wrote the script in January 1999, and he started shooting it in July, so Allen figured it would be getting a timely release.

"Given when we shot it, and knowing that it was a serious film, unlikely to come out in the summer, there was obviously an awareness that it would probably come out at this time."

Lurie is a longtime Allen fan and film critic who wrote the movie with her in mind.

A couple of years ago, while presenting a Los Angeles Film Critics award to Allen for "Pleasantville," he announced to the audience that he wanted to write a script for her. She took him up on his offer.

"He told me if he did it, he knew it would be good," she said. "I had a healthy skepticism about this, but a few months later I got the script, and then we were in production. It all happened very quickly."

One of the first scenes shot was Hanson's appearance on "The Larry King Show." Allen had previously appeared with King, but as herself, promoting "Nixon."

"Rod gave me some things to say to Larry King that were pretty political and very hard for me to memorize," she said. "It was like trying to memorize medical terms. There was no emotional logic or progression, and it was difficult to get the sequence of words. I kept drilling these lines, and I ended up having some of them written on the table in front of me."

Having previously played a president's wife wasn't necessarily helpful.

"It couldn't hurt playing a character surrounded by high-end politics," she said. "But with C-SPAN and all the news shows, we have a good sense of what our politicians are like."

Much of the "Larry King" footage was cut anyway, along with some material about Hanson's husband (Robin Thomas), who is treated by the president (Jeff Bridges) and his advisers as a liability.

"There was a bit more there," she said. "But when an assembly of a film is three and a half hours, we all lose scenes."

Most of the picture was shot in Richmond, Va. Allen has since spent several months in Prague, shooting a miniseries version of the 1980s best seller, "The Mists of Avalon," that will be telecast in the spring.

"It's kind of a women's version of the King Arthur story, and they've been trying to make it for ages," she said. Anjelica Huston plays the lady of the lake, who orchestrates the birth of King Arthur.

"I'm the villain," said Allen, "who is always scheming and never gets what she wants."

Allen spent a few weeks in Seattle in the mid-1990s, co-starring with Drew Barrymore and Chris O'Donnell in "Mad Love." Her sister lived in Bellevue at the time, so part of the shoot was a family reunion.

"The Contender" was partly a reunion for the stars of Francis Coppola's 1988 film, "Tucker: The Man and His Dream," in which Allen had played Bridges' wife and the mother of Christian Slater, who turns up in the new film as a naive, misguided congressman. Allen says it wasn't deliberate.

"Jeff just thought the role (of president) was a good challenge for him," she said.

In a sense, Slater is still portraying a son who learns life lessons from the actors who were playing his parents 12 years ago.

"He's a little wayward," Allen said with a laugh, "but he sees the light."