and loving every minute of the fame game - Outspoken.

(From Canberra Times)

I t's Susan Sarandon's 58th birthday and she's under press arrest in a Manhattan hotel suite conducting interviews for Alfie, the remake of the '60s classic, in which Jude Law replaces Michael Caine as the adorable rogue. Ever the professional, Sarandon doesn't seem to mind that she's working on her birthday.

''When you're in this business, you become very flexible in terms of holidays and birthdays. You sometimes have to move Christmas a week earlier or a week late,'' she smiles.

''My sons have already taken me out for my birthday dinner, and Tim [Robbins, her partner of 16 years] is playing with his band on the John Kerry tour registering people to vote. He's already given me a lovely gift of a beautiful hydrangea tree, which is planted outside our bedroom window, and, besides, he'll be singing down the phone in a few hours.'' Sarandon is wearing grey tailored trousers and a multi- coloured short-sleeved blouse. Looking at least a decade younger, it's almost impossible to believe she will be collecting her pension in a few years.

She is one of those women you wish to emulate in your later years (speaking as a woman). She is truly inspirational. A political campaigner, movie star, a long- time companion of a hot younger man, and a late-in-life mother.

And, refreshingly, she takes herself less seriously than one might expect.

Her significant other is actor- director Tim Robbins (12 years her junior), whom she met when he was a fledgling actor on the set of Bull Durham (in which she starred opposite Kevin Costner) in 1988. He is the father of two of her three children, Jack Henry, 15, and Miles, 12. Her daughter, Eva, 19, is from her relationship with Italian director Franco Amurri.