'I'm back to being myself': Funny. Famous. Fat. After some high-profile mistakes, Kirstie Alley is finally ready to start over. What she's doing to slim down, jump-start her career ... and maybe even find a husband.('Fat Actress')(Cover Story)

Publication: Good Housekeeping

Publication Date: 01-MAR-05

Bookmark this article Print this article Link to this article Email this article Digg It! Add to del.icio.us RSS

COPYRIGHT 2005 © Hearst Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved

"People aren't interested in fat actresses," says Kirstie Alley. "They're interested in actresses who get fat. That's big news, apparently." Sitting at a table in front of the fireplace in the living room of her grand three-story Spanish-style home in Los Angeles, Alley is marveling at the unexpected, "crazy" amount of media attention sparked by her new Showtime series, Fat Actress, which is loosely based on her life. "I've never seen anything like it," she says. "If you started out fat, you're not fair game. If you started out fat, you play fat roles and you're a fat girl. Who cares?" She smiles a wry smile and arches one of her famously expressive eyebrows.

The room she's in--high-ceilinged, its walls covered in pale-green silk--has the elegance befitting a star. But Alley, a self-described "eccentric," has filled the room with near-life-size stuffed animals--including a moose, a tiger, and a reindeer. "Santa brings two apiece every Christmas," she explains. The recipients are her children with ex-husband Parker Stevenson: William True, 12, and Lillie Price, ten. (She and Stevenson, an actor, divorced in 1998.)

Swathed in a loose, thigh-length brown sweater over a long black dress, her outfit accented with low-heeled, pointy-toed orange shoes and a playful plastic orange-flower brooch pinned to her sweater, Alley is plump but striking--her skin smooth and creamy, her almond-shaped eyes a stunning green. She wears little makeup: eyeliner, a bit of freshly applied soft-pink lipstick. She is warm and full of wisecracks, never at a loss for words. Her signature voice is even huskier than usual--"blown out," she says, from shooting this week's episode of Fat Actress. She smiles often and laughs a lot, usually at herself.

The public's fascination with Alley's weight gain suggests there's a titillating story behind it--"Oh my God, what happened?!" Alley asks in mock horror. What happened, she says, isn't that dramatic: "In the last year and a half, I just got lazy about working out," she says. Exercise "wasn't a priority." It's suggested to her that it can be easy to let gaining weight just happen. But Alley insists she was more culpable than that. "I think I hit the point where I let it go," she says.

The fact that Alley loves to...

Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.