Morgan Fairchild parodies herself in movie about teen selling s

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- The elevator doors are closing fast and Morgan Fairchild wants to go up. The slender blonde steps forward, thrusts her arms out and heaves the doors back open. She steps inside for the ride to her publicist's fourth-floor office, chuckling, amused by her own determination.

Fairchild, who studied kung fu for years, is not one to let things stand in her way. Hollywood ageism, for instance, isn't going to get the better of her.

"You have to keep reintroducing yourself to the audience," said the 52-year-old actress, who's been reintroducing herself in Old Navy commercials. "Every five years there's a new generation that comes of age where they start paying attention and identify, and you just have to be there on the cutting edge of whatever that is.

"So I have this whole audience of teenagers who know who I am, who don't know who any of the other '80s vixens are. And they don't know how old I am; they think I'm the Old Navy babe!"

After a few years on the daytime soap opera "Search for Tomorrow," Fairchild rose to fame as the glamorous up-to-no-good Constance Weldon Semple Carlyle in the 1980s prime-time soap "Flamingo Road."

Now she's co-starring as the devil's girlfriend in a family movie, "I Was a Teenage Faust," about a geeky teen tempted to sell his soul in the hopes of becoming cool.

"She's a sort of Morgan Fairchild parody," Fairchild says of the role of Babylonia in the Showtime movie airing 7 p.m. today.

Interested in family fare

The movie also stars Josh Zuckerman as the teenager, Stuart Margolin as the devil and Robert Townsend as his soul seeker.

"It's cute. Cute is not a word that usually describes the kind of pictures I do," Fairchild said. "I was very interested to be offered something that was family fare. I always end up playing vixens."

Fairchild's character hounds the soul seeker over his delay in hooking the teen. "I'm like the posse on his heels, wreaking havoc," Fairchild said.

The movie's writer-director, Thom Eberhardt, said, "We needed an actress who could dominate, but not become overbearing doing so."

Fairchild recalls when she wasn't the vixen who could dominate.

"I was a fat kid. Fat, pudgy," said Fairchild, born Patsy Ann McClenny. "Kids at school were teasing me, calling me 'Fatsy Patsy.' And I'm as blind as bat, so I had these big, thick, Coke-bottle glasses -- and I just went home and cried and swore I just wasn't going to be that fat kid any more."

Diet and contact lenses changed her appearance. Later the Dallas native changed her name to fit the new image.

Those vixen roles followed, along with the typecasting, which she now can make fun of: In 1990, Fairchild earned an Emmy nomination as an actress researching the role of an anchorwoman on "Murphy Brown." As the new wife to Christine Baranski's ex, she tumbled into a cat fight on "Cybill" in the '90s. Last year, she guest-starred in three episodes of the top-rated "Friends" as Chandler's oh-so-sexy mother, Nora Tyler Bing.

Acting isn't the only thing keeping Fairchild busy. She's developing her Morgan Fairchild Pure Effect skin care line, which goes on sale next year, and she's a member of the national executive committee of the Screen Actors Guild.

Fairchild first started acting in an effort to overcome shyness.

"I still hate public speaking, but if there's an issue that matters to me, by gum, I'll stand up," she says.