At 46, Lynn Redgrave is pleased to announce she's a svelte size 8.
That's quite something, you see, because "at my heaviest, I was a size 18," says the veteran actress, whose 15-second spots for Weight Watchers with the sign-off "This is living!" have garnered her more fame than all her movies, theater and television work put together.And that's OK, too, says Redgrave, still one of the classiest women in acting today and in San Francisco to promote her latest movie, a sweet British comedy produced by Randal Kleiser and Jonathan Krane called "Getting It Right."
"I enjoy doing the commercials. They're well-written and fun to do and I'm probably the only person in television history who's pushing something she believes in," adds the youngest member of the famed British acting family that includes her father, Sir Michael; her mother, Rachel Kempson; her sister, Vanessa; and her brother, Corin.
"And it all adds to the other. If 30 percent of the matinee audience for "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" (which she has just wound up in Los Angeles) normally don't go to the theater but came to see me because of my commercials, that's OK by me.
"It used to be that you'd be in a touring group and you'd tour for a year and then you'd go back and people would be glad to see you again. But touring's dead now, and things like TV commercials - as much as they are lucrative and put your children though college a hell of a lot quicker than touring ever did - they have also, I believe, made me a better screen actor . . . because I've had the opportunity to practice and express myself in a meticulous situation."
Besides, says Redgrave, in her clipped British accent, "I don't get offered that many movies."
And the movies she has done have not - how can we say this - been blockbusters.
After giving up horses for acting at age 15, Redgrave made her film debut in the epic "Tom Jones" and was also seen in such '60s films as "The Girl with the Green Eyes" and "The Deadly Affair."
But even after her Oscar nomination in 1966 for the cult-status movie "Georgy Girl" and countless television, screen and stage roles, real fame still seems to elude her.
Redgrave's subsequent screen appearances have included "Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex," "The Happy Hooker," "Sunday Lovers" and, most recently, "Midnight' and the BBC film "Death of a Son."
Her theater credits include "Love for Love" with Laurence Olivier, "Hay Fever" with Noel Coward, "The Tulip Tree" and "Born Yesterday." On Broadway, Redgrave has starred in "Mrs. Warren's Profession" (for which she earned a Tony nomination), "St. Joan" and "Sweet Sue." She also played Sister Mary in "Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You" and is a founding member of Britain's National Theater.
In television, Redgrave received an Emmy nomination for her starring role in the mediocre CBS sitcom "House Calls," from which she was fired in a dispute with Universal Television over what she said was her request to breast-feed her infant daughter, Annabel, at work and what Universal said was a salary demand.
If Redgrave seems to have chosen a clearly different acting path than other members of her family, she doesn't feel it. "Because I live in America, I've been able to have a more diversified career than in England.
"American people forget that England is a very small country and there's not masses of work there. In England I was brought up to think it's fine to flip to different media, because you can't make a living on just one medium there. But the theater is where you have the most longevity. Stage is what I always want to return to.
"All of my family would do all this if they had the opportunity," says Redgrave, "although my father is not crazy about television because he came to it too late. But my sister, Vanessa, has done television , my brother has, my mother certainly has. And there aren't always movie offered. Maybe it will change now, but for a while I think I was out of fashion in the movies."
On her sister, Vanessa, Redgrave says the two get along well and rarely discuss Vanessa's pro-PLO politics.
"We don't always subscribe to the same views, but we don't always talk about it...I very much respect the fact that she hasn't changed her opinions to fit in with the times like others we could mention."
For the future, Redgrave has just finished her autobiographical book, "This Is Living," about "how I got fat, why I stayed fat and how I got thin. I ate when I was happy, I ate when I was unhappy and it all comes out of a destructive lack of self-esteem."
"For 20 years, I dieted by starving myself, and in 1982 I joined Weight Watchers, lost 35 pounds and have been keeping the weight off ever since. It restrains you about how you think about food. Compulsive overeating is a very serious problem. I never went on a binge when I was hungry."
Redgrave is also looking for more high-class work.
"I would like to be in films with wonderful directors like a Sydney Pollock or a Louis Malle. Not David Puttnam, because he was just quoted in Time as saying he never makes movies where a woman has the lead because women's feelings are arbitrary to him."