Most women would give their eye teeth to look like Julia Sweeney, a slender colleen with soft dark hair, alabaster skin, cornflower blue eyes and a spangle of freckles across a pert nose.
So what has Sweeney done to herself?She stuffs her shirt and slacks with padding, wears horn-rimmed spectacles and stuffs her hair under a short wig to transform herself into Pat Riley, a shapeless, androgynous nerd with a simpering grin and an I.Q. of about 20.
And why does Sweeney trash her natural beauty?
For laughs, of course, on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" and now in a soft-cover book titled "It's Pat! My Life Exposed."
The book, written with Christine Zander, is more scrapbook than autobiography. One page is illustrated with a large portrait of Michael Jackson with a note from Pat:
"Dear Michael,
"I think you're great! You are one of my favorites! One question though, are you a man or a woman?"
The same could be asked of Pat Riley.
The other day in a San Fernando Valley restaurant Pat was nowhere to be seen, but Sweeney, 30, was very much in evidence in a blue dress that matched her mischievous eyes.
"I still go to mass every Sunday," Sweeney said, "because I have this fantasy of writing a book about New York Catholic churches. I go to a different church in New York every week. There are some really great ones.
"But right now I'm preoccupied with the new `Saturday Night Live' season and Pat. Most people think Pat is a female, but I think of him as a male, or at least a mixture.
"Personally, I don't feel androgynous myself, but it's not difficult to call on the male side of me. In a weird way, I don't think I'm particularly feminine.
"When I began putting Pat's character together I performed for my husband and friends. I played him as a man and he wasn't particularly funny. So I threw in some jokes to make up for my lack of acting ability, and he became androgynous.
"I first did Pat on stage at a performance of The Groundlings here in Los Angeles, and it worked. Now Pat is one of the characters I do in sketches for SNL."
Married to Steve Hibbert, a writer for cartoons at Warner Bros., Sweeney is a native of Spokane, Wash., who enjoyed a successful career for five years as an accountant with Columbia Pictures before becoming a comedian.
"At 24 I had a midlife crisis as an accountant and began crying all the time," she said, laughing. "The 9-to-5 thing was not for me. I didn't like the idea of working 50 weeks a year to get two weeks off.
"So I chose to become a performer. It was a `calling.' Like becoming a nun. I took classes with The Groundlings, the comedy and improvisation group. I'd always been funny. I was voted most humorous girl eight years in a row in school. I knew I could make people laugh.
"This probably is weird, but I like the sound of the word `androgynous' and I find the subject interesting. But I'm not only seen as Pat. I play a lot of characters looking like myself.
"It's not that I'm like Paul Reubens with Pee-wee Herman. I don't do Pat too often because I don't want to burn out the character. Also, it's hard to write good material for an androgynous individual.
"I think most androgynous people are female because it's easier for women to dress and acquire male mannerisms than the other way around. I see a lot of middle-aged women who have given up on themselves, cut their hair short and could pass for men.
"One reason for Pat's original success is that audiences didn't know who was playing the character. It helped that people thought Pat was a real person. Of course, viewers know it's me now.
"It's fun to play someone so completely different from yourself. I don't think I'm making fun of Pat because the character doesn't think he or she is unattractive.
"I've never met anyone as androgynous, but I've seen Pat's traits in members of both sexes. Pat just doesn't buy into the cultural ideal of how men and women should look.
"I always try to make it perfectly clear Pat is not homosexual. The character is very heterosexual. The question is, which sex, male or female. But no one has ever actually asked Pat Riley to identify his or her sex."
Sweeney was 14 when she began watching "Saturday Night Live," never dreaming she would become a regular in the cast one day. Her parents have mixed feelings about Pat but are proud their daughter is succeeding in show biz.
"My mother hates Pat so much she carries a picture of me in my wedding dress in her purse wherever she goes," Sweeney said. "Dad thinks Pat's funny.
"They would prefer to see me look like myself in feminine clothes. Sometimes I can't help but agree with them."