PASADENA, Calif. -- Lauren Bacall has been a star for 55 years -- since, at the age of 19, she starred in "To Have and Have Not" with Humphrey Bogart, the man she later married.
But even if you'd never heard of her before, chances are that if you happened to witness Bacall entering a room, you'd still know she's a star.Actually, you instantly get the impression that Bacall doesn't suffer fools lightly -- so you try your best not to seem foolish. But that isn't easy, given that you're facing a living legend.
There's sort of an aura that surrounds Bacall. Almost regal.
And she plays off that. Like when an infant in the back of a room filled with approximately 25 TV critics suddenly started to whimper.
"That child is not giving an audition today," Bacall intoned.
The actress appeared before critics to talk up the CBS miniseries "Too Rich: The Secret Life of Doris Duke." Bacall, of course, has the title role, playing the fabulously wealthy woman whose personal life veered from one disaster to the next.
When one critic had the temerity to ask Bacall how she got the part -- did she audition? -- the actress looked straight down her nose and fixed the questioner with a rather steely gaze.
"Audition!" she exclaimed. "Do you think I spent my nightmare life in this business to audition now?"
"Actually, you have it backwards," said executive producer Robert Sertner. "She auditioned us."
Bacall was not above performing for the room, however. Like when her "Too Rich" co-star, Richard Chamberlain, was asked to talk about what it was like working with her.
"Look, I'm embarrassed sitting next to you," Chamberlain said. "She's just wonderful and funny and witty and great and sexy."
"Oh, go on," Bacall interjected.
"Too Rich" follows the life of heiress Doris Duke from her birth in 1912 through her death, under somewhat suspicious circumstances, in 1993.
And what a life it was. Her devoted father (Joe Don Baker) died when she was but 13, leaving her all of his money -- a $100 million fortune that grew to more than $3 billion -- and a nasty mother (Kathleen Quinlan) who resented, even hated her. Her parents drummed into Doris that she should trust no one; that people only wanted her because of her money.
And that led to bad marriages, disastrous love affairs and a lifelong, unsuccessful search for happiness.
The miniseries divides its focus between a series of flashbacks through various stages of Duke's life and her final days in the care of her butler, Bernard Lafferty (Richard Chamberlain) -- a man widely believed to have hastened her death in order to claim his share of the estate. And the end of Duke's life was not a pretty picture.
"By osmosis, even the couple of photographs that I've seen of myself, I resemble her more than I would like to," Bacall said. "I look pretty awful, I can tell you. . . . I look really -- bad."
Bacall, at 74, does not attempt to play Duke any younger than her mid-50s. In a nice bit of casting, Lindsay Frost plays Doris as a younger woman. And Frost does bear a resemblance to Bacall.
"Same coloring," Bacall said. "She's a lovely, lovely girl."
"And she has that voice down," Sertner added.
"She doesn't have the exact voice," Bacall interjected, dropping her baritone an octave or so lower than usual.
Of course, "Too Rich" requires that Bacall play more than just another part -- she's playing an actual person. And, while Doris Duke was rather reclusive and not exactly recognizable to most Americans, playing real people can complicate an actor's performance.
"I'm of two minds about that because I think, in a way, it's kind of a guideline," Bacall said. "You have a clue about the kind of person that you are portraying. And in another way, it's restricting because you can't go bananas as we love to go.
"But it's interesting and it kind of keeps you in check, in a way. At least it does me."
Just don't expect to see a movie about the life of Lauren Bacall come along anytime soon. At least not if she has anything to say about it.
"Over my dead body is all I can say," Bacall said. "I don't want anybody to do it. . . . I did not live my life so I could be exploited."
She acknowledged -- with the word "yes" -- that she had been approached about selling the rights to her autobiography. And she was equally brief in what her response to those entreaties was -- "No."
Bacall did recently agree to be interviewed for an "Intimate Portrait" of herself -- an hourlong profile on cable's Lifetime channel. But only reluctantly.
"I'm fed up with talking about myself, frankly," Bacall said. "I can't believe that anyone has a different notion about how to ask a question or what they want to know that they don't already know. And so, I mean, I'm not wildly in favor of them."
(Now that's just the sort of thing people conducting an interview want to hear.)
Given that Bacall doesn't want her own life story "exploited," does she feel like she's taking part in exploiting Duke's life story?
"Well, I suppose, in a way, because it's being used commercially, isn't it?" Bacall said while the producer squirmed. "But I don't think it's being done in a negative way."
"She also said, 'Over my dead body,' " Sertner pointed out.
Bacall also drew a distinction between movies based on books about famous people and movies based on books written by the famous people themselves.
"My life story would be based on my book, my autobiography," she said. "So it's all much too personal and a different kind of involvement. But I think when you portray anyone and use it commercially, it's a kind of exploitation, I suppose. But it's certainly not the Enquirer or the Star.
"You're dramatizing somebody's life. And, in this case, we're hoping to be as truthful and factual as we can be."
Still, she doesn't want a movie made about her. Not even if she had control over the script and production.
"I'd feel exactly the same way," Bacall said. "I don't want to have any say. I don't want to go over my life again. I lived it once."