<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" She&amp;#039;s only been away from home for a couple of days, but already Kirstie Alley is missing her kids. William True, 14, and Lillie Price, 12, are in Los Angeles with their dad (and Alley&amp;#039;s ex), Parker Stevenson; she&amp;#039;s here in Victoria, British Columbia, making a Lifetime TV movie. So to stay connected, Alley made the ultimate Cool Mom move: On her own, she went to a concert featuring the Goth band Evanescence and held up her cell phone so her kids could hear. &amp;quot;They listened to the whole show with me,&amp;quot; she says, beaming. &amp;quot;My son got me into them. They were brilliant! And I went backstage and had the lead singer, Amy, sign a poster for him.&amp;quot;  Now Alley is flitting about her hotel suite, turning off the TV and offering her visitor a Diet Coke. Ever since she dropped 75 pounds, she has been bursting with energy: &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve always had a lot, but now I have tons,&amp;quot; she declares as she heads over to the window. &amp;quot;How about this beautiful room?&amp;quot; she says, taking in the view of the harbor below.  Finally, she alights on a couch. Given the recent attention to her weight, it&amp;#039;s hard not to stare. &amp;quot;Please,&amp;quot; she says as if reading my mind, &amp;quot;you may gawk.&amp;quot; Wearing a black sweater, a short black skirt, and stiletto boots, she looks 15 years younger than her actual age--56--thanks to luminous skin, a cascade of tawny hair, and yes, a slimmer frame. Alley is probably a little north of the 145 pounds she&amp;#039;s reported, but even so, she looks fabulous.  She&amp;#039;s entering a new phase in her life. It&amp;#039;s not just that she&amp;#039;s thinner (and blonder). Now that she&amp;#039;s done with &amp;quot;bad dudes and bad food,&amp;quot; she is ready to date again. Her 2005 Showtime series, Fat Actress, galvanized her career, and she&amp;#039;s also percolating with new projects. In The Minister of Divine, a TV pilot based on the BBC series The Vicar of Dibley, she&amp;#039;ll play a formerly rebellious woman who returns to her hometown as a minister to helm the local church. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m really excited about it,&amp;quot; says Alley. &amp;quot;I was born to do sitcoms, where you get an immediate response from the audience.&amp;quot; She&amp;#039;s also writing her second book and gearing up for a speaking tour.  Meanwhile, women across the nation are still talking about her triumphant appearance, in a maroon bikini, on Oprah last November--a watershed Alley moment and one of Winfrey&amp;#039;s highest-rated shows of the year. &amp;quot;People have started rooting for me in weird ways,&amp;quot; says Alley She insists that she wasn&amp;#039;t nervous beforehand. Well, there was one moment, when she was having pantyhose issues (she was wearing them under her bikini) and trying not to burst into hysterical tears. &amp;quot;The wardrobe person kept pinning the hose wrong and making them run, and I was getting more and more frustrated,&amp;quot; says Alley, her words coming out in a rush. &amp;quot;The hose idea sucked, but I looked better in the hose...I&amp;#039;m Irish, and if I get a big spray tan, I&amp;#039;m not going to look like J.Lo; I&amp;#039;m just going to look dirty.&amp;quot; She laughs. &amp;quot;And Oprah was leaving for her girls&amp;#039; school in Africa right after the show, so she didn&amp;#039;t have time to mess around. It looked like [the pantyhose] was just going to be a giant mistake...nothing good about it. I was going to be white here&amp;quot;--she points to her top--&amp;quot;and pantyhose color on the bottom.&amp;quot;  She takes a breath. &amp;quot;But it turned out OK. I was happy. I was glad I didn&amp;#039;t look hideous.&amp;quot; She grins. &amp;quot;Oprah kept saying, &amp;#039;You look beautiful.&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Indeed, when Alley appeared later in the show wearing a $13 print dress that she&amp;#039;d bought at H&amp;amp;amp;M, Winfrey liked it so much that Alley pulled it off in the dressing room and handed it to her. &amp;quot;She was saying, &amp;#039;I love that dress, what is that, a Gucci?&amp;#039; I said, &amp;#039;Here, take it. Wear it in Africa.&amp;#039; And she did.&amp;quot; That evening, after the Oprah taping, Alley went out to dinner in Chicago with friends, and a flirty waiter offered to show her the town. She blurted out, &amp;quot;Only if you&amp;#039;re naked.&amp;quot; Now she claps her hands over her mouth. &amp;quot;It just popped out!&amp;quot; she says, shaking her head. &amp;quot;He didn&amp;#039;t miss a beat. &amp;#039;I can arrange that,&amp;#039; he said, but I felt so stupid. It&amp;#039;s been waaaay too long,&amp;quot; she adds, referring to her dateless condition--and using an entirely unprintable expression for her rekindled interest in the opposite sex Alley is just like your funniest girlfriend, lively and fun and bawdy. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve always felt like if someone asks me something, they want the real answer,&amp;quot; she says as two of her dogs, Fawney and May, pad into the room and flop down at her feet. (These two made the trip with her; there are six others back home.) &amp;quot;I think there&amp;#039;s also something about being from Kansas. Usually people think I&amp;#039;m from New York. The only similarity between New Yorkers and Midwesterners is that what you see is what you get. Whereas on the West Coast, they&amp;#039;re very social but very covert. They don&amp;#039;t mean what they say.&amp;quot;  Alley herself lives in Los Angeles--she also has homes in Kansas and in Maine--but she&amp;#039;s always been more accessible than your typical Hollywood star. And her frank, self-effacing comments about her weight have made her a heroine to dieting women everywhere. This, after all, is a woman who described her recent weight gain as tantamount to &amp;quot;having two children stuck on my ass.&amp;quot;  She&amp;#039;s been rejected by casting agents on account of her weight, and for this reason, she says, she can relate to the character she&amp;#039;s playing in the TV movie she&amp;#039;s shooting here. (It airs next month.) Called And She Was, it&amp;#039;s the story of an over-40 Hollywood screenwriter unable to find work because of her age. In desperation, she gets her young car-salesman nephew to pose as a screenwriter and put his name on her scripts.  Alley &amp;quot;absolutely loves&amp;quot; the story, but she&amp;#039;s not as enthused about the actual filming. She doesn&amp;#039;t like the predawn hours. She is uncomfortable being in hair and makeup. She doesn&amp;#039;t like having her wardrobe constantly de-linted. And most of all, she misses being with her kids. A born nurturer, Alley likes nothing better than to watch movies at home with &amp;quot;eight dogs on the bed, and cats, and children.&amp;quot; Nonetheless, she wants you to know that Lillie and True, as she calls her son, &amp;quot;are allowed a maximum of two hours of TV a night. And zero unmonitored computer time: My son has MySpace, and he&amp;#039;s allowed 15 minutes on it, that&amp;#039;s it. And the computers are in the kitchen where we all are.&amp;quot;  Lillie and True, she says, are happy kids, and they clearly have better body images than their mom. &amp;quot;They&amp;#039;re very physical; they&amp;#039;re moving all the time, and they eat good, healthy, organic food. I tell them, &amp;#039;I know you want to be beautiful and handsome. Beauty and handsomeness first come from being happy, and second, from being healthy.&amp;#039;&amp;quot;  Alley celebrated her 56th birthday with 18 friends at a Chinese restaurant, and she wouldn&amp;#039;t have dreamed of leaving Lillie and True behind. &amp;quot;Kirstie always has her kids with her,&amp;quot; says Kathy Najimy, her longtime friend and former costar on Veronica&amp;#039;s Closet. &amp;quot;And she&amp;#039;s the kind of mom you want, because she&amp;#039;s really fun.&amp;quot; Najimy and her 10-year-old daughter, Samia, are frequent visitors at Alley&amp;#039;s house. &amp;quot;Last time we were over, [Alley] jumped into the pool with her clothes on.&amp;quot; Najimy laughs. &amp;quot;Instead of buying Lillie a dollhouse, she&amp;#039;ll build a dollhouse that&amp;#039;s big enough for three people. She doesn&amp;#039;t spoil her kids, she just does things in a grand way.&amp;quot; Lillie and True stole the show at Alley&amp;#039;s birthday party. &amp;quot;They know a lot about animals and the environment,&amp;quot; Alley says, &amp;quot;and they were telling everyone about the mercury levels in fish and how different foods are right for your body and others are toxic. People were just cracking up. My kids are so funny. And smart.&amp;quot; Alley has been funny and smart in public for a long time. After making an impression in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, she joined the cast of Cheers in 1987 and nabbed an Emmy four years later for her portrayal of the neurotic Rebecca Howe. Her movie work has included a trio of Look Who&amp;#039;s Talking films and, in 1989, Loverboy, starring a scrawny 22-year-old Patrick Dempsey as an unlikely gigolo. &amp;quot;He was always McDreamy, I&amp;#039;m telling you,&amp;quot; says Alley, an avid watcher of Grey&amp;#039;s Anatomy. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m not the only person who thought he was Hottie McHotster back then. But I think he&amp;#039;s much better now.&amp;quot;  Her sitcom Veronica&amp;#039;s Closet debuted in 1997, the same year that her 14-year marriage to Stevenson was ending. She then dated actor James Wilder, but the relationship did not end well. Around 2001, her sitcom behind her, Alley started getting &amp;quot;lazy and complacent&amp;quot; as she puts it. As her career slowed and her weight jumped, the paparazzi pounced--to the consternation of Alley&amp;#039;s protective kids, who are always ready to attack photographers with their water Uzis.  Alley shakes her head at the memory of those painful tabloid headlines. &amp;quot;Girl didn&amp;#039;t have game,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;And I didn&amp;#039;t want sympathy for being fat because, God knows, nobody was tying me down and shoving food in my face. Nobody else ruined me; I ruined me.&amp;quot; After a teary Scientology session (she has been a member of the church since the eighties), she decided to call Jenny Craig, the weight-loss company. Her involvement swiftly led to an endorsement deal.  Around the same time, she created the darkly funny, critically acclaimed Fat Actress. But it was tough, at first, to see footage from the show, &amp;quot;because I didn&amp;#039;t think I was that fat. I thought I was medium-fat! And then I saw myself, and I was like, &amp;#039;No, dude, you are freakin&amp;#039; fat...I&amp;#039;m telling you, I was big enough to where I couldn&amp;#039;t get in a seat comfortably.&amp;quot; For every pound that Alley lost, she put a one-pound box of Snow Cap lard on a silver tray at home. As the boxes piled up--25, 50--she gleefully found that she could barely lift the tray.  Now, fully rejuvenated, Alley is ready for anything. In addition to the new sitcom and the Lifetime movie, she&amp;#039;s preparing for a college speaking tour this autumn, hoping to fire up her young audience. &amp;quot;Our youth is apathetic,&amp;quot; she says bluntly. &amp;quot;They should be out protesting the war and speaking out against injustices.&amp;quot; She has become more socially conscious and is exploring ways to raise funds for children&amp;#039;s causes. &amp;quot;I want to be a billionaire and then I want to change something in the world for real,&amp;quot; she declares. Alley is also writing a novel, which will follow her memorably titled memoir, How to Lose Your Ass and Regain Your Life: Reluctant Confessions of a Big-Butted Star.  And, after a self-imposed seven-year hiatus, which she spent in a happy bubble of motherhood and friends, Alley is looking for a guy. She has been on the market now for several months, and she says she is armed with better judgment than she has exercised in the past. &amp;quot;I tended to err on the side of &amp;#039;everybody&amp;#039;s swell,&amp;#039;&amp;quot; she says, rolling her eyes. &amp;quot;It was like, &amp;#039;Hi, I&amp;#039;m Ted Bundy.&amp;#039; &amp;#039;Oh my God, he&amp;#039;s so cute. And he loves women!&amp;#039;&amp;quot; She laughs. &amp;quot;But I&amp;#039;ve gotten a lot better.&amp;quot; Her ideal man would fit the following description: 50 to 60 years old, with children, self-made, tenacious, and a &amp;quot;girl-guy&amp;quot; who could watch Bridget Jones and actually think it&amp;#039;s funny.  She used to be dazzled by good looks, but not so much anymore. &amp;quot;I sort of like guys&amp;#039; faces that are pocked,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;Like Seal--that slice thing going on there? Richard Burton, James Woods--I love that imperfect face on a man.&amp;quot;  But finding the right guy hasn&amp;#039;t been easy. &amp;quot;When I meet someone and I think they&amp;#039;re swell, it just turns into Alanis Morissette&amp;#039;s &amp;#039;Ironic,&amp;#039; because I like men who love children and their wives,&amp;quot; she explains. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t like playboys. Those guys are a dime a dozen, and they&amp;#039;re creepy, creepy creeps. &amp;quot;  On a recent skiing trip, Alley was chatted up in a restaurant by a man who called himself &amp;quot;Fat Ed.&amp;quot; He told her that he wanted to do Jenny Craig. &amp;quot;And I thought, Oh my God, he&amp;#039;s fat, but he&amp;#039;s actually very handsome, and he was self-deprecating and I like that,&amp;quot; she says. She asked the maitre d&amp;#039; to discreetly find out if Fat Ed was single, but before she had her answer, Ed invited her to dinner...with his wife and kids. She puts her face in her hands. &amp;quot;Damn, Ed! We had a great time and the wife was beautiful and his kids were so cute. I thought, I need a guy like Ed, whose wife has been run over accidentally.&amp;quot; In the meantime, her new body has given her confidence. Right now she&amp;#039;s on the Jenny Craig maintenance plan, and she allows herself the occasional splurge. &amp;quot;If something&amp;#039;s really worth it, I&amp;#039;ll eat it,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;My last splurge was a caramel apple, which is 180 calories. But I love Jenny Craig&amp;#039;s desserts.&amp;quot; She raises an eyebrow. &amp;quot;Have you had their lemon cake? No? It&amp;#039;s the best. So is their chocolate.&amp;quot; She leaps up. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m going to bring you one of each!&amp;quot; Her assistant, Kelly, who has been bustling around in an adjacent room, hears her and runs out with two of the cakes perched on a silver tray. &amp;quot;Taste these!&amp;quot; Alley urges.  OK, they really are good. &amp;quot;What did I tell you?&amp;quot; she says. No wonder Jenny Craig executives keep renewing her contract. To see if she truly walks the walk, I ask if I can peek inside her fridge. She gamely leads me into the kitchen and flings open the refrigerator doors. &amp;quot;Take a look!&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;This is my stash.&amp;quot; There are Jenny Craig boxes stuffed into every spare inch of the fridge, and a dozen more entrees wedged inside the freezer.  Kelly pops her head in the kitchen to announce that Alley&amp;#039;s doctor has arrived. &amp;quot;I get vitamin B-12 shots when I&amp;#039;m doing movies, for energy,&amp;quot; Alley explains. More energy? We&amp;#039;ve been chatting for a few hours, but she hasn&amp;#039;t slowed down in the least. As I gather my things to go, she races back to the kitchen and returns with two more cakes in plastic containers. &amp;quot;Here&amp;#039;s more for later,&amp;quot; she says. Then she leans in and whispers, &amp;quot;I get them for free, you know.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/inspirational-stories/interviews/a17227/kirstie-alley-may07/>