At 43, Andie MacDowell remains a radiant, youthful presence, both on and off the screen. As comfortable with comedy as with drama, the versatile actress will be showing audiences both sides of her persona, with the British comedy Crush and the powerful Harrison's Flowers, in which she plays a woman who travels to war-torn Yugoslavia to find her husband, a photojournalist for 'Newsweek,' who was to make this his last assignment but has been reported dead by the wire service. The film proved to be a tougher working experience than even SHE had imagined, as she revealed to Paul Fischer.

Paul Fischer: Harrison's Flowers really has some harrowing moments in it such as a sequence involving you running through a burning hospital. I understand that was pretty scary stuff for you.

Andie MacDowell: The thing was, I didn't know because we could not rehearse it, what it was going to be like, and eventually the room was burnt, so that was that. You had to get it right, and when I ran by that wall I had to ask them, okay explain to me what is going to happen, because the whole wall was going to explode, explain to me what is going to happen. I really need to know what they are doing, because quite often it did not feel like, many people did not know what they were doing, and nobody spoke English, and if you normally do a movie with ammunition, they will go fire in the hole, there was none of that stuff. Everybody has gone, guns going off, it was complete and utter chaos, it was CRAZY. It was 3 in the morning, and you felt like nobody knew what they were doing and you were just kinda having to go: Okay, go, they hired you so here you are, running into the burning room and then pass the wall while it all explodes; it was crazy but he did an amazing job.

P.F: Doesn't that sort of help you in the terms of the fact that you were shooting a film that's set in a war zone?

A.M: Of course it helped. It was a painful way to help. It was a horrible way to help, and in fact, you know, that I realized even more so that Elie [Chouraqui, director] did all of this intentionally to make me feel like I was really in a war. The scene where this guy rapes me, he was HORRIBLE to me. He was awful to me. Actually he wouldn't talk to me, it was terrible. I wanted to go up, you know, actor to actor and try to introduce myself, but that would not happen.

P.F: Why was that?

A.M: I think ELIE did it, and at the time I believed it. I thought that the guy was really Serbian and that he hated Americans, then I realized he was such an asshole.

P.F: Did you confirm this with Elie?

A.M: Yeah. But it finally dawned on me, I was like wait a minute, you did that to me. He said, well of course I did.

P.F: So what does that do to your performance?

A.M: It made it better. What can you say? I mean, I've never had to go through an experience, where a director felt COMPELLED to torture me in order to get a better performance. I've always heard about it, and I guess I felt by this time noone would have the necessity to do that.

P.F: I'm wondering if you were completely engrossed in this role or if you had done something that you had just been training along the way.

A.M: I was probably really ready. I was actually really raw in my life. I had been through the most difficult thing in my whole life; I had been to the bottom of my pit, and had experienced deep pain and depression, and really the strange thing is this movie took me out of that, because I realized my life was not really that bad, and I had to deal with reality of what could be going on in other people's lives. I think a lot of it has to do with timing, finding the right piece and working with the right director. There's many components that come together to make a performance what a performance is, and I think all the components came together at the right time.

P.F: Your life now it seems to be much steadier, in that you've remarried, have a wonderful family. Is it all coincidental that it all has come together?

A.M: You know, it blows my mind, I don't know how this happened, but I am very, very thankful that it did. Why does anything happen in anybody's life. We can sit around and go, okay, is there really a plan, does somebody really know what's happening, is it all planned out, because sometimes it just seems too remarkable to me the things that have happened to me.

P.F: About your kids, when you did this and you read the script and you saw that there was going to be things with children, like about the children getting raped, the little girl that gets shot earlier on, and then the children being blown up by the grenade, what did you think about your older children and how did you prepare them for this, for this film. I mean, did you let them see it?

A.M: They haven't seen it. I think I'll let my son see it, but I think that's probably it. He's 15.

P.F: Did you tell him about it, what kind of role you were doing or what it was about?

A.M: No, because I don't think, I actually think there's a lot of dignity in telling the story. So that doesn't really concern me, I think I would be more concerned about a sexually risqué movie, than a movie that reveals a truth that needs to be revealed.

P.F: Like Crush?

A.M: Yeah, I am more worried about that.

P.F: The scene where you have sex at a graveyard comes to mind.

A.M: Yeah, I'm more worried about the graveyard scene and my son seeing that, he would be mortified.

P.F: It seems that many who see Harrison's Flowers might be a little bit ashamed that they didn't know MORE, about what had gone on in Bosnia. How much did YOU know about that?

A.M: I don't think anybody knew anything. I was frustrated because I remember during the war I would ask people that I felt probably were more well informed and literate than I am, but had the capacity to understand, perhaps maybe read more that me about it and they STILL couldn't explain it to me. I even knew someone who was from Croatia, whose family was over there and HE couldn't even explain it. I think there was such a mystery because of the overlapping, the chaos, especially in the beginning of the war, or the conflict that nobody could really explain it.

P.F: Did this film chang your perception of what goes on outside this country, in terms of conflict?

A.M: I have always been interested because I lived in Paris when I was 20 and 21, and actually knew people that worked for the government there, that talked about terrorism in the country 20 years ago. I mean I had a friend who told me about what was happening, what was going to happen, and things that were happening NOW, 15 years ago. And I'm sitting here going, oh my God, you knew things that were going on 15 years ago that we are now just becoming aware of as a public. I mean, the capacity for what has happened now has been there, it's just that we have been oblivious to it.

P.F: Do you think that's just here in the United States?

A.M: I mean more so in the United States. I hate to say it, but we are so isolated in a lot of ways. We don't speak other languages, we're not stuck right next to other countries, like if you look at European countries because they are all close together. We are so independent and the rest of the world follows us. We are number one in technology, that we don't look outside of us in a lot of ways. We don't look at the rest of the world as much as we need to.

P.F: Is there a kind of a rebirth in a way, of your career especially given that your at an age where women find it tougher to find good roles? I guess there is this perception when you reach, when an actress reaches a certain age..

A.M: It's a SAD perception. I wish we could do something about it. I wish we could change it. During Katherine Hepburn's time when she was just coming into her own at 40.

P.F: How are you finding it?

A.M: It's frustrating, because I get so exhausted with people's perception of what I must be like to be 40 when it's actually wonderful. It's incredibly fabulous. I've never felt sexier in my whole life. I can wear sexy clothes because I've got an incredible body and I happen to be 43 but it's really not that hard, all you have to do is work out a little bit and it's not like everything is falling apart. I don't know why, what it is that, you know, this magical number, everything's suppose to go downhill. I actually feel better about myself. I know who I am. I feel strong. I feel like I have integrity and intelligence more so than I ever did in my whole life. Who is it that came up with this idea that you were going to fall apart?

A.M: Do you feel you're more mature as an actor?

P.F: Of course I have TIME underneath my belt. It would be a shame to put that to waste. It's bizarre. Who came up with this concept. What happened? When did this happen. We are supposed to be liberated and it seems like we've declined. Someone told me that Mae West did not start her acting career until she turned 40.

P.F: Actually she didn't look too bad for 40.

A.M: She looked damn good.

P.F: There's a strange dichotomy about you playing the character in Harrison's Flowers on the one hand, then you doing your modeling stuff on the other. Do you notice that at all, that kind of a weird contrast in your professional life?

A.M: I must be thankful that I get to do intense dramatic roles, because it takes; so much more whereas I've been doing L'Oreal forever, and I can do that in my sleep. I've been doing it for so long, but not to say that I'm not thankful. Will not take a blessing for granted and it's been an incredible, lucrative job for me that has allowed me in the beginning to study with people I've never been able to before study with if I were a waitress, which a lot of starting out actors are, and it opened doors for me that may not have been opened for me. Of course there was always going to people who wanted to hold you down and criticize you no matter what you do if they can, because that's human nature. But I am thankful every day for the opportunities that I've had due to L'Oreal and I'm STILL thankful.

P.F: Did you still enjoy the L'Oreal gig?

A.M: It's a great job. I've known these people forever. I am so comfortable with them. They listen to what I say. The first commercial I did for gray hair I was actually mortified. I was mortified. I was like, Oh my God; I cannot believe this day has already come. I am too young, but I will do it, it's okay, it's gray hair. At least women can be thankful that I'm in my 40s and I'm not in my 30's or 20's, so the gray hair products. They can at least relate with me on that level. But the commercial was just really straight and I had so much, all day long I kept telling them I'm really trying to make some humor in this, I'm having a hard time being humorous and I really wish there was some humor in, why can't I say something like, I highlight, I don't color, you know, why can't I say something funny? People that are 40 they don't sit around at talk about gray hair and how it covers their hair. They talk about highlighting, of course they're covering gray, but they don't talk about it that way. They're going to get their colors because they need a little lightening. So they ended up rewriting it, dumped the whole commercial, that was when we added 'some of that that covers your gray, not that I ever HAD any'. I was so thankful. Oh God, at least I'm not sitting here talking about some chemical process that happens.

P.F: One of the nice things about Harrison's Flowers, is what spurs her on is her intuition. In your own life, are you in touch with that , do you listen to your intuition?

A.M: I think women have an innate ability to be intuitive with people that they truly love, but they have to trust that inner voice, and I think it is there. I think we are more intuitive than men.

P.F: What was tougher: Doing the scenes in Harrison's Flowers or having sex in the graveyard in Crush?

A.M: Oh the scenes in THIS movie; sex with that cute little boy in Crush was not that hard.

Harrison's Flowers opens in limited release on Wednesday