OUT OF THE INCUBATOR, INTO THE PLAYHOUSE : SUSAN TYRRELL DOESN’T SKIRT AN ISSUE

“I’ve never done any acting exercises,” offered Susan Tyrrell on her preparation for Tom Eyen’s ribald comedy, “Why Hanna’s Skirt Won’t Stay Down” (at the Coast Playhouse). “I don’t care about that. I don’t care about acting. I care about going to art school, moving to Mexico and keeping up my Spanish. But acting-- never . It was too easy for me, so I never respected it.”

So why has Tyrrell embraced the role of gaudy Hanna, this “broken doll in a garbage can,” who hangs around Coney Island propositioning young men and letting a fun-house breeze hole blow up her dress?

“I haven’t acted in two years,” she began matter-of-factly. “I quit after every job I’ve ever had; I’ve completely given up, retired. At Lincoln Center (where she appeared in “A Cry of Players,” “Camino Real” and “The Time of Your Life”) I called in sick after three years, sat in the audience and quit the next day, ‘cause the stuff was just lame. Lame . If I can’t have a tour de force, I’m gonna stay home: sculpt, garden, tear around Venice and just be happy there.”

Consequently, the reentry into acting did not come easily.

“Getting this together,” she sighed, “meant four weeks of insomnia, of fear, of working in my sleep, trying to get this character: ‘Would it be enough, or too much?’ . . . It’s like Pauline Kael once said: ‘Susan Tyrrell is a school of acting--if you like that,’ which killed me, but also honored me.”

The actress cackled cheerfully. “I’ve never had much luck in my career, so this play has been a real boon. I’ve been sleeping for two years, incubating. Of course when I don’t act, I get very sick, almost suicidal. I miss it so much--but I won’t admit it to myself because I have such loathing for it. Loathing for the business. I’ve worked with so many idiots who try to play doll with me--dress me and tell me how to act--instead of inspiring me. If you wanna play doll with Susan Tyrrell, then don’t hire her.

“The last thing I did,” she said grimly, “was ‘Flesh and Blood’ with Rutger Hauer in Spain--which was a nightmare. I lived in Madrid and spent money like a maniac, ‘cause I didn’t respect the money. So I was completely broke when the ‘Angel’ people called. (Tyrrell appeared in both notorious “Angel” films.) The first time they phoned, Milton Berle had just quit. They said, ‘Can you come in right now and play a guy?’ (The role was later rewritten as a lesbian.)

“I never saw that movie,” she shrugged. “I haven’t seen anything I’ve done in eight years. I know when it stinks. And I would be so depressed if I had to see myself in it. So my boyfriend Clay (“a Reagan redneck” to her “screaming liberal”) says, ‘It’s coming on. We’ve got to go out.’ I’d crack if I had to witness anything bad that I’d done. I don’t care if I’m the best thing in it. Who wants to be the best thing in a piece of junk?”

With “Hanna,” Tyrrell feels she’s found the perfect foil for both her talents and personality.

“A lot of her vulgarity is me, Susu,” she nodded. “My boyfriend calls me the anti-Gidget. And I’m very smarmy at home. You see, I had British parents, very up-tight. I came from such a repressed background--also physically abusive. . . . My parents wanted everything nice : to the point of danger, to the point of mental breakdown. There was no air; I could not breathe.”

In her fury to run away from that world, she also put on some blinders: “I never ask any questions. I like to feel, I don’t like to know. I was an ‘F’ student, never finished high school.” Yet her migration to Hollywood brought almost instant success, in such movies as “Forbidden Zone,” “Andy Warhol’s Bad” and an Oscar-nominated role in “Fat City” (1972).

“I never appreciated anything about that film; it was so unpleasant. ‘Fat City’ should have been the beginning of a marvelous career--instead it was like the end. Anyway, where do you put somebody like me, a female Jack Nicholson?

“You keep going and persevere,” she said. “Now, for once in my life, I can be proud of a show.”