BUCKLEY AT 39--NOW THE CAT’S MEOW

“I’m a late bloomer, I suppose,” said Betty Buckley. “But that’s healthier than the panic some people have to make it in their 20s. I’ve always thought my prime would come in my 40s. And I’m right on schedule--I turn 40 in July.”

She will celebrate that birthday in Paris where she will be co-starring with Harrison Ford in an as-yet untitled movie directed by Roman Polanski.

“Imagine,” she said in her hotel suite. “Paris for three months. Harrison Ford. And Roman Polanski. Luck really is going my way.”

For Buckley, who made her name in the ‘70s TV sitcom “Eight Is Enough” and went on to win new admirers in the musicals “I’m Getting My Act Together . . .” and “Cats,” this is shaping up as a very good year. She has a CBS miniseries, “Roses Are for the Rich,” in which she plays a madam, due to air in May. A movie, “Wild Thing,” in which she plays a bag lady, will be released next month. And her album, “Betty Buckley,” will be released in a couple of weeks.

No wonder she’s smiling.

“I was making this CBS miniseries in Alabama when they asked me to fly to Paris by Concorde to meet with Harrison and Roman,” she said. “Apparently Harrison had liked a test I did for the wife in ‘The Mosquito Coast’ (the role eventually went to Helen Mirren) so he remembered me. And Roman had seen some clips from the second movie I did, ‘Tender Mercies.’

“I had dinner with both of them the first night in Paris and then lunch and dinner with Roman the next day.

“I’d seen several of Roman’s films, of course--’Tess,’ ‘Chinatown,’ ‘Fearless Vampire Killers’--but I’d no idea he’d made so many other great movies. I was awestruck. In a way it’s probably better I didn’t know because I’d have been terribly intimidated.

“Anyway, when I got back and was told I had the part I called my brother Norman who is an assistant film editor (“Tender Mercies,” “Silkwood”) and he said: ‘You mean you didn’t know about all his other films?’ He couldn’t believe it.”

Buckley, of course, does not need a movie career to survive. She has made several films--though not many will remember her debut as the gym teacher with a sympathetic ear for Sissy Spacek’s woes in “Carrie.”

What people do remember is her work on stage. No one who saw her in “Cats”--in which she sang the mega-hit “Memory”--will easily forget her. And those who saw her playing the lead last summer in “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” on Broadway were equally dazzled.

In this version of Charles Dickens’ unfinished novel she played a man. And during her seven-month run she cunningly managed to get her Shih Tzu Bridget into the act.

“After I walked offstage I came back on with Bridget,” she said. “And it always got a roar of laughter. So I told the management I felt Bridget should be paid. They disagreed. So when I was off for a few days and my understudy went on without Bridget she got no laugh for the exit. And they finally agreed Bridget should be paid. She got a back check for $1500 and $100 a week grooming fee.”

In “Cats” she was a top cat. In “Drood” she was a man. In “Roses Are for the Rich” she wears a red wig. In “Wild Things” she’s a bag lady. Underneath it all there’s Betty Buckley--bursting with talent, anxious to show her real face again. She’ll get that chance in the new Roman Polanski thriller--playing Harrison Ford’s wife.

“Finally,” she said, “I feel I’m getting there; I feel my only limitations are the ones that God’s given me. I feel I can do anything. . . .”