POWELL PREPARING 2ND REEL OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY

“I don’t suppose I contributed much when I was with Francis Coppola,” said veteran movie maker Michael Powell, “even though I was called senior director in residence, whatever that meant. But what I did do was tell him not to go ahead with two of the films he eventually did make.”

Now 81, the pre-eminent stylist of the British film industry smiles a lot--never more than when he talks about his eight-month stint at Coppola’s Zoetrope Studios in 1981.

It was, it appears, his last hurrah--although afterward he did go to Moscow to work as consultant on a Soviet movie about ballet dancer Anna Pavlova. These days, he spends his time putting his life and thoughts on paper, and any student of movies will find intriguing reading in the 670 pages of his just-published autobiography, “A Life in Movies” (Knopf).

This brings him up to the time he directed “The Red Shoes” with Moira Shearer, considered by many to be the best ballet movie ever made.

He is now halfway through the second volume of his autobiography, in which he describes how, after his film “Peeping Tom” premiered, he was ostracized and abused by the very industry he had helped solidify.

This movie, the story of a voyeuristic murderer, was attacked so fiercely as pornographic by the British critics that Powell found it difficult to work again. He spent the next 20 years in the wilderness and was rescued only when Martin Scorsese flew to Britain and brought him back to the United States.

Since then, Powell has been the recipient of numerous awards. He eventually married Scorsese’s Oscar-winning (for “Raging Bull”) film editor Thelma Schoonmaker.

And Powell has had the last laugh after all--because “Peeping Tom” is now considered to be his masterpiece.

“At the time,” he said the other day on a visit to Los Angeles--he and his wife divide their time between Britain and a home in Marin County--”it was called the most pornographic film ever made. Isn’t that extraordinary?”

Impressed by many of Powell’s 50-plus movies (including “A Matter of Life and Death” and “The Life and Death of Col. Blimp”), Coppola asked him to help him run Zoetrope.

“But by the time I got there, the money was all gone,” Powell said. “Francis was too innocent about the business. He needed $200 million and he had nothing like that. And that’s a shame because everyone was excited that a film maker was going to be in charge of a studio again.

“He wasn’t foolish, just idealistic. When I arrived he had two films going--’Hammett’ and “The Escape Artist.” I read both scripts and told him, ‘Stop them. They’re both terrible.’ He was a bit shaken by that. But it was too late anyway.”

Powell’s book is replete with stories and anecdotes covering his early years in movies. Yet he said he kept no diary.

“I have very good recall though Moira Shearer did ring me up when the book was published in Britain and complained that she hadn’t said the things I quoted.” He chuckled. “Of course she did.”

For many years, Michael Powell owned a hotel in the South of France, the du Parc (now renamed the Voile d’Or, it is one of the gems of the French Riviera). Selling it, as he did in the ‘60s, was an unwise move he now thinks.

“But it was a question of siding with art or commerce and art triumphed,” he said with a shrug. “With me it always will.”

SECOND CHANCE: “After I was dropped from ‘Dynasty,’ someone even advised me to leave town,” said Catherine Oxenberg. “I said, ‘Why should I? I haven’t done anything.’ ‘Yes you have,’ they said. ‘You’ve flopped.’ ”

Since leaving the show last summer--”terminated in the interests of all concerned” was the way the producers put it--Oxenberg has busied herself with acting classes.

“Before I left ‘Dynasty,’ they told me on the show that my acting was getting progressively worse,” she said the other day. “So I knew I had a lot to prove. I wasn’t about to be called the fastest has-been in Hollywood history.”

Last week, the 25-year-old actress left for Europe and the starring role in the NBC remake of “Roman Holiday,” the 1953 movie that made an international name for Audrey Hepburn.

Filming starts this week in Lisbon and Rome with Tom Conti playing the Gregory Peck part. The story concerns a princess who falls in love with a journalist during an official visit to Rome. It will mark the second time that Oxenberg has played royalty. She made her acting debut in TV’s “The Royal Romance of Charles and Diana”--playing Princess Di.

“For a long time after ‘Dynasty’ I felt very vulnerable and insecure,” she said, “but I felt if I didn’t panic and kept on working at my acting something was bound to come along. Now it has. . . .”