‘Gotham’s’ Ghost Is a <i> Fatale </i> Attraction : <i> Virginia Madsen Makes a Specter of Herself in Sultry Role on Cable</i>

Virginia Madsen, looking most unlike the haunting spirit she plays in Showtime’s “Gotham,” romped on the sofa with her yellowish-white “mutt.”

Whiskey, a mixture of Australian shepherd and timber wolf, licked her face and snuggled close.

Madsen stars in “Gotham” with Tommy Lee Jones as a sultry spirit who doesn’t want to give up the ghost.

“Rachel doesn’t get it, she doesn’t realize she has to go to the hereafter,” said Madsen, shooing Whiskey off so she could talk.

“I didn’t see Rachel as a villain. You have to consider the ghost. She could be frightened and confused.”

In the movie, which Showtime began cablecasting on Sunday, she is a beautiful socialite killed in a boating accident who haunts her husband because he did not bury her jewels with her. She is pursuing him for the jewels. Her husband, Charlie (Colin Bruce), hires private eye Eddie Mallard (Jones) to get her to leave him alone. Mallard, of course, falls in love with Rachel.

Lloyd Fonvielle wrote and directed the movie, which was filmed on location in New York and Toronto. The movie effectively uses lighting and atmosphere to give it the feel of a 1940s film noir.

“It’s a mysterious love story,” she said. “I don’t want to call it a ghost story because it’s not really about her being a ghost. She’s very earthbound. As Tommy Lee said, ‘It’s a story about a gumshoe and the femme fatale, only she’s a bit more fatale than usual.’ ”

If the voice of the unseen bartender in “Gotham” sounds familiar, you’re on the right track. It’s that of Dabney Coleman.

Madsen was in the living room of her rented home in the Hollywood Hills, which she will be vacating soon for a larger house she is buying. She sat directly beneath a skylight, which made her corn-silk hair and milk-white skin seem luminescent. The room was decorated with old toys and memorabilia from the 1930s. In the bookcase were two travel books, one of Yugoslavia, where she played Mussolini’s mistress Claretta Petacci in the NBC miniseries “Mussolini: The Untold Story,” and one on Florida, where she starred in the HBO movie “Long Gone.”

Family pictures were on the kitchen counter, including one of her brother, actor Michael Madsen, in his baseball uniform from “The Natural.” He also starred in the ABC series “Family Honor.”

She is currently between movies. Besides “Gotham,” she recently completed “Hot to Trot,” a comedy about a talking horse, and “Heart of Dixie” and “Mr. North,” directed by Danny Huston. Anjelica Huston appears in the movie, which was intended to feature their father, John Huston. When Huston died he was replaced by Robert Mitchum.

“Heart of Dixie,” from the novel “Heartbreak Hotel,” tells the story of three young women in Alabama in 1957. The movie also stars Phoebe Cates and Ally Sheedy. It was filmed in Mississippi.

“It’s a time of innocence in their lives,” she said, “and when the civil rights movement begins we see how it affects each one. Ally sees a man being beaten by the police and is sprayed with his blood. Phoebe’s already at an age where you know she’s going to become a Greenwich Village beatnik. My character starts out wild and bawdy, but through a tragedy I become very proper. Treat Williams plays an AP reporter who covers the racial problems.”

Madsen, who grew up in the Chicago area, said: “I was acting always. I never grew out of make-believe. I never grew out of dress-up. What was playtime became my profession. I was very serious about it. My mother never pushed me into commercials or community theater or anything professional. She felt I would lose the magic. I’m very grateful to her for not being a stage mother.

“I still feel the magic. People who start out young rarely stay in the business. She wanted me to be sure of myself as a person before I started. Of course, when I did start in Chicago I couldn’t get arrested there.”

She did work in the movie “Class” while still in Chicago and did a Public Broadcasting Service special. “That gave me a little chunk of money to come out here and get settled. My brother was already here and working. I guess my big break was in ‘Dune,’ but it wasn’t very successful. It did cause a little buzz about me. I was thought of as another Princess Leia, but an evil Princess Leia. It did create work for me.”