The Chic Life, Complete With Flying Ants, Bad Heat, Old Newspapers . . .

Surely the life of a gorgeous French actress is oh so chic, oh so exotic.

“It was 100 degrees every day by 9 in the morning. One time it got up to 127,” Lydie Denier, who plays the willful biologist Jane in the updated weekly TV series “Tarzan,” said of her five months filming in the remote Yucatan jungles near Palenque, Mexico.

“And there were these flying red ants that would come out of nowhere, bite you all over and then go away. There was no TV, no newspapers. Even little things like chewing gum you couldn’t get. The producer would fly down twice a month and bring us chocolate-chip cookies and newspapers that were three weeks old. After awhile you just lay back and let the mosquitoes bite you.”

So what’s a bored, big-city Jane to do with nothing to occupy her nights and weekends in the hot jungle? Why, take up with her Tarzan, played by German-born actor Wolf Larson. Some Hollywood myths--like the one about the leading man and his leading lady--are true. . . .

Denier, 27, who was born in Brittany, France, became an actress after several years as a fashion model when she came to Los Angeles five years ago on vacation and decided to stay. She’s appeared in several television shows, including “China Beach” and “General Hospital.”

Zalman King, the director of such erotic films as “Two Moon Junction” and “Wild Orchid,” cast her in two of his upcoming projects: an episode of Showtime’s TV series “Red Shoe Diaries” that will premiere next spring, and his feature film due out in February, “Blue Movie Blue.” In the latter, Denier unabashedly removes nearly all of her lingerie in a titillating striptease.

She said she has no qualms about taking off her clothes, and to those who might criticize her for allowing herself to be used by a man as a flawless objectification of Woman, she retorts: “They are just jealous. European attitudes are so different than American attitudes. All these American actresses clutch their breast and say, ‘Oh no, I won’t do a nude scene,’ but they are the first ones to rip off their clothes and run around naked on the beach at St. Tropez.”