Faces to Watch in ’92 : These are the people Calendar’s critics and writers think you’ll be hearing about in 1992. In some cases, they’re familiar people who will experience a transitional year. Some are newcomers who could have a breakthrough year. : JEANNE PAULSEN

“I’m not your classically beautiful person,” Jeanne Paulsen says, matter-of-factly and without regret. Possibly her deep Iowa roots have pointed her to the realization that while beauty is perishable, character is not. A former schoolteacher, Paulsen is a classically trained actress who’s been working on the West Coast for the past few years and is now based in Seattle’s A Contemporary Theater. Southern California audiences first saw her tall, raw-boned, Appalachian frame move through a ghostly, terrible grief in Sally Nemeth’s “Holy Days” at the South Coast Repertory last season. And she’s one of the central characters in “The Kentucky Cycle,” which is about to open at the Mark Taper Forum and, by the estimate of some, could be the premier L.A. theater event of 1992. Paulsen’s face is as rough-cut as a figure in a wood engraving, but it’s also subtle and lambent, and unusually capable of surprise surrender to strong emotion. She recalls a younger Colleen Dewhurst, and there are a number of powerful roles out there awaiting someone with her visceral authority. There are different ways for a woman to be beautiful.