What’s New, Paula Prentiss? How About Playing Jessica Fletcher?

With her oldest child ready for college, Paula Prentiss is finally resuming her career, beginning with Sunday night’s guest appearance on CBS’ “Murder, She Wrote.”

Sunday’s show takes the fictional mystery novelist Jessica Fletcher to Universal Studios, which is making a movie based on her latest book. Universal is the series’ actual producer and, in a nifty bit of cross promotion, the episode’s murder takes place on the famed Universal tour. Prentiss plays the actress hired to portray Jessica; the real Jessica (Angela Lansbury) investigates the murder by visiting some of the tour’s locations.

“My 13-year-old daughter loves that show,” the statuesque actress says, her voice still filigreed by a native Texas twang. “So I said, ‘Isn’t that the perfect cup of tea for me?’ ”

She is composed and comfortable in the role of proud mother and wife--without a trace of the flighty characters she once played.

Remember her in “What’s New Pussycat?” or perhaps in “Man’s Favorite Sport,” directed by Howard Hawks, or Mike Nichols’ operatic “Catch 22,” in which her husband Richard Benjamin was so memorably smarmy?

What about those other Prentiss late-show perennials, “Last of the Red Hot Lovers,” “Where the Boys Are,” “The Stepford Wives” or “The World of Henry Orient”?

Middlebrow movie mavens, for whom the relatively innocent pleasures of ‘60s and ‘70s Hollywood are enough, usually can readily cite their favorite Paula Prentiss picture.

But until Sunday’s “Murder” episode, there had been no new additions to her oeuvre for more than a decade. While her husband was developing an impressive resume as a director (“My Favorite Year,” “Mermaids”), she spent the ‘80s raising two kids--namesake daughter Prentiss, now 13, and son Ross, 17.

“Acting is a lot of fun, but I think living has contributed to my love of acting,” Prentiss says. “I’ve gotten done what I wanted to get done. Now I’m ready.”