A Steady Drive in Direction of Stardom : Movies: England’s Minnie Driver is not a star--yet. But a winning role in ‘Circle of Friends’ has clearly put her on the fast track.

Movie stardom has little to do with reality, but neither does New York. Just ask Minnie Driver, star of “Circle of Friends,” budding social critic and the object of affection for local lunatics.

“There’s this man who’s been following me around and asking for my autograph--about five times since I’ve come to New York,” the 23-year-old English actress said over breakfast during a short stop in Manhattan. “Five times, same man. He asks me to sign these things and he says, ‘Minnie, could you print it, please, and make it really neat ?’

“So there I am printing my name and I’m like, ‘But you could do this.’ And he says, ‘No, no, no, because I know it’s you, I just need it to be neat .’ I mean, psycho. Then he says, ‘I waited for five hours for you.’ I said, ‘Like I asked you to, psycho. Get back to Ward 6, babe.’ ”

Driver, by her own admission, is not a star. Not here. Not yet. In England, she’s a familiar face to television viewers, having appeared in a number of BBC productions. And “Circle of Friends”--the bittersweet Pat O’Connor comedy adapted from the Maeve Binchy novel that opened last month--may be in the process of changing her international status. But in New York, of course, even the groupies are avant-garde.

“They ring up my room and say, ‘Minnie said we should come up to her room and hang out,’ ” Driver says. “I said, ‘This is Minnie. Who the (expletive) are you?’ It’s so weird.”

In the movie, Driver’s character is the bighearted Benny Hogan, a small-town Irish woman protected by her shopkeeper parents (Mick Lally and Britta Smith), pursued by their lecherous, larcenous employee Sean (Alan Cumming), smitten by her handsome college classmate Jack (Chris O’Donnell), betrayed by her girlfriend Nan (Saffron Burrows) and saved, basically, by her other friend, Eve (Geraldine O’Rawe). Generously proportioned, pretty but unspectacular, Benny is a woman with an overabundance of personality and good nature.

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Driver has that, too, it seems, but when one first encounters her--in this case, walking across the lobby of her hotel--there’s a bit of sensory reshuffling required: It’s the same woman, perhaps, but svelte and long-limbed, a mane of brown curls atop a sculpted face, an air of supreme confidence and what turns out to be a take-no-prisoners wit.

Is this a trend? Toni Collette, the star of “Muriel’s Wedding”--another film about a wallflower who finds herself--appeared at an interview having turned herself from overweight heroine to slim, smiling starlet and a walking contradiction of her character. So is everybody turning into Robert De Niro?

“It’s extraordinary, isn’t it?” said Driver, conceding that yes, unlike Benny, she is thin. “I was actually astounded when I saw my movie. It wasn’t like, ‘Oh, I’m so pretty, she’s so not pretty.’ It’s just that I can’t actually believe that someone can look so different, and that person is me.”

Driver, who grew up outside London, trained at the Webber Douglas performing arts college there and began her career doing local stage plays, did gain weight, she admits, but it was more than that.

“Pat’s criterion was ‘keep eating,’ ” Driver said. “But really, I was sent off set a few times to go change because I didn’t look big enough. I didn’t wear padding, but while I did gain weight, it was as much psychological as anything. I was never allowed to show my waist; always everything was big. I wore petticoats, and very heavy underwear, big thick skirts and sweaters. Everything was man-sized. And I really carry weight in my face, so I looked heavier right off.”

And it made her feel pretty uncomfortable. “Geraldine O’Rawe looks like Vivien Leigh,” she said of her co-star. “Saffron Burrows looks like a cross between Rita Hayworth and a racehorse. And then there’s me, feeling like Miss Limp from the planet Blimp.”

Driver worked it all out in her mind, she says--talking with O’Connor and with her mother, a onetime model. What she found was that “it’s what you project.” “I mean, without a shadow of a doubt, if you think big, fat, ungainly, sweet and innocent, people get that. Everything I’ve read about myself in this movie sounds like this alien--’jaw as square as a window frame,’ ‘the unattractive plain one of the threesome.’ But it’s what I was feeling all the way through filming.”

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Getting the role, of course, had to make her smile. “I look for highly intelligent and perceptive actors,” director O’Connor said from England. “In this case, I was looking for people who could convincingly be innocent and wide-eyed, as well as convincingly 18 years old, so I didn’t seek out real veterans.”

He had seen Driver’s performances on stage and on the BBC, he said, and was concerned only that she would blend in with Burrows and O’Rawe, who had already been cast. She did.

“Minnie has an enormous amount of dedication to her roles,” he added. “Benny is really quite far from who Minnie really is, but she was very committed to understanding and identifying with Benny. It takes courage to be that dedicated, but I think in the end it will pay off for Minnie--it really comes through in her performances.”

The strange issue surrounding that performance is what the “improved” Driver means vis-a-vis a movie whose message is--well, that beauty is only skin deep. Benny isn’t a beauty--although even on-screen, Driver is much more attractive than the character described in Binchy’s novel--yet, because she’s basically good and honest and has a strong streak of self-respect, she wins romance in the end.

Audiences may be ready for heroines who aren’t super-models. If box office--nearly $10 million so far, in limited release--is any indication, they’re responding to the film and to Driver’s not-so-ugly duckling.

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So the question is: Should Driver feel guilty for being beautiful?

“The sick thing about it is I find myself now . . . well, I feel like a bit of a charlatan,” she said. “Benny is this extraordinary person whom I would love to be, would be proud to be, and here I am, thin, wearing the clothes, the makeup, and everyone’s going, ‘Oh, she doesn’t look like that, she’s glamorous, etc.’ And maybe it’s very easy to say it’s fine to be as you are. But here I am, as much a victim of the media and people’s perceptions as the next person.”

Driver was in New York not just to promote her own movie but to audition for Bernardo Bertolucci’s new and as yet untitled film. She said she didn’t think she would get the part, but there will be parts, more than she can handle. And fame and fortune and, perhaps, intrigue and secrets. “I don’t really have any deep, dark secrets,” she said wistfully. “I mean, I do, but they’re quite boring. . . .” That, along with everything else, is likely to change for Minnie Driver.