MOVIES : Dressed for Success : For Hollywood’s long-suffering leading actresses (remember ‘Year of the Woman’?), there’s a new optimism about their ability to open and carry a movie. But the big bucks still go to the boys.

The theme of the 1993 Oscar ceremonies was “The Year of the Woman.” Given the paucity of substantive roles for actresses, insiders wondered, “Which woman?”

The pickings were nearly as slim in 1994, when Holly Hunter won the top award for “The Piano.” Noting that she and Emma Thompson had been nominated in both the best actress and best supporting actress categories, Hunter suggested that to cover all bases, the academy had to resort to using Hamburger Helper.

And the picture wasn’t much brighter earlier this year when Jessica Lange beat out yet another lackluster field with her performance in the scarcely seen “Blue Sky.”

Few would have forecast that later in the year, actresses would emerge as a critical force, distinguishing themselves in a growing number of substantive roles and beginning to demonstrate potent box-office appeal. Countering the conventional wisdom that actresses can’t fill the seats on that do-or-die first weekend, Sandra Bullock, Michelle Pfeiffer and Julia Roberts carried “The Net,” “Dangerous Minds” and “Something to Talk About,” respectively, to wide-ranging audiences this past summer.

Jennifer Jason Leigh and Emma Thompson, stars of the recently released “Georgia” and “Sense and Sensibility,” are likely favorites in a suddenly jammed Oscar race. Fox’s “Waiting to Exhale,” the story of four African American women in Phoenix, and MGM’s “Cutthroat Island,” starring Geena Davis as a pirate, open Friday.

“Women are a big audience and you can market to them if the product is good,” says Tom Pollock, vice chairman of MCA Inc., whose Universal Pictures released the multi-generational “How to Make an American Quilt” this fall. “Studios are accepting the fact that women and women’s subjects have opened films. . . . Hollywood takes note of numbers.”

But progress is predicated on profits, and the results thus far have been erratic. “The Scarlet Letter,” with Demi Moore; “To Die For,” starring Nicole Kidman as a homicidal Barbara Walters wannabe; “American Quilt,” and the Warner Bros. thriller “Copycat,” featuring Sigourney Weaver and, in a role originally written for a man, Holly Hunter, failed to fulfill expectations. Just as the failure of 1990’s “Stella” led then-Walt Disney Studios Chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg to steer clear of female-themed movies, the fate of the current spate of films may have far-reaching implications on what gets made down the road.

“Unless these films do well, female-driven movies will be viewed as a once-a-year-and-we-already-have-one genre rather than as a legitimate source of revenue,” says Midge Sanford, a producer of “American Quilt.” “Movies like ‘Little Women’ and ‘Enchanted April’ had to take in some money before we got the green light.”

It’s still a far cry from the 1940s, when “the majority of films were dominated by female stars and women’s stories,” says Moore, who also starred in and produced New Line’s female coming-of-age story “Now and Then.” “But at least the industry has shed its fixation on boys aged 15 to 22--whose girlfriends or wives, it was assumed, would come along for the ride.

“On a personal level, there’s more material to choose from,” says the actress, acknowledging that her experience may be skewed by the fact that she has four pictures with $100-million-plus grosses to her credit. “With each role of the dice, movies starring or about women are receiving more studio marketing support. The pendulum seems to be swinging to the other side.”

The women’s audience has always been there, maintains screenwriter Robin Swicord (“Little Women”). But whenever she’d point out that people showed up for “Terms of Endearment,” studio executives would call it a “fluke.” “In fact, it was women who made action adventures so big and ‘Last of the Mohicans’ a hit,” she says. “We all came out of the house to see Daniel Day-Lewis running half-naked through the woods and a heroine who wasn’t an object. Women’s movies don’t have to be female-themed . . . they just have to give us something we like.”

Industry observers agree that the female component in the moviegoing marketplace extends far beyond so-called “chick flicks.” “The Bridges of Madison County” and “Legends of the Fall” did well by appealing to both men and women. And, according to exit polls, 55% of the opening weekend crowd for “Apollo 13” was female.

Among teens, males generally select a film. But among adults, women usually dominate.

“The conventional wisdom is that women make the decision about which movies to go to--and men have veto power,” says Paula Silver, a marketing consultant for the Walt Disney Studios and former president of marketing at Columbia Pictures. “If it looks really sappy, women go with their girlfriends. But if a story is compelling, the word-of-mouth factor makes it OK for men to turn out.”

The 1991 female buddy film “Thelma & Louise” was a case in point. “Though the movie wasn’t a runaway hit, it more than recouped its money and had great psychological impact on the studios and the public,” Hunter says. “Since then, women have been establishing a track record, however fragile. We all stand to benefit with Julia Roberts exhibiting stamina at the box office and Demi and Sharon Stone hitting home runs nearly every time out.”

That reality was borne out this summer when “The Net” was moved up from the fall to July, says Jeff Blake, president of domestic distribution for Columbia/TriStar.

“ ‘Sandra Bullock’ was all the exhibitors needed to hear when it came to booking on short notice in the heart of the summer,” he says. “They wanted the movie on the strength of the star as they did with Nicole Kidman in ‘To Die For.’ Few male stars would have gotten them more enthused.”

Still, producer Sanford says, the corner hasn’t yet been turned. “Female-themed films such as Fox’s ‘Waiting to Exhale’ and my own ‘American Quilt’ are regarded more as class acts bringing prestige to a studio lineup rather than as commercially hot ‘breakout films,’ ” she noted prior to the release of her film. “But having executives like [Turner Pictures production chief] Amy Pascal and [Fox 2000 Pictures president] Laura Ziskin helps. Though we can’t unilaterally greenlight films, we wield more power than five years ago.”

While studios are responding to women’s numbers and pocketbooks, Ziskin says, most lack an awareness of what women really want. “As a producer, I know that my first audience to sell to is white middle-aged males who decide which movies get made,” she says. “They’re a very homogeneous group with a different sensibility and a reluctance to spend a lot on movies catering to women. I don’t view ‘To Die For’ as a ‘women’s picture,’ but we had to make it at a price well below the norm.”

To help ensure a supply of roles, actresses such as Pfeiffer, Moore, Meg Ryan and Jodie Foster have set up production entities of their own. These companies, the stars acknowledge, can be “vanity affairs,” designed to maintain relationships with performers to whom studios often pitch other, more commercially viable properties. And there’s nothing requiring the executives to greenlight projects that emerge.

Yet Pfeiffer managed to set up “One Fine Day,” a romantic comedy that will start shooting in February for Fox 2000, and Moore’s second feature, after “Now and Then,” is also expected to get underway at that time. It was Ryan’s company that helped bring “French Kiss” to the screen. And Foster’s offbeat “Home for the Holidays” came on the heels of “Nell”--another production of her Egg Pictures, where every project is female-driven.

Despite the progress that has been made, Foster maintains, the meatiest roles are still reserved for men. “There are more people in the system with a female sensibility--and in those ranks I include a male director such as [“The Silence of the Lambs” director] Jonathan Demme,” says the actress, who earned an Oscar for her performance in that film. “But it’s still hard to find a fully etched woman character in a script at the major studios.”

At the same time the industry is beginning to embrace women, however, some portrayals of them are still mired in muck. Critics charged that the NC-17-rated “Showgirls” was titillation devoid of character or plot. And movies as diverse as “Leaving Las Vegas,” “Copycat,” Kathryn Bigelow’s “Strange Days” and even “The Scarlet Letter” depicted rape sequences and violence toward women considered gratuitous or overly graphic by some.

“Until society changes, the film industry won’t,” Pfeiffer says. “Plus, there are dollars and cents to be made. They’ve been trying to get me to take off my clothes in every movie I do. Though I did it once, they’ve since given up. Maybe if I had a better body--or surgery--I wouldn’t mind.”

Demi Moore makes no apologies for her appearance in Castle Rock’s “Striptease,” currently shooting. Nudity, she says, wasn’t contractually mandated, though it would be naive to deny that it came with the turf.

“This isn’t a hard-core, raunchy film,” Moore says. “It’s the story of a woman fighting to regain custody of her daughter from her drug-addict husband--an opportunity for me to get inside someone people are quick to judge, just as they judged [“The Scarlet Letter’s”] Hester Prynne. I like roles that challenge stereotypes since I, myself, don’t want to live by limitations, whether self-imposed or from the outside.”

Moore’s salary for “Striptease,” $12.5 million, broke ground for the rest of the women, whose salaries have also soared in the past few months.

Julia Roberts, the only actress considered capable of opening a film a few years back, now earns $12 million per film. Bullock is being paid at least $11 million to star as a Red Cross nurse in “In Love and War.” Foster will receive $9 million for “Contact”--a tad more than Pfeiffer commands. And, highlighting the desperation of the industry for superstars of any gender, young Alicia Silverstone--star of this summer’s “Clueless”--is getting $5 million for each of four films to come from Columbia Pictures.

“There’s been a huge jump,” Pfeiffer says. “Jim Carrey led the way. If they pay him $20 million, they have to give us some sort of raise. Studios and producers are between a rock and a hard place.”

Still, until the female-driven action-adventure pictures start pulling in the grosses achieved by a Bruce Willis or an Arnold Schwarzenegger, fiscal parity will remain a pipe dream. And since the late 1980s, the megabucks paid to stars such as Sylvester Stallone and Steven Seagal have been dictated by their value overseas.

“The foreign market is still the quagmire,” says producer Kathleen Summers (“Stakeout”). “Women are generally in movies with a lot of talk--and movies that are more action-oriented are easier to sell abroad.”

Industry sources point out that it’s easier to cast a Geena Davis or a Meryl Streep in male genre films such as “Cutthroat Island” or “The River Wild” than to take a plunge with an “American Quilt,” which raises issues such as whether to marry for security or love.

Davis will play an amnesiac assassin in New Line’s “The Long Kiss Goodnight,” which is scheduled to begin filming in January. But it took the $80-million-plus gross of “Dangerous Minds” to rekindle Paramount’s interest in Pfeiffer’s Georgia O’Keeffe project after it had been in development at the studio for years.

One solution, industry analysts say, is to make less expensive “niche” films that target a smaller audience.

“Making a movie for $12 million, you can recoup--even if they don’t like it in Zimbabwe,” says Mike De Luca, president of production at New Line, whose female ensemble “Moonlight and Valentino” took a plunge in the fall. “I didn’t budget ‘Now and Then’ based on crossover potential, but then independents have always been more open to these kind of pictures than the major studios. If you’re carrying overhead like Warners or Disney, niche films are an indulgence. You can take a shower.”

Yet De Luca is convinced that the recent spate of female-themed films is a fluke. What comes out of “development hell,” he maintains, is random rather than “a trend.”

The women disagree.

“The film business is still light-years away from the TV arena, which belongs to the Oprahs, the Murphys, the Bretts and the Roseannes,” says Joan Hyler, a former William Morris agent who manages Diane Lane and Jane Alexander. “But we’ve acquitted ourselves very well this year.

“Women over 40 paved the way,” she adds. “And Geena, Meg, Julia, Sharon, Sandra and Jodie are the beneficiaries. We’ve birthed our first generation, thank God. This is a coming of age.”